Feds need to have telecom backup plan for climate emergencies, northern Manitoba MP says - Action News
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Manitoba

Feds need to have telecom backup plan for climate emergencies, northern Manitoba MP says

The city of Flin Flon recently went days without phone or internet service after a nearby wildfire. Now, a northern Manitoba member of Parliament says the federal government needs to have telecommunications backup plans in place for the region, especially during climate emergencies.

City of Flin Flon was without phone or internet service for days during recent wildfire

The sky above a highway is black and grey and orange with smoke from forest fires.
A photo shows the smoke- and fire-filled sky above the Highway 10 route out of Cranberry Portage after a wildfire that broke out on May 9, 2024. The fire damaged eight kilometres of fibre line, temporarily severing phone and internet access to the city of Flin Flon, just northwest of Cranberry Portage. (Submitted by Neena Lundie)

George Fontaine remembers waking in the early hours of the morning a few weeks ago to find all phone and internet servicedown in Flin Flon.

There was a wildfire nearby, and as mayor of the northern Manitoba city of 5,000,Fontaine knew officials had to find a way to communicate with residents.

"There's no phone, no landlines, no cellphones, no internet service and we had no way of transferring information to the general public," Fontaine told CBC in a phone interview.

"It was very interesting, and a little bit frightening."

It is scenarios like this that prompted Churchill-Keewatinook Aski MPNiki Ashton to call on the federal government to have telecommunications backup plans in place for northern Manitoba, especially during times of climate emergencies.

"We need to be very clear that our telecoms are critical services that need to be there for our communities at all times," the northern Manitoba NDP member told CBC.

"We know that climate change is becoming more and more serious, which poses a threat to all our communities, [and] we need to make sure that communication is possible."

A woman speaks into a microphone.
NDP MP Niki Ashton, seen here in a 2017 file photo, says it's a federal responsibility to make sure telecommunications and critical services are in place for northern Manitoba. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

Ashton brought up the issue in Parliament a week after it was reported that Flin Flon went days without its primary source for phone and internet service following a massive wildfire east of the citylast month, which also forced residents in the nearby community ofCranberry Portage to evacuate their homes for more than a week.

Flin Flon's telecommunications went downafter the fire caused significant damage to eight kilometres of fibre line, severing phone and internet access to the city.

The mayor and other officials ended up collaborating with the local radio station to break into regular programs, while also gathering Starlink satellite systems for the police service,fire department, hospital, airport and local hotel.

The satellites came from a patchwork of what the northwestern Manitoba city already had in its inventory, along with some from Saskatchewan.

"They were being purchased, and it was quite a scramble to find where they were and how to get them set up and running quickly," Fontaine said.

Telecoms lostduring N.W.T. fires

Flin Flon is not the only city in the north that has faced a telecommunication outage during a wildfire.

Last August, phone and internet service went down in the Northwest Territories as fires forced more than two-thirds of the territory's population including about 22,000 residents in Yellowknife and the surrounding area to fleetheir homes.

Vehicles form a single line stretching as far as the eye can see on a highway out of Yellowknife.
Yellowknife residents leave the city on Highway 3, the only highway in or out of the community, after an evacuation order was given on Aug. 16, 2023. Phone and internet service went down as fires forced more than two-thirds of the territory's population to flee their homes. (Pat Kane/Reuters)

But due to the outage at the time, not everyone was aware of the orders in their communities includingLloyd Chicot, chief of the community ofKakisa, who told reporters at the time he learned about theevacuation order after hearing about it on CBC.

It happened again this past May after wildfire damageto fibre optic lines affected telecommunication services in northern B.C., N.W.T.,Yukon and Nunavut.

Bell MTS, the primary telecommunication provider in northern Manitoba, sent an emailed statement during the May outage in Manitoba saying the company has several approaches to mitigating the impacts of severe weather.

Those include keeping the company's generators and trucks topped up with fuel during and immediately after weather events, and communicating with the province, key federal minister and local partners, the telecom company said.

Ashton says it'sa federal responsibility to make sure telecommunications and critical services are in place.

"We just can't have hospitals and health centres running off of hastily put togethersatellites," the MP said. "We also can't leave it to private companies to keep an eye on things."

CBC sent a request to thefederal government for comment.

Flin Flon's mayor says this time, things worked out for his city.

Smoke billows from a burning hydro pole.
A Manitoba Hydro pole near Cranberry Portage burns after a wildfire that began on May 9. (Submitted by Manitoba Hydro)

"Had the wind been from the east and brought [the fire] directly towards us, we would never have been able to call in for help in enough time," Fontaine said.

"It was actually a very dangerous situation for this community."

He'd like to hearfrom experts, and see fail-safes for northern communities, including collaboration with other provinces.

"We've got good communications when the communications are good, but when they get blocked off and there's only one single path that's blocked off, I would consider them well, zero. We got nothing."