Town of Whitecourt selected as one of two Alberta municipalities to take part in pilot project

By Serena Lapointe

A new pilot project led by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), in
partnership with FireSmart Canada, has looped in the Town of Whitecourt as one of only
two municipalities in the province to take part. The Policy Pathways Pilot Project is a
test run on how FireSmart principles can be worked into municipal planning documents,
to help mitigate wildfire risk right at the ground floor of a project.
The municipality was formally asked to join during the October 13 Regular Meeting of
Council, with Michael Coutu, FireSmart Specialist with the Government of Alberta,
presenting. FireSmart Alberta handpicked the two municipalities it wanted in the project:
Whitecourt and Canmore. “Over the past spring and early part of summer, I had the
opportunity to meet some of your town councillors at various events, and I took your
comments to heart. When this project came up, I recognized that this would be a great
next step for Whitecourt,” explained Coutu.
“Between 2014 and now, between the Government of Alberta through FireSmart
Alberta, and FRIAA (Forest Resource Improvement Association of Alberta), collectively
in Whitecourt, there’s been about three million worth of mitigation work that has been
done. You’re definitely leading the province as an example in this realm,” said Coutu.
Projects such as summer mitigation work, where forests are cleaned up around the
municipality, removing dead and downed trees or overgrown vegetation, as well as the
Fireguard on the town’s east boundary, are all projects that have received significant
funding.
Coutu said the pilot project is about learning how to build things better by integrating
FireSmart principles directly into a municipality’s land use and development policies.
The project is looking at things like having new subdivision layouts feature a minimum of
two evacuation routes, stricter mandates for developers to install adequate water
volume/pressure for fire suppression, location of utilities, fire-rated products for roofing
and siding for new builds, as well as perimeter materials, such as requiring a wooden
fence to attach to a home with a non-combustible material to break the path of fire to the
structure. It also touches on zoning, topographical setbacks and vegetation and
landscaping zones, such as using rock or gravel instead of mulch.
The pilot portion of the program is of no cost to the community but will allow Whitecourt
to provide feedback on what works and what doesn’t, in terms of how FireSmart
principles merge into current planning documents. To be clear, being a pilot community
doesn’t mean that Whitecourt has to commit to adopting or changing its bylaws.

Decisions on any changes to current policies or bylaws would solely be a municipal
decision and up to Town Council to decide on in the future.
However, changing or updating policies and bylaws can be costly, depending on the
need for legal support. It is also time-consuming. The goal of the pilot project is to do as
much of the work for municipalities as possible by seeking legal opinions on changes
and testing out changes with willing communities who can find bottlenecks within
current planning processes and provide feedback so that necessary changes can be
made. Coutu said in the end, they want to hand over a workable system, a turnkey
program to municipalities so they can more easily add FireSmart principles into their
planning documents without doing all the grunt work, because it will already have been
done.
The pilot project is running in Alberta, Ontario and the Yukon, with only two
municipalities chosen from each. “Whitecourt is very much leading the example
especially on the mitigation front, and to be honest with you, you are somewhat leading
in the realm that we’re diving into now, with the regulation component,” said Coutu. “We
feel that your two communities (Whitecourt and Canmore) have completed the vast
majority of that mitigation and are in the best position to move forward.”
He said that now is the time to start thinking about how communities can develop and
build more resiliency into their plans, and he is looking forward to seeing the outcome.
“Even if we pushed the tree line (around a town) back two miles, the West Kelowna fire
proved that we will still see ember transfer into the community, some the size of
cellphones, which was a remarkable finding from that fire. We know that the ecosystems
in most of Alberta are what we call fire-adapted ecosystems, meaning they require fire
to thrive. As a society, we have taken away that natural cycle and as a result, wound up
in these circumstances where the wildfire potential is greater than our ability to suppress
it,” explained the Coutu, making these types of changes all the more important.
Mayor Ray Hilts called it fantastic. “I appreciate you guys considering us as a partner on
this.” Councillor Brian Wynn made the motion to endorse the Town of Whitecourt’s
participation in the pilot project, which passed unanimously.