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“Nothing was done to address the landscape or the beetle-killed timber to prevent the mega fire of July 22nd, 2024. What was done was insignificant and poorly thought out. It did nothing to protect the town from the Jasper Fire complex,” Ken Hodges told the House of Commons environment committee Wednesday night. 

Hodges, who warned Parks Canada officials in 2017 that it was a matter of time before a catastrophic fire hit the national park, wondered about the amount of money spent in wildfire management in Jasper to negligible ends. 

“Partial logging and mixed stands, pruning and fuel management costs about $500 a hectare, you can do about 10,000 hectares for about $5,000,000. So, you can put some value there. ...The question I have is where did the $80 million that was noted by the minister, where was it spent in relation to this fire?”

Hodges described Parks Canada as ill-equipped to manage the forest and ignorant of the serious fire danger in the park. 

Hodges also warned that the danger remains high in both Jasper and Banff parks for a fire next summer due to the lack of clearing away of dead trees in forests managed by the federal government, under the purview of the Environment and Climate Change Canada. 

Scandal-plagued Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault was promoted Wednesday morning to minister in charge of Jasper's recovery. 

By Wednesday afternoon, a motion ordering further examination of the federal mismanagement of the fire danger in the park passed. 

One-third of Jasper's historic townsite was lost to fire, along with $2 billion in assets in a wildfire which began in the park in July.