Here's what happened at last night's wildfire information meeting in Yellowknife
CBC
At a public engagement into last summer's wildfire response in Yellowknife last night, residents who spoke were in agreement on one thing – there had been a huge failure of communication leading up to the city's evacuation in August.
Many residents spoke out about being "blindsided" and "sitting in the dark" leading up the evacuation.
One resident likened the sudden switch from shelter in place alert to evacuation order in the city to a Monty Python sketch, with residents being told, "everything is fine" and then, "run away!"
Wednesday's public engagement session was part of the City of Yellowknife's "after-action assessment" into their 2023 wildfire response. The independent review is being conducted by Toronto-based consulting firm KPMG, and is set to be completed in June.
The goal of the review is to look at what the city got right and wrong during last year's devastating wildfires, with a focus on how the city can be better prepared for wildfires and other disasters in the future.
KPMG specialist Leon Gaber conducted Wednesday's public engagement meeting, calling it an important part of the early "information gathering" part of the review process.
For many residents, it was also one of the first chances they have had to speak about their experiences.
"The only people who really knew what was going on, I believe, were the people in government, the bureaucracy. They looked after each other, but they forgot about everybody else," longtime Yellowknife resident Barry Taylor told CBC in an interview before the meeting.
"Hopefully, there will be some boats rocked and heads rolling," Taylor said.
Scott Yuill spoke about his experience staying behind in Yellowknife as a volunteer.
"There was a lot of mistakes and a lot of stuff was overlooked," he told CBC.
Among other things, there was no plan made for how volunteers would access food. He said that those left behind did a good job of figuring things out on the fly, but that for next year, he would like to see emergency plans that include those kinds of details.
Resident Alexandra Giroux said that she felt that the lack of planning she saw during the evacuation was dangerous.
"I think we got extremely, extremely lucky that we didn't have car crashes, that we didn't have deaths on the highway as we were leaving," she said.
As classes across New Brunswick pause for the holidays, it’s not yet clear which schools are making a dent in chronic absenteeism — a stubborn post-pandemic trend that mostly afflicts the high school cohort, especially in the Anglophone West school district.
CBC Quebec has launched its Make the Season Kind campaign. It's our annual campaign that focuses on food insecurity, while also celebrating kindness, generosity and community spirit around the province.
Premier Wab Kinew says Manitoba will hold a public inquiry as soon as 2026 into the former Progressive Conservative government’s post-election efforts to approve an environmental licence for sand-mining company Sio Silica.
Premier Scott Moe has led the Saskatchewan Party through two straight elections, winning majority governments each time.
Eight weeks after adding a GM BrightDrop van to the fleet of his plumbing and heating business, Marty Salliss has no complaints, only praise.
Nearly half of Alberta’s Grade 6 students failed the provincewide math test in 2024, three years after the province started rolling out its new elementary school curriculum.
Toronto could get new cars on the road whose drivers will never get frustrated by gridlock — because the cars would be driving themselves.
Amidst a cost-of-living crisis, some London-area organizations say they have noticed a decline in donations this holiday season.
Prominent northern leaders have been touting the Arctic economic and security corridor as a "nation-building" project that will bring economic benefits to the two territories it straddles, but others are split on how much good will come out of it.
When the federal government tabled its 2025 budget last month, it included a proposal that tax fraud experts say is long overdue — if also a belated acknowledgement that the Canada Revenue Agency has been repeatedly duped into paying out untold millions in bogus tax refunds to scammers.
Talking with an AI chatbot can successfully convince people to change their votes and could affect the outcome of future elections, according to a new study.
While some are writing wishlists for Santa Claus, a group of Newfoundland and Labrador youth are writing their wishlist for the provincial government.
A horse owner near Stewiacke, N.S., says the current shortage of hay in the province is putting pressure on her financially.