Climate change ‘sanctuary city’ one possibility for Brandon

Opinion

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew says that as wildfire seasons become longer, increasingly frequent and more severe, the province must adapt in order to keep its citizens safe.

During a media conference on Wednesday, he argued that “Our province is going to have to adapt to many things at the same time. … One of them is the impacts of a changing climate.”

One adaptation he believes is required is a change in the way evacuees are housed and treated. He argues there aren’t enough facilities in the province that are capable of housing the rising numbers of evacuees and keeping them safe.

“You’re talking about close to 12,000 people out of their homes, which is a huge human cost,” he said. “That’s also more hotel rooms than we have in the entire province. So it’s definitely a big challenge.”

Kinew is right about all of that. One of the dangerous realities of climate change in Manitoba is that wildfires have now become an annual danger that necessitates the evacuation of thousands of residents to communities that are safe from the flames. The problem is worsening in severity, which means that a growing number of people require temporary housing for longer periods of time.

Manitoba’s hotels don’t have enough rooms to meet that demand, let alone also provide rooms for their non-evacuated guests. As a result, it has become almost impossible to book a hotel room in the province during the summer, and we have far too many Manitobans who are already in crisis being forced to stay in “congregate housing.” They are sleeping on temporary cots and sharing washrooms at hockey and curling rinks.

That’s no way to treat people who are already enduring the pressure of evacuation and experiencing the anxiety that their homes and possessions may be consumed by the fires.

Given that the need to house wildfire evacuees has become an annual challenge, Kinew is correct to suggest we must adapt to the new reality. What he failed to suggest, however, is an obvious solution.

Hotels will likely continue to play a role in providing accommodations to evacuees at times of peak demand, but what is really needed are permanent facilities that are specifically designed to provide safe housing, privacy, nutritious meals and other services that people in crisis require.

This is the point in the conversation where some might ask “What’s the point of constructing such facilities if they would only be used to house evacuees in the summer?” That’s a logical question, but that wouldn’t need to be the case.

The buildings could be used for housing for the other parts of the year — student housing, for example — or they could be used as temporary housing for refugees, new immigrants, health care, conferences, tournaments, training events and/or other gatherings of people. Some of that space could be kept vacant, on standby for emergency accommodations at any time of the year, ready to respond to any crisis that occurs in or near Manitoba.

The community or communities with those buildings would be the first-choice destination for evacuees in the event of an emergency, with other communities only being asked to provide accommodations once the demand exceeds the capacity of the evacuation centres.

Going a step further, the communities where the evacuation centres would be located would also offer a wide range of services and amenities for evacuees to use in order to help overcome the stress and boredom of being evacuated.

That would start with ensuring there is sufficient capacity in the community to address the medical, educational and spiritual needs of the evacuees, but it could also include everything from family-oriented swimming pools to go-kart tracks to mountain biking circuits to pickleball courts.

With a geographical location in the province that is far away from the threat of wildfires, Brandon could be an ideal host community for such an evacuation facility. The large area of bare land near the Trans-Canada Highway and the airport, with excellent multi-directional transportation links by land and air, would seem to be a good location.

All of this is pie-in-the-sky thinking, but climate change is real and its impact is only going to worsen for the foreseeable future. The wildfires aren’t going to stop; they’re going to get bigger and more destructive. The same goes for increasingly intense rain storms and the flooding they cause. Extreme weather events will keep becoming more routine, forcing more and more people to need emergency accommodation.

Somebody needs to step up and be ready. With Brandon’s increasingly pleasant weather patterns — our springs and falls are more pleasant, our winters are shorter and warmer, and summer storms seem to consistently miss us — our city may be increasing viewed by others as a climate change “sanctuary city,” where people can find refuge from the turmoil and danger.

Kinew has described the challenge. This may be the solution. It’s a discussion worth having and acting upon before things get even worse.