“Competing operational priorities and a lack of stakeholder support” may have driven decisions to abandon prescribed burns ahead of the wildfire that devastated Jasper National Park, Parks Canada admitted.

The information came in response to an inquiry of ministry by Conservative MP Gerald Soroka, who sought details on unused fire mitigation proposals across national parks over the past decade.

The general admission from Parks Canada, which answers to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, is that prescribed burns and wildfire risk reduction projects are often not carried out due to factors such as weather conditions not meeting the necessary “prescription” for safe burns as well as resource and staff availability, particularly during peak wildfire seasons.

While Parks Canada maintains records of proposed prescribed burns and wildfire risk reduction projects, the reasons for abandoning these plans are not centrally documented. The agency cites weather conditions as the most frequent obstacle, alongside staffing shortages and competing operational priorities, but no detailed data exists on specific decisions.

From 2014 to 2024, Parks Canada considered wildfire mitigation projects across numerous parks, including Banff, Grasslands and Point Pelee.

Many of these plans remain unexecuted.

Alberta's Jasper wildfire, which grew inside the national park, burned 30% of the UNESCO World Heritage site after a lack of mechanical clearing of thousands of hectares of trees killed by a mountain pine beetle infestation which began in the early 2000s.

Foresty management experts and locals had warned Parks Canada for years about the threat the fuel load of dead trees posed to the Jasper townsite.

Help Jasper!

A massive wildfire has struck the town of Jasper, Alberta. Rebel News's Sheila Gunn Reid is on the scene, and Rebel News is crowdfunding for emergency disaster relief efforts.