How do you hold an election in a province on fire?

CLIP You are listening to a Frequency Podcast Network production.

Jordan Heath Rawlings

CLIP I don’t know that I ever recall seeing a multiple communities evacuated all at once in fire season.

Jordan Heath Rawlings That’s Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who declared a state of emergency this weekend as fires spread across most of the province. Many of them unchecked. Now Alberta is no stranger to these fires, even two dozens of them at a time. But this, this was something else.

CLIP The number of active fires across the province now tops 100 with each red flame on this map representing those that are burning out of control.

Jordan Heath Rawlings A couple of cool days have moved that number down below 100, but tens of thousands of Albertans have had to evacuate. Many of them not knowing when they’ll return home. And the scorching weather that’s blamed for starting the fires is forecasted to return this weekend. Oh, and Alberta is in the middle of a closely contested election. The closest in decades. Smith, who has based much of her campaign on her opposition to Ottawa and the federal liberals has called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for help. If you would like more evidence, of how serious this all is. Meanwhile, elections Alberta is currently making contingency plans for people to cast ballots for candidates in their riding, even if they cannot return to their riding on election day. I would say this is a perfect storm, in Alberta, but actually a big, perfect storm is what the province really needs. I am Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Courtney Theriault is a reporter with City News Edmonton. He is the person we call when things pop off in Alberta, which is certainly happening right now. Hello, Courtney.

Courtney Theriault That they are, the writers are busy at work on this latest season of Alberta and Alberta politics.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Let’s talk about, obviously the fires. Give us a sense, in the rest of Canada, of the scale of this as we speak, which I should point out Tuesday morning, Alberta time. How much of the province is burning right now? How many fires, where are they? Just describe the situation.

Courtney Theriault This isn’t a term that I use very lightly with respect to the last couple years, but it is safe to say that this is a fairly unprecedented situation. This isn’t the largest wildfire season to date, but what makes it so unique is the number of fires sporadically placed throughout the province. So far, we’ve seen just over 400,000 hectares burn, to give you a kind of a sense as to the scope of that, take Edmonton Calgary in the next three biggest cities in the province, and that’s the territory you’re looking at that has been ravaged by the wildfires so far. We have seen a bit of a downturn, thankfully in the last few days with the number of active wildfires, we peaked at about 115 on the weekend. This morning we’re down to 89 active wildfires. But as you can imagine given the fact that they’re so widely spread out and all requiring their own firefighting crews certainly has put a strain on those resources.

Jordan Heath Rawlings What about evacuations or damages to homes and businesses? What do we know there?

Courtney Theriault Well, so far we’ve seen just about thirty thousand people displaced by the wildfires. And again, as I mentioned it’s all over the map. We’re talking west of Edmonton, we’re talking north of Edmonton, some south of Edmonton. So it’s required a little bit more effort than we typically would’ve seen because you know, you look back at past wildfire seasons. A lot of those evacuee wound up heading to Edmonton specifically, but some of them west of Edmonton simply haven’t been able to make it here because fire is impeding their progress. So they’ve actually had to go to Jasper in order to seek refuge from the fires. And yeah, I think right now we’re looking at about 20 communities in all that have seen some sort of evacuation alert. The good news is that we did see yesterday our very first lifting of a couple of those, one of them involving Edson, which was one of the larger communities. They had about 8,000 people evacuated. And so slowly things are starting to return to normal there. So that’s a good sign. But we still have thousands still out of their homes and a lot of confusion about information. Drayton Valley, the second largest community to be evacuated, which is over 7,000 people, Officials there, say that the wildfire around the town is still very much out of control. But we’ve seen on Facebook residents saying that, no, it is safe and we should be allowed back in. So again, you know, misinformation finding its way into pretty much every facet of life in Alberta, whether it’s politics or even wildfires.

Jordan Heath Rawlings And we’ll talk about some conspiracy theories behind these wildfires a little bit later. First, just to confirm, you know, no deaths, no injuries yet. Is that right?

Courtney Theriault Yeah. So the priority here without question has been as the officials with Alberta Wire Fire have reiterated time and time again, it’s human life. And so far we haven’t heard any injuries and certainly no deaths. Lots of questions about the, the damage estimate at this point, and we still haven’t had a figure pinpointed in terms of what we’ve seen in that regard. We know that the community of Fox Lake up in Northern Alberta lost at least 20 homes there, police detachment, their water plant, as well as the general store. But the problem in terms of being able to better assess the damage in other areas is simply because the smoke has been too thick, the flames too harsh. So it’s been very difficult for the water bombers and the helicopters above to even remotely begin to take a guess as to what’s been lost in the fire.

Jordan Heath Rawlings That was an incredibly succinct report, almost like you do this for a living. That’s the situation on the ground, let’s talk about the big picture. Okay. I am not an expert by any means on wildfire season, but it is early May. Is this as early as it feels for this level of fires? What’s going on?

Courtney Theriault Early May isn’t completely unprecedented. If we go back to that other relatively well known fire here in Alberta, the Fort McMurray Blaze in 2016, that one really started to whip up on May 1st before the evacuation on May 3rd. What makes this one maybe a little bit more unique is that the fires themselves actually started to begin in the final week of April. Now that is unusual, and it kind of fits into what we’ve been hearing from climatologists who have been saying that you know, climate change is increasing, is lengthening the window of wildfire season here, or at least the elements to have a severe wildfire season. Because in Alberta, technically wildfire season runs from March to October, but those first few months, and those last few months, we don’t typically see a lot of activity. So, yeah to answer your question, I guess April is definitely very early, an unusual early opening night for wildfires in the province.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You mentioned speaking to climatologists. Are they saying this is an aberration? This is, I mean, part of a trend is this, get used to it. What does this tell us about seasons to come? Or is that too early to say?

Courtney Theriault The general consensus amongst climatologists that I’ve spoken to about this is that yes, climate change is very much playing a role in these earlier fire starts, these later conclusions to fire season. Does that mean we’re going to see something that we are seeing right now On a regular annual basis? Probably not. There is still an element of cyclical nature to these fires. To put things into perspective, 2016 for the Fort McMurray wildfires, we lost about 600,000 hectares. 2019 was just a shade under 900,000 this year, as I mentioned, just over 400,000. But in between those other years cumulatively, I think it might have been 400,000 for those other five years. So it just gives you a sense that there is still a cyclical element to it. But climate change does mean that we’re seeing the snow being gone much earlier. We’re not seeing the vegetation green as soon as we’d like it to. And we’re seeing again, just these absurdly hot days. We set, I think three or four heat records in the last two weeks. We got to plus 30, you know, at a time when, and I was looking back at my Facebook memories and thank you Mark Zuckerberg for this, at least twice in the last seven years we had snow in early May.

Jordan Heath Rawlings You mentioned that it has cooled off some, however, and that at least one evacuation order has been lifted. Does this mean that the worst is over? What are we watching for now and and how do you even try to project these things?

Courtney Theriault And that is the watchword projection. A as we hear on a daily basis. And certainly over the last couple days, you know, I mean there’s been this sense of optimism, right? Because cooler temperatures have have crept in. We’ve seen some light rains and that’s allowed fire crews to get to parts of these wildfires that were completely off limits just because they were so intense. But they are telling us that despite that good news, it’s hard to project what a wildfire is going to do. It just takes, you know, a subtle shift in the wind and suddenly you’re dealing with this massive conflagration again. And what makes things particularly difficult this time around is that we are going to see a return to those record temperatures in the days ahead. We are heading back to plus 30 territory. This weekend and the rain that we’ve seen in the last couple days is soon going to be in the rear view mirror. And so we are going to be back in those high risk situations for wildfires. And at best we’ve, you know, we’ve managed to tamp down 20% of what we’ve seen so far. So there’s a very, very real risk that we’re going to see a nasty sequel to the last week or so that we’ve seen of wildfires. And, you know, what they say about sequels, they’re usually bigger and and badder.

Jordan Heath Rawlings The other unprecedented, I guess part of this equation is these blazes come smack in the middle of a huge provincial election campaign that we spoke to you about a couple of weeks ago. How are these fires changing the race?

Courtney Theriault It’s something that’s still evolving. But it’s funny because I think there was a sense during the first few days of the election that both the NDP and the UCP, the campaign seemed to be in part who loves the police more, because there was the sense that, you know, Alberta’s dealing with a bit of a crime issue, but now that’s pivoted to who loves the firefighters more. So it’s been very interesting to see that. And certainly I think the biggest question on all of this and maybe the deciding factor, because leadership was arguably the biggest issue that wasn’t affordability or healthcare in the province. A lot of questions raised about Danielle Smith’s suitability to be at the head of the table for Alberta and this is giving her an opportunity to demonstrate whether or not she has those chops. Certainly, you know, there have been some questions about the speed with which she enacted the state of emergency. That happened on Saturday, a few days after people were calling for it, certainly some questions about how quickly she reached out to Ottawa to ask for help. But that has come through. So we’re going to see a lot of this, a lot of these leadership questions, I think take to the forefront of the election over the next few days. And I think you’re gonna see some of the other stories. And trust me, there have been some other Danielle Smith videos and stories emerging as has become the norm. It’s almost like a subscription service, you get one free Danielle Smith controversial video clip every week, but I think some of those are gonna wind up taking a backseat to these leadership questions and to what we’re seeing with the wildfire response.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Let’s stick with leadership for one minute, just because you mentioned it and because I find the dynamic fascinating. You and I, as I mentioned, talked about this race a few weeks ago. One of the things we talked about was Danielle Smith going head to head with Ottawa and the Alberta first mentality. How does it play when she goes to the people and says, you know, I’ve reached out to Prime Minister Trudeau and we had a great conversation, and he is graciously providing aid, and obviously it’s the right thing to do for Alberta, but there’s an awfully strange dynamic there.

Courtney Theriault Yeah, well her catchphrase through the, the first few days of the campaign were the Trudeau-Singh Notley Alliance. And those are words that she hasn’t spoken since the wildfire crisis has really ramped up. Because you’re not wrong, they do have a, Danielle Smith and Justin Trudeau do have a very itchy and scratchy sort of dynamic between them. And so what’s interesting about this is that you’ve got the diehards on either side of the partisan split, whose minds aren’t going to be changed by this, who are going to, you know, say on the one hand, well, thank goodness the feds stepped in to help us out because Danielle wasn’t. And then you have the other side of the coin. It’s like, Danielle, don’t reach out to Ottawa. You know, this is against what you’re saying, but then you have the people in the middle, right. Who I think are not as hardwired to their specific partisan talking points.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Right. Who just want more firefighters to fight these fires.

Courtney Theriault Yeah, exactly right. I think there’s just a sense that, you know, we want what’s best for Alberta, right? And so, this is where that leadership element comes through in the election, which is if Danielle Smith gives up that rhetoric that she’s had her fight with Ottawa and plays nice with them in order to, you know, secure the, the safety and the resources that are desperately needed in the province, then that is something that I think will play well with those moderates and undecideds. Now, again, obviously there’s a lot more in the election blender that could change people’s minds. But I would think that, is not necessarily a bad thing for Danielle to change her tone and to be more amicable with Ottawa and Justin Trudeau.

Jordan Heath Rawlings The other thing we spoke about, and you briefly mentioned it a second ago when we previewed the election, were the big issues simply being, you know, affordability and day-to-day life. We didn’t talk about climate change as a big issue at all. Is the tone different on that issue, either from leaders and candidates or from voters themselves? Given that province is on fire?

Courtney Theriault It’s still early days and it’s hard to say how much the notion of climate change will truly impact this election. I would say, its unlikely to have an effect in the next several weeks leading up to May 29th, but will it be part of the broader conversation going forward? Absolutely. One of the talking points that came up here between the two candidates, between Notley and Danielle Smith earlier this week before everything went to hack, was who has the better plan to get Alberta to net zero? And I think certainly that’s something that ties into the climate change conversation of course, again, energy is still the leader here in the province and it’s still something that you have to tread with very delicately. I know we had the climate change conversation following Fort McMurray in 2016, and certainly it felt like there might be some momentum there, but you know, as that one faded from memory a little bit, the conversations around climate change cooled down a bit. And so there’s certainly a chance that that might happen here as well. So again, it’s, it’s hard to say long term how that’s going to impact it. But I would say for the sake of the election, it’s probably not going to wind up, you know, becoming a top five issue, maybe not even a top 10 issue.

Jordan Heath Rawlings One more question about the election specifically. This is probably too early to ask, but I’ll ask it theoretically anyway. We’re talking about evacuation orders. We’re talking about 30,000 people out of their homes. What happens if this is going on on election day? Are there contingency plans? How does it practically impact the vote?

Courtney Theriault That’s certainly an element that says, kind of floating in the air right now. As things stand, contingencies have been set in place by elections Alberta for the impacted communities. In essence, they would be allowed to vote remotely or in advanced polls in the communities where they’ve been evacuated too. The election itself is still very much slated to go May 29th, and it would take a substantially larger disaster than this already unprecedented disaster to move that date. Premier Danielle Smith was asked about it. She said she’s talked to Elections Alberta and the officials there telling her basically that it’s not something that they foresee happening. So that’s the short answer in terms of, of how it’s going to impact the actual day of election process.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I promise that we would get to this, being Alberta politics. There is some stuff on the fringes related to this election and these wildfires. You’ve dug into it a bit. Just tell us what’s going on.

Courtney Theriault Yeah, if there’s one thing that Albertans love to do as a pastime, it’s to engage in unfounded and wild conspiracies. And the latest and greatest hit is one that seems to suggest that the wildfires themselves were deliberately set. Now, there are a couple of different sort of threads with respect to this. One pertains to a prescribed burn that happened just outside of Banff, about a week and a half ago. In essence, a prescribed ban for those who don’t know, is a fire that’s set deliberately by firefighters in order to kind of burn some of the forest and to bring down the fire risk. Now, This happened close to when things kind of went wild. And it also was part of a Parks Canada promotion, where they had some female firefighters taken to it. And so this has led some people to believe that these fires were set intentionally by woke feminists. Yeah, I know. Seems, seems wild. And then there are other folks who…

Jordan Heath Rawlings Nothing surprises me anymore, Alberta or anywhere else in terms of conspiracy theories. So.

Courtney Theriault And then there’s the other element to that, which is that the woke feminist started the wildfires in order to make Danielle Smith look bad. Because there have never been wildfires in early May in Alberta, despite what the evidence suggests.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Right. We just talked about that.

Courtney Theriault And it’s interesting to me in the sense that, the folks who are starting that conspiracy, who are often in the Danielle Smith camp, are suggesting in essence as I’m interpreting it, that the wildfires were started to make her look bad because she can’t provide the leadership in order to steer the province through it. Again, it’s just, the half baked conspiracies, it’s, they can’t see the force for the trees a lot of the time, so to speak.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Last question. What happens now? I know we talked about the heat possibly returning, but combination of the campaign, which can obviously bring rhetoric to the fore as well as this situation. How volatile is it covering the news day today in Alberta right now?

Courtney Theriault Probably no more volatile than trying to campaign during a wildfire. You know, there, it’s delicate on both sides of the coin, right? Because certainly you’ve got the politicians still out there making their platform pledges, trying to demonstrate to Albertans that their policies are the best for them for the next four years, while conversely not trying to appear insensitive to what’s happening out there in these communities where 30,000 people have been evacuated and it’s the same for us as well in the news, right? You know, trying to ensure that people get the information that they need on both fronts, while not seeing as if we’re tipping too heavily towards one another. So, yeah, it is to go back to the word I used at the top of the podcast, very much unprecedented. And I look forward to being able to shelve that word completely at some time in the near future.

Jordan Heath Rawlings I will just add as a closing note, our colleague Natasha Ramsahai, who is the chief meteorologist at City News Toronto right now reports, this is where I am, reports that the haze in the sky over Toronto that’s keeping temperatures down today is yes the smoke from the wildfires out where you are. So we are all in this together.

Courtney Theriault You know what that is a message that probably won’t play well in Alberta. We still have, we still have mixed feelings about Toronto, you and the rest of the country. Courtney, thank you for this as always, much appreciated.

Jordan Heath Rawlings My pleasure.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Courtney Theriault reporting for City News from Edmonton. That was the big story. Best of luck to our friends out in Alberta. You can find more big stories at thebigstorypodcast.ca. You can talk to us anytime by writing us an email hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca, or by tracking us down on Twitter @thebigstoryfpnat. If you feel like picking up a phone or dialing a phone or talking into a phone, you can leave us a voicemail. That number is 416-935-5935. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.