Alberta Premier Danielle Smith tours Jasper on Friday, July 26, 2024. Smith on Friday defended the province's wildfire response after a report found that the government impeded the work of crews.Amber Bracken/Reuters
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is demanding an apology for a report commissioned by the Town of Jasper into last year’s devastating wildfires in the National Park after firefighters said their work was impeded by the province.
Blaming the federal government Friday, Ms. Smith dismissed findings from the report. The publication surveyed firefighters and other emergency officials involved in the effort against the wind-whipped conflagrations that destroyed at least one-third of the buildings in the Rocky Mountain resort town.
The Premier asserted that the wildfires started in an area that is managed by Parks Canada, and criticized Ottawa officials for not seeking Alberta’s help until the flames had breached the townsite. She defended the provincial response, describing it to be as prompt as possible under the constraints of jurisdictional authority.
“Whatever it is that they’re trying to do to deflect blame, I’m not impressed with it. And I would ask for an apology,” Ms. Smith said at an unrelated event in Edmonton, shortly after posting a lengthy statement against the report on social media.
“This report comes as a shot out of the blue. It’s unfair, it’s untrue, and I would like them to withdraw it,” she said. “Pointing fingers at others when they should be looking at what they can do to improve their own response would have been a far better outcome as we approach the year-anniversary.”
On July 22, Jasper will mark one year since wildfires destroyed the homes of roughly 2,000 residents and forced around 25,000 people out of the area for weeks. The calamity killed one person: Morgan Kitchen, a 24-year-old firefighter, who died after a tree struck him while he battled the flames.
The Premier made her remarks as federal ministers from environment, emergency management and Indigenous services provided a seasonal update about this year’s wildfires. Citing the latest research from Environment and Climate Change Canada, the ministers noted that this season is already one of the worst on record, indicating that there is heightened risk of more conflagrations in August.
Across the country, more than 570 wildfires are actively burning, with at least 140 deemed out of control. An excess of 5.5 million hectares of land in Canada has burned in 2025, around double the 10-year average for mid-July.
While the situation this year has been much better in Alberta than 2024, several provinces have experienced an aggressive and earlier start to the wildfire season. Manitoba, which has borne the brunt of the damage, is now under its second provincewide state of emergency, as dozens of other large fires have also spread in Saskatchewan, Ontario and British Columbia.
“I don’t think it’s helpful for me to respond to Premier Smith’s comments this morning. What I would prefer to do is to continue my review of the report,” said Eleanor Olszewski, Canada’s minister of emergency management and community resilience, at the briefing in Ottawa.
Ms. Olszewski, who is also responsible for Prairies Economic Development Canada, said it is not surprising that the Jasper report identified gaps in the handling of the wildfire response.
“Any time we look at an event in retrospect, we expect to see things that could have been done better,” she said, adding that she is planning a visit to Jasper next week, where she will meet with community members and assess next steps.
Smith says the initial wildfire response and management was solely under the jurisdiction of Parks Canada, and that Alberta's contributions were “either minimized or ignored entirely” by the report's findings.AMBER BRACKEN/The Canadian Press
According to the Jasper report, town officials and Parks Canada had an integrated command structure, but their response to the fire became challenging when the Alberta government got involved.
“Jurisdictional overlap with the province created political challenges that disrupted the focus of incident commanders, leading to time spent managing inquiries and issues instead of directing the wildfire response and re-entry,” noted the report.
“Provincial involvement added complexity to the response as the Province of Alberta, though not jurisdictionally responsible to lead the incident, regularly requested information and sought to exercise decision-making authority.”
Bill Given, Jasper’s chief administrator, said the report was not intended to assign blame on anyone.
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The report analyzed seven of the municipality’s emergency management plans and conducted surveys about deployment issues – receiving input from 115 incident management-team members and 138 firefighters, after also speaking with 68 people from government agencies and the private sector, all involved in the wildfire response.
“In order to find out how you can improve, you look for gaps, you look at overlaps, you look for weaknesses and then you go to address them moving forward,” Mr. Given said.
But Ms. Smith disagreed, contending that the report is “an intentional political attack,” specifically because it does not acknowledge the work of provincial emergency personnel and leadership.
“The town went right out and said, ‘We’re not looking to lay blame.’ And then they have a whole section where they laid blame. Maybe they should reissue the report, do a little bit of self-reflection, and take that section out,” she said.
The Premier has previously faulted the federal government for the wildfires in Jasper, stating Ottawa has not met its responsibility to manage the forest.
Ms. Smith, recalling details from last year, said that she was “quite surprised” about her conversations about Jasper with former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
“I was offering help, and he didn’t understand that it was a Parks Canada fire. He said, ‘We’ll give you whatever help you need.’ And I said, ‘No-no-no, you don’t understand. We are offering to help you.’ So, that, I think, shows you the level of disconnect that there was,” Ms. Smith told reporters.
With a report from The Canadian Press