Jasper mayor wants more election focus on environment

Richard Ireland doesn’t want to be a voice in the wilderness. But, in a federal election campaign dominated by themes of national unity and the threat of tariffs from the United States, he feels the majority of Canadians are ignoring the bigger issue at hand. 

And that’s what climate change is doing to our country.

Ireland is the mayor of Jasper, which lost an estimated 358 structures in the 2024 wildfire, according to Parks Canada. The Jasper Wildfire stretched to a size of 32,654 hectares, bigger than the island nation of Malta. 

Article content

He thought when Canadians saw the images from one of the country’s most beloved tourist spots — of smoke, ash, burnt-out cars and shells of buildings — it would be a national wake-up call. But it hasn’t been. The state of the environment hasn’t really made any sort of blip on the national radar during this campaign.

“My hope is that no other community has to face challenges in the same way we did,” said Ireland. “Our experience certainly shows what can happen with climate change and climate-change catastrophe.”

On Friday, Ireland joined municipal leaders from across Canada in the Elbows Up for Climate Action movement, which asks federal candidates to prioritize disaster preparedness and climate-change-fighting policies. Included in the signees was Edmonton city councillor Aaron Paquette.

The calls to action include the need to build two million energy-efficient homes across then country, create a national clean electric grid and a countrywide high-speed rail network. It also calls on the federal party leaders to recognize the need for a “national resilience, response and recovery strategy” so communities can better prepare for natural disasters, and government has a playbook that it can use when disaster strikes.

Article content

Article content

“It needs to be funded, it needs to be strategic, it can’t be just a plan that sits on a shelf,” said Ireland.

Ireland warned that the effects of climate change are long-lasting, and plans to make Canada more sustainable will take years upon years to achieve. But the Trump threat, unless the American president can do something about term limits, can only last four years. Trump will be long gone, while Jasper will still be in recovery mode.

As Jasper burned, Avni Soma and her neighbours in Canmore discussed how ready they’d be if a wildfire threatened them. They talked about having their insurance topped up.

Now, Soma is travelling through the Yellowhead constituency as the NDP candidate for the riding, and she’s hearing very little about environmental concerns.

“Bottom of our consciousness”

““The issues from the U.S. are overtaking our political campaign,” she said. “For me, that’s very unfortunate. But, it’s the latest issue, and it’s what we have to deal with. Long-term things, like the state of our environment, are going to the bottom of our consciousness.”

Article content

Soma is a scientist who has been part of the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council. So, this election campaign’s turn away from science is painful. The Yellowhead riding takes in Banff and Jasper, then moves east all the way to the borders of Parkland County. It includes Edson, which was twice evacuated in 2023 because of wildfire threat.

She encouraged Ireland and his cohorts to keep hammering away at their message. Someone has to hear them, right? “Municipalities have to keep bringing it up at federal level.”

In February, the federal government announced $160 million in funding to support Jasper’s recovery, a sign of how wildfires impact taxpayers across the country. Of that, $30 million was slated for housing units that were recently delivered to the town. Ireland said there are 100 duplexes and 120 single, dormitory-style units. There are four pre-built units, ranging from three-bedroom dwellings to studios. There are 20 more prefab units, each of them two-bedroom builds.

Article content

The feds also committed $9.4 million to the Housing Accelerator Fund with a goal to construct 505 multi-family homes over the next decade.

Ireland said the challenge this year will be finding housing for summer workers in the tourism industry, and for the people who are reconstructing the town.

Michael Fark had been directing the recovery efforts for Jasper, but is now running as the Liberal candidate for Yellowhead after party officials came to him.

“This wasn’t on my radar. I was very much committed to doing the work I was doing,” he said.

But he believes he can win, or he wouldn’t have agreed to carry the Liberal banner. All this despite the fact that Yellowhead has historically supported Conservatives by wide margins.

“The work I ‘m doing in Jasper is consequential. I would not have made this effort if this was just going to be an exercise.”

But, does be believe the province and feds could have better responded to the Jasper crisis?

“It’s a difficult question to answer,” said Fark. “The work I did was with all three levels of government. There was very good support from all levels, but there were some areas of difficulty.” But he acknowledged that getting the feds and the province on the same page was “was a challenge.”

Article content

The province pledged $112 million for the rebuilding of Jasper homes, but in January threatened to yank that funding because of the town and federal government’s push for high-density housing. The province wanted to spend the money on single-family homes.

On Thursday, the province announced that it would be providing $900,000 to upgrade and add to 150 weather stations across Alberta. This would allow Alberta Wildfire to better predict potential hot spots for forest blazes.

“This is about getting the right information to the right hands at the right time,” said Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen.

The number of fires are down in Alberta so far in 2025, and maybe this has given us all a sense of complacency. Loewen said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that 2025 will offer Albertans a bit of a respite after consecutive summers of smoky skies and evacuations. But he warned that the eastern slopes and parts of northern Alberta were dry.

On the campaign trail, Soma is hearing a lot of concerns about the closure of emergency wards in Rocky Mountain House and Hinton; and constituents are telling her the feds should get tough and enforce the Canada Health Act. Fark is hearing a lot about affordability concerns, health care and the poor state of infrastructure in the riding. Neither brought up climate change as a major issue they’re hearing from Yellowhead residents, though the riding has been scarred by major fires over the past couple of years.

Article content