In this video, Member of Parliament Arnold Viersen speaks out against the $15 million reduction in Alberta’s provincial budget for wildfire suppression. The funds allotted for air tankers was cut by $5.1 million while the base wildfire management budget was slashed by $9.6 million.
Paul Lane, the vice president of the air tanker company Air Spray said the company’s contract was cut by 25 per cent in the recent budget.
From CBCnews:
“The province has reduced the operating contracts, for not just us but the other air tanker operator, from 123 days to 93 days,” [Mr. Lane] said.
“Effectively that will mean that all the air tanker assets in Alberta will come up contract by August 16. The province has no guarantee of availability after that period of those air tanker assets.”
From the Edmonton Journal:
With dry conditions and dozens of blazes already burning across Alberta, Premier Rachel Notley said Tuesday her government’s decision to slash the wildfire budget by $15 million this year won’t impact the province’s firefighting efforts.
Notley chalked the matter up to simple budgetary practices that has the province earmark base funding, with the understanding firefighting efforts are covered in the province’s emergency budget.
“In no way, shape or form are we suggesting that we wouldn’t put every bit of resources that are required to ensure that fires are appropriately fought as they arise,” Notley told reporters at a Red Deer news conference. “This is the way these kinds of emergent and non-predictable costs are typically budgeted.”
Last year, the province spent $375 million fighting wildfires; none of that money was earmarked in the budget, but instead came directly from emergency funding.
After [the air tanker] contracts expire Aug. 16, the province will hire planes on case by case basis as needed, but critics say that could leave the government in a vulnerable position if companies look for longer-term contracts elsewhere.
The fire in Fort Mc … started about 30 km away … the reports do not say this … The reports also do not say when you have a budget of over 300 million cut to 86 million for the whole year .. and the contracts ripped up for Air Tankers from Con Air in BC .. did the person in charge hold off .. Slave Lake just weeks before had the same problem .. thus was the budget was used up? not sure. But still .. I am sure the NDP marketers are hard at work spinning this one could not of been stopped .. just a guess .. but if Alberta had the budget .. at the very beginning would they have used Con Air to put this one out before it got out of hand?
Carl. I’m not sure what you mean by “the contracts ripped up”. Alberta cut the wildfire budget but did not eliminate all air tankers. Here’s a portion of an April 20 article on Fire Aviation, which was a quote from CBCnews:
As we wrote in the article above:
How are those wildfire budget cuts working out for Alberta?
Prayers and all best wishes for the thousands who have lost their homes and all wishes for fire fighter safety for our northern brothers and sisters.
From all reports about the fuels, weather and fire behavior, it was highly unlikely that more resources would have slowed this one down.