The News Rundown

3 years and a record $239M in recovery funding later, Lytton still hasn't rebuilt

In the summer of 2021, Western Canada was under the grips of a terrifying heat dome, with temperatures into the 40s and even close to 50 degrees Celsius. At the epicenter of the heat dome was the small town of Lytton, BC, located in the interior of BC. In three consecutive days of June 2021, it broke the all-time record for Canada's highest temperature, ending at 49.6 °C (121.3 °F) on June 29. This is the highest temperature ever recorded north of 45°N and higher than the all-time records for Europe and South America. The next day (June 30), a wildfire swept through the valley, destroying the majority of the town.
As summer weather finally reaches the majority of BC this July, it's time we look back on such a momentous time in BC's history. It's not even the first time we've done this, last year we looked back on the 2 year retrospective on Western Context 321, aptly titled "Nothing's Going On" where rebuilding had barely begun, despite numerous fundraisers and funding announcements from various levels of governments. We're just over a year later from that episode, and we have to ask, how's the rebuilding going, and what's going on now? Surely something, yes?
Well, no. That's the problem right now with Lytton, is that the problems there in 2022 and 2023 are still there in 2024. While the federal government has given funding to the town to rebuild, there have been many roadblocks, not least of which was Prime Minister Trudeau, just a few months after the fire referring to Lytton in the past tense and used the community as a symbol for the consequences of climate change to score political points. Many residents were outraged, given that there are still people living in Lytton in homes that were undamaged.
Despite more than $239-million in provincial and federal funding committed to help rebuild, so far only five homes in the village that was home to around 250 people are close to completion, and about 15 building permits have been approved.
According to the press secretary for the Minister of Indigenous Services Patty Hajdu, more than $120 million of that money went to Lytton First Nation to support recovery, plus an additional $1.3 million to fast-track 20 homes and help construct more than 175 homes using the Housing Accelerator Fund.
On top of that, the Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates the Lytton fire caused more than $102 million in insured damage in 2022. Plus Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway committed more than $1 million to help with the rebuild.
On adjacent and nearby reserve lands — where close to triple the village population live — about 36 temporary trailers were set up to temporarily house about 50 people.
But hundreds of people remain displaced, asking why Lytton hasn't recovered at the pace of other towns impacted by wildfires, such as in the Shuswap area. While the town was around 250, the community services about 2,500 people who live around it.
B.C. Auditor General Michael Pickup is investigating how provincial recovery money — more than $41 million — was spent and why the rebuild is taking so long. The final report is expected early in 2025.
Lytton First Nation spiritual leader Nkixwstn James spoke out at a recent meeting, asking: "Where is all that money going?"
She was told millions were spent removing debris and sifting soil for archaeological artifacts. She says she refused to let them sift her lot, and refused a government offer of $80,000 to buy her land.
Denise O'Connor, who took over as mayor in 2022, says she hopes Lytton's recovery experience sounds alarms for other communities facing disasters. Record levels of recovery funding was quickly drained, with little rebuilding to show for it.
In 2023 The Village of Lytton paid out more than $12 million for excavation and debris cleanup to Matcon Environmental Ltd., $1.6 million to AEW for archeological work and more than $1 million to Teranis Consulting Ltd., which specializes in providing First Nations with environmental consulting services related to contaminated land investigation and remediation. Collier's Project Leaders were paid more than $300,000 that year to help oversee recovery.
O'Connor says Lytton — a tiny community that lost everything from the town hall and its records to the RCMP station — needed far more experienced organizational support to handle the many aspects involved in its rebound efforts.
And she says it stings that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has never even visited, while residents still have to drive an hour away to even get groceries.
One of the problems surrounding the rebuilding efforts is soil remediation and the fact that Lytton has so many historical artifacts sitting in the soil underneath the burned down buildings, a result of being one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America.
John Haugen, historian with the Lytton First Nation says early maps showed how buildings were constructed on burial grounds. In B.C. all archaeological sites are protected under the Heritage Conservation Act. Potential dig sites can't be touched without permit, after being assessed. In Lytton, assessments are being done by a company called AEW, with links to the Nlaka'pamux Nation Tribal Council. If you dig for construction, the province mandates that you need archaeologists to sift the dirt for artifacts, and the homeowner is on the hook for their bill, which can run up to tens of thousands of dollars.
Some residents have received estimates or invoices for thousands of dollars for archaeological monitoring or work. Reserve land is federal, so it's exempt, the mayor says. Archaeological work, however, is not covered by insurance.
Some residents are refusing to let archaeologists on their properties, for fear of costs. And all this is stirring tensions, between First Nations and non-Indigenous residents frustrated with delays.
Lytton First Nation elder Sharon Brown says "I felt a sort of sense that they were blaming the First Nations, that we had asked for this. This heritage, assessment and that included, archaeology is a government program. They do this with all disasters."
Dan Wollf, founder of Legacy Pro Contractors, who is putting the finishing touches on one of the first homes to rise again in town explains: "People don't expect the timeline in terms of what it takes for insurance to process their claim. And then and it's probably not as much insurance as it is the bureaucracy within the provincial governments wanting to do this right."
In the meantime, since the fire, Lytton residents have been at the mercy of insurance companies, disaster relief agencies like the Red Cross, governments, and the kindness of friends, family and strangers. Most initially fled to neighbouring communities, but as the fires raged through the B.C. interior that summer, they hopped from one town to the next; many ended up in hotels in Kamloops or down the coast. Today many survivors are still spread out in the province and neighbouring communities. Camp Hope, near Hope, B.C., opened its summer cabins to survivors. The Lytton First Nation eventually built a tiny-home village on the grounds of the old St. George’s Residential School in Lytton.
Fraser-Nicola MLA Jackie Tegart says the provincial government’s efforts rebuilding Lytton have been “appalling.” The opposition BC United MLA said she’s spoken to residents of the town who lack support from the province, which she says is heartbreaking, adding the government needs to do better when it comes to emergency recovery.
Tegart said while it has been exciting to see a few houses now being rebuilt in the community, she lamented the fact people have had to wait three years for it and that most residents remain displaced: “Anyone who's been to Lytton knows that the rebuild process has been appalling and it is laid at the feet of the NDP government who made excessive promises. There seems to be no clear direction from government.”
The Village of Lytton has stated that in the last year it has lifted a local state of emergency, completed backfilling work, issued 13 residential and two commercial building permits, worked to recover and reestablish corporate records, bylaws and policies and is planning to develop a community hub and rebuild municipal infrastructure and open a temporary village office.
However, the village said construction costs have risen “astronomically”, federal funding for net zero and fire-resilient rebuilding is “inaccessible” to many property owners and costs of requirements under the Heritage Conservation Act are “exorbitant and prohibitive.”
3 years later, it's clear that more needs to be done for the people of Lytton, and a plan put in place to prevent future messes like this happening. The federal and provincial governments need to cut the red tape and allow those from Lytton to get back to their lives.
Supplementals:

The UK had their early election this week called by now former PM Rishi Sunak. Labour won a huge majority in this election winning 412 out of 650 seats.
Keir Starmer has become the new UK Prime Minister.
Sir Keir Rodney Starmer as his full name goes is a barrister, has lead the Labour party since 2020, and has been an MP since 2015.
Prior to this he was the Director of Public Prosecutions from 2008 to 2013.
He himself identifies as a progressive and socialist, went to prestigious universities such as Oxford, and ticks the boxes of upper ruling class.
We’ll discuss what the new Labour government means for Canada a little bit later.
This labour government was produced with just 33.8% of the vote. In fact, labour only improved its vote share by 1.7% from the previous election!
The Conservatives were down 20% of the vote from the previous election.
This saw Labour gain 214 seats and the Conservatives lose 252 with the Liberal Democrats gaining 64 and the Scottish National Party or SNP losing 38.
Reform also broke through with 5 seats and 14.3% of the vote necessitating just over 1 million votes required to elect each of their MPs.
These numbers illustrate the issues that can occur with the first past the post voting system that both the UK and Canada use.
The debate about how far swung is too much for first past the post is an interesting one but not what we’re going to focus on today since the dynamics in one country are different than another.
But it goes without saying that even the most ardent supporters of first past the post have a line where they will say that something is truly absurd.
The situation is also exacerbated in the UK because it’s not just the political parties at play in England that we know: Labour, Conservative, Lib-Dem, Reform, and Green. There are also unique parties that play in Wales, North Ireland, and Scotland that are also represented in the UK parliament that factors into this first past the post result.
What is apparent though is that if you assume say 90% of Reform voters would vote Conservative if the Conservatives had similar policies and governed from a Reform-like perspective, the Conservatives would have won the popular vote.
This situation is eerily similar to Canada in the 1990s where Preston Manning’s Reform party took off and we saw huge Chretien Liberal governments from 1993 to 2004.
It of course wasn’t until the modern Conservative Party of Canada was created that this stopped.
In Canada and now similarly in the UK we can imagine a world where the Reform Party would capture enough votes when the Conservatives (or Progressive Conservatives in Canada) don’t serve that section of the electorate.
What results is an interesting thought exercise that we’re seeing play out in the UK.
What it boils down to is that freedom fighters and insurgents best direct their effort to changing political parties rather than starting new ones. Thankfully that was able to happen in Canada and for now there’s a low risk of a UK-like situation of happening.
But for our Canadian listeners you should know that the UK parties don’t work like our parties here in terms of open nomination races and the ability for the grass roots to easily influence policy and Candidates.
Given the situation in the UK, maybe this is something they should consider. It started with the Reform Party here, moved to the Conservative Party of Canada and now even the Liberals and NDP hold semi-open nomination races.
The biggest note for Canada out of the UK election is that both governments seem keen to restart talks on a Canada-UK free trade deal.
The last talks broke down over dairy protection quotas in Canada at the end of 2023.
High Commissioner Ralph Goodale said that he hopes that the dialog will be “open and fulsome.”
Ralph Goodale is of course the long-term Saskatchewan Liberal MP that initially served with Pierre Trudeau and later Justin Trudeau.
The goal was to do a free trade deal after Brexit but it never materialized.
The UK government previously wanted to double the dairy quota that was present under the Canada-EU free trade deal but that was a non-starter for Canada.
This would be the best thing to come out of this election result and from our end we’ll of course provide the Western Context you’ve come to expect on any future Canada-UK free trade deal.
Supplementals:

Poilievre would repeal online harms bill after PBO report finds $200 million in new bureaucracy

Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives are promising to scrap the proposed federal online harms bill after the latest report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that it would create more than $200 million in new bureaucracy.
The bill, which was introduced this past February, in the government's own words is intended "to hold social media platforms accountable for addressing harmful content on their platforms and for creating a safer online space that protects all people in Canada, especially kids." Bill C-63 would establish three new entities: the Digital Safety Commission, which is mandated to enforce the act and has the power to issue monetary penalties and fines, and the Digital Safety Ombudsperson, which will support social media users. Both will be supported by the Digital Safety Office, which manages the day-to-day operations.
Put together, the Digital Safety Commission, Ombudsman and Office will have the equivalent of 300 full-time employees at full capacity, according to preliminary estimates from the Department of Canadian Heritage provided to the PBO’s office.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said after the bill was introduced earlier this year that it took issue with the “vast authority” bestowed upon the proposed Digital Safety Commission which will “serve as judge, jury, and executioner.”
In a report issued Thursday, the budget watchdog estimated that the total operating costs of these new entities in the next five years will be $201 million — minus any administrative monetary penalties or fines collected from online providers that contravene the act.
The proposed Online Harms Act would specifically target seven types of harmful content some of which are clear cut, and others that could be nebulous depending on who you ask. It includes: content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, intimate content communicated without consent, content used to bully a child, content that induces a child to harm themselves and content that incites violent extremism or terrorism.
However, the less clear cut examples of online speech targeted include content that 'foments hatred' and 'incites violence'. These two types can include a lot of different types of speech and yet will carry harsh penalties.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner asked the PBO to calculate the costs associated with the new Online Harms Act. In a blog post, she wrote that “the opportunity cost of bill C-63 alone should be enough to send it to the (Justice) Minister’s shred pile.”
“It’s unconscionable that the Liberal government would consider dumping $200M and over 300 new staff into an ill-defined new bureaucracy that does little to materially protect Canadians from online harassment when Canada’s existing law enforcement officials are begging for support to deal with the crime waves sweeping across our nation,” she wrote.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s office said he would repeal C-63 should it become law, along with the other parts of what Sebastian Skamski, director of media relations calls Trudeau's 'three headed censorship monster'. This monster refers to bills C-11 and C-18, respectively the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act which became law last year, as well as C-63. In a fundraising email, Poilievre’s team accused the Liberal government of wanting to “further restrict” Canadians’ rights and freedoms with these pieces of legislation.
PBO Yves Giroux said he was surprised to see such a “high number” of employees for the new Digital Safety Commission, Ombudsman and Office. “It was indeed surprising, especially when you consider other organizations in Canada. The CRTC, for example, has more than 500 employees,” he said, adding that it has a “broad mandate” regulating broadcasting and telecommunications. “So, it’s surprising to see that the CRTC has less than double the size of the new Commission.”
It's crazy that in a time when Trudeau's Liberal government has been spending money hand over fist, putting Canadians into so much debt through inflation, that this is one of their major priorities right now. It's yet another reason why they've become so unpopular lately, with polls suggesting they would be in for a massive defeat if an election was held. Unfortunately thanks to the NDP propping up Trudeau, we won't be seeing an election, which will allow for high price legislation like this to pass in the fall.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Historica Canada deletes John A. Macdonald Heritage Minute from YouTube

Last week’s Canada Day was a relatively low-key affair but it is worth remembering the history of how our country came to be.
It was Sir John A. Macdonald’s vision of a national railway that brought the country together.
Confederation made sense out east in the maritimes and in what is now Ontario and Quebec but how do you bring the west in? And how do you protect yourself from American Manifest Destiny?
The national railway and a bold vision.
This week it was noticed by True North and confirmed by Western Standard that Historica Canada removed a Heritage Minute about MacDonald.
Historica Canada makes short one minute videos often aired in commercial spots about key moments in Canadian history.
Historica Canada confirmed that a Minute about John A. MacDonald was removed.
The video portrays the time before Confederation where where MacDonald and the founding fathers of Canada set out their vision.
The video in question was produced in 2015 and went to air in 2017 but Historica Canada Director of Branding and Digital Media Chantal Gagnon said the video was made before current controversies about Macdonald entered the national conversation.
The controversies of course involve vandalizing and removing Macdonald statues, removing him from the $10 bill, and Canadian government departments changing or removing his biography.
There has also been changes to Bellevue House, the national historic site in Kingston where they created a decolonized tour.
The view from Historica Canada is that the video as it stands now is lacking context and that Canadians need to be educated about the positives and negatives of our history.
The reality though is that no government since Macdonald has attempted as ambitious of a national project ever and no project put forward by the Canadian government has spurred national unity. In fact, the obvious.
Macdonald and subsequently Laurier were two of our most consequential Prime Ministers that set what it meant to be Canadian.
Also it is an impressive show of Canadian patriotism when people in the 2020s evoke our country’s founders. Patriotism that has always been on display in the Historica Moments.
Do we need to be cognizant of changes in perception since Confederation? Yes.
Should that happen though in terms of white washing history, forgetting elements, making Canadians disappointed in their history? No.
Canadian patriotism has always existed if not below the surface and manifested in different ways than one would expect.
As such anything that moves to stifle that should be seen with suspicion.
Presently though there is a push online to make the Historica Moment go viral on the internet in terms of re-posting. We’ll see if that works but we would be remiss if we didn’t point this out given that Canada Day was just last weekend.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

"People don't expect the timeline in terms of what it takes for insurance to process their claim. And then and it's probably not as much insurance as it is the bureaucracy within the provincial governments wanting to do this right." - Dan Wollf, founder of Legacy Pro Contractors, a company working on the rebuilding of Lytton, BC.

Word of the Week

Artifact - an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Still Nothing Going On

Teaser: 3 years later Lytton still hasn't been rebuilt, the UK Labour election win shows lessons for Canada, and Poilievre promises to repeal the online harms bill. Also, Historica Canada deletes the John A MacDonald Heritage Minute.

Recorded Date: July 6, 2024

Release Date: July 7, 2024

Duration: 58:08

Edit Notes: None

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX