Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes a statement about the wildfires in Western Canada in Charlottetown, Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023. The Liberal cabinet is in Prince Edward Island's capital this week for a retreat as it gets ready for the next sitting of the Parliament. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Brian McInnis
CHARLOTTETOWN – The “apocalyptic devastation” of wildfires in British Columbia and Northwest Territories is a chief concern for the federal government as a cabinet retreat gets underway in Charlottetown, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday morning.
Affordability and the country’s housing crisis are set to headline the three-day retreat but he said the fires are a “pressing concern.”
More than 30,000 people in British Columbia are under evacuation orders as multiple fires threaten communities including the Central Okanagan city of Kelowna.
More than 20,000 people were forced to flee Yellowknife and several other communities near Slave Lake in Northwest Territories last week.
“This is a scary and heartbreaking time for people,” Trudeau said.
He said cabinet’s incident response group will meet again in Charlottetown on Monday afternoon to discuss ongoing co-ordination of the fire situation.
Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan, who represents a Vancouver riding in the House of Commons, will attend that meeting and the retreat remotely. He is remaining in B.C. to help with the co-ordinated response to the fires.
More than 1,000 fires are still burning across Canada, and 60 per cent of them are in B.C. and N.W.T.
This has by far been Canada’s worst fire season on record, with more than 5,800 fires burning 141,000 square kilometres, an area greater in size than all of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island put together.
The cabinet retreat comes a few weeks before members of Parliament will return to the House of Commons following their summer break. It has also been less than a month since Trudeau announced a major shuffle of his cabinet.
There are seven new faces among his 38-member governing team, and 19 more have new jobs.
All of them have spent the summer getting an earful from friends, neighbours, and constituents about housing, which is the number 1 item on the government’s agenda for the fall.
The cost of housing, including to purchase and to rent, have increased far faster than wages in recent years. It is estimated that Canada needs to at least triple the rate it is building new homes to try to get the issue back under control.
The authors of a recent national report on housing will be in Charlottetown to brief cabinet ministers on their findings and on what needs to be done.
Ministers will also hear from the founder of the Generation Squeeze think tank from the University of British Columbia about ways to help young Canadians who are feeling economic despair as prices rise.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 21, 2023.
