B.C. gov’t workers to help evacuees
Social workers, health pros will be sent on aid missions for up to 10 days
B.C. will soon begin sending social workers and health-care workers to Alberta to help evacuees fleeing the Fort McMurray fire, Premier Christy Clark said Thursday.
B.C. may not be able to spare any firefighters or firefighting equipment, but it does have the resources to help Albertans find temporary homes and social services, Clark said at the beginning of the two-day Western Premiers Conference in Vancouver.
Clark said Alberta Premier Rachel Notley called her earlier in the day to ask for help in delivering social and health services to the more than 80,000 people who fled Tuesday night when several forest fires reached the city.
“We are right now beginning to identify how we can send some folks over to Alberta on the socialservices side to help people who are finding their way out of Fort McMurray,” Clark said.
“We will be calling on social workers, health workers, who would like to step up and help to go over to Alberta for a five- or 10-day rotation. We want to be there to support the people of Alberta in this nightmare time they are experiencing.”
The fire, which has ravaged a large part of Fort McMurray, reset the agenda of the premiers’ annual conference, pushing emergency management to the top of the list over issues of the economy, job creation and the soon-to-expire softwood lumber trade deal with the U.S.
But it didn’t stop Clark from taking a shot at presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for his inflammatory remarks about building walls. She said it is in both Canadian and American interests that a new lumber trade deal is signed.
“Great American presidents never made their country or the world great because they were talking about building walls. They talked about taking down walls. That is what trade is all about, taking walls down all around the world,” she said.
Clark also said she favours free trade between the western provinces.
While B.C. is doing better economically than its western provincial neighbours, Clark said she will judge the conference a success if the premiers get to a consensus on resource development, employment and the lumber deal.
Clark said the premiers also want the federal Liberal government to reverse the cuts the previous Conservative government made to a federal disaster finance and mitigation program. With climate change amplifying the alternating problems of drought and flooding, the federal government needs to recommit to the 50-yearold disaster finance assistance arrangement program.
Notley isn’t attending the conference because of her preoccupation with the Fort McMurray fire. In her place she sent Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman.