Aftermath of wildfires at Weyakwin. Photo by Liam Richards.
Recent government consultation meetings with northern leaders and emergency officials about the summer’s wildfires have been by invitation only.
Government Relations is one of the ministries holding these meetings as part of the province’s “lessons learned exercise”.
But deputy minister Al Hilton says there is no plan to host a forum where northern citizens can publicly question provincial officials about the handling of the fires.
“We don’t have those kinds of meetings planned at the moment and we’re not anticipating having those meetings,” he says. “I would say that we invited the First Nation chiefs, their councillors, whoever they might want to bring. We invited the mayors and their councillors and whoever they wanted to bring.”
Hilton says northern citizens with concerns can either fill out the government’s survey, present a written submission — or have their local leaders relay their concerns.
“We were really looking to the local leaders — be it chiefs or councillors or mayors — to provide us a good sense of what they were hearing from their constituents and from the citizens within their community,” he says. “So we’re really looking for them to offer on behalf of their communities the perspective of the community members.”
Hilton says Government Relations has hosted eight of these invitation-only sessions, including one recently in La Ronge. There is still one more to be conducted with the Meadow Lake Tribal Council.
The province says any changes to how the government manages forest fires will be made well before the 2016 fire season.