We're here in Hinton, a town west of Jasper, Alberta, at a command centre coordinating the emergency response to the wildfires burning out of control in Jasper National Park, which resulted in a fire sweeping into the town and destroying 30% of the structures — leaving people homeless, businesses destroyed, and a piece of irreplaceable Canadian heritage irreparably damaged.

Firefighters, police officers, emergency responders and the military have been coming and going from here all day, working hard and risking their lives to get these fires under control and we're so grateful for it. We thank them.  

We're Albertans and we will rebuild.

But was the Conservative MP for Yellowhead, Jim Eglinksi wrong back in 2017 when he implored the Trudeau Liberals to do something about the fuel load caused by mountain pine beetle dead trees in a House of Commons speech?

Guilbeault says "years of forest management" paid off in Jasper.

30% of the town burned.

His own ministry's 2022 Jasper Park Mgmt Plan says not enough was done to clear pine beetle fuel load out of the park. Feds were warned in 2017 about potential for a catastrophe… pic.twitter.com/j7IrALmW5d

— Sheila Gunn Reid (@SheilaGunnReid) July 29, 2024

Or were the experts wrong in 2018, when two British Columbia researchers said Jasper National Park was due for a catastrophic forest fire — worrying officials weren't doing enough preparation for or prevent it from happening?

"It's a matter of when, not if," Begin told CBC's Radio Active.

Or were Parks Canada bureaucrats wrong when they tried to warn Parks Canada and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault in 2022 in a report about the potential for the exact disaster the experts tried to sound the alarm bells about in 2018?

And were those same federal bureaucrats wrong when, in 2022, they noted that just 18,000 seedlings of over half a billion seedlings needed for fire mitigation had been planted, that there weren't enough controlled burns, and that only 1.6 hectares of pine beetle dead trees had been mechanically cleared — when 44% of the parks' forest had been touched by the pine beetle?

Why wasn't any of this work done? Did Parks Canada CEO Ron Hallman choose social justice, DEI and nature over people?

The federal government, and specifically Minister Guilbeault, repeatedly preens about what environmentalists they are, and how Albertans just don't care about nature.

But as the fire continues to rage in Jasper National Park, more and more facts come out — which place the blame for the size and scale of that fire on the shoulders of those tasked with stewarding the park for all of us: Parks Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Steven Guilbeault.