The great Jasper wildfire of July and August simmers on with a new working title: Canada’s Most Divisive Disaster.
This week and last, MPs have been sniping at each other through five meetings of a parliamentary committee on environment and sustainable development.
The battle breaks down as follows:
The Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and NDP want to pin this tragic event on climate change.
Conservative MPs would like Canadians to know how badly Ottawa screwed up fire prevention and the firefighting itself.
The deck is stacked, as you’d expect from a Liberal-dominated committee. One session had two subjects:
“Factors leading to the recent fires in Jasper National Park” and “Profits and emissions reduction efforts in Canada’s oil and gas industry.”
They’re not subtle.
Throughout, federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault claimed that Ottawa could not have done better either before or during the fire.
At any suggestion that Ottawa was lacking, he trotted out climate change as the true culprit. It was clear more than once that a big ugly fire in Alberta is a great boost for his climate agenda.
Focusing on climate also turned minds away from serious questions about Ottawa’s performance as the power in charge of both prevention and firefighting.
For instance, why was a convoy of firefighters with 20 trucks turned away from the park gate like tourists who can’t afford a pass?
That actually happened.
Private firefighter Kristopher Liivam testified that his crew wasn’t there on spec. There had been discussions with officials. They clearly understood they would be admitted.
But Parks Canada turned firefighters away from a fire.
That was three days after the fire began, just as things were getting really dangerous.
Alberta deputy premier Mike Ellis, who spoke to the hearing, said in an interview Tuesday that he was “very concerned” to hear about the episode.
“Certainly, our position would be that we wouldn’t be turning away anybody” if Alberta had been part of joint command.
Beyond the firefighter fiasco, there’s the question of why the feds froze out Alberta.
Ellis testified that he had great working relations with his federal counterpart, Harjit Sajjan. But that didn’t make up for being denied joint command.
Delicately, Ellis didn’t name the federal minister who would need to grant permission — but everyone knew he was talking about Guilbeault.
Denied any authority, Alberta needed federal permission to bring in helicopters, water bombers, surveillance drones, bulldozers and other equipment.
The refusal to grant joint command was both bizarre and churlish.
As Ellis noted, Alberta faces most of the firefighting costs. Jasper is in a national park but it remains, despite federal pretensions, squarely situated in Alberta.
Premier Danielle Smith has created a cabinet committee to help the town recover. That means provincial spending. Ottawa has not complained about this latest intrusion on sovereign federal soil.
The hottest point of debate was whether Parks Canada had done enough to clear the nearby forest of highly flammable deadwood from pine beetle infestation.
Guilbeault insisted that prescribed burns for the past decade were the reason 70 per cent of Jasper was saved.
He was challenged on this time after time. There’s evidence going back decades that Parks Canada didn’t do enough to get rid of explosive wildfire fuel.
Indigenous people snort derisively at Guilbeault’s suggestion that they were full partners in the planned burns.
Both sides at least agreed on the heroic actions of firefighters and townspeople. They lamented the terrible damage to the beloved, iconic mountain town.
Albertans have either been to Jasper or want to go. It’s hard to find people without a treasured memory.
And now, sadly, 200 of the 500 Parks Canada workers who lived in the townsite have lost their homes.
Apart from those sincere sentiments, there was no agreement on faraway Parliament Hill. The massive blaze that transfixed the country became just another political tool.
Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald
X: @DonBraid