Trudeau discusses wildfires, Middle East in B.C. visit

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed emergency preparedness while stopping in B.C.’s Interior on Friday.

In West Kelowna, flanked by local first responders and politicians, Trudeau talked about the challenges posed by extreme weather events that come from climate change, whether it’s wildfires or floods or heat waves or cold snaps that are having an impact on growers.

“We know that we need to be more prepared, more coordinated and focused on everything that we’re doing to keep families, individuals, communities and our country safe.”

A few minutes after his opening announcement to the media, Trudeau said there needs to be “better coordination across the board” along with tax credits regarding first responders.

“We know from the forecasts that in western and northern Canada … it is likely to be a very bad forest fire season,” he said.

“Our firefighters are extraordinary heroes who step up with courage and determination to support their neighbours, to save lives and we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to be there for them.”

Trudeau said the federal government has doubled the volunteer firefighter tax credit, will spend $800,000 on training 1,000 more wildland firefighters across Canada and $175 million for emergency response and preparedness in Indigenous communities.

“We’re in a situation right now where people are worried,” he said.

1:58 Trudeau on Canadian abstention from UN Palestinian membership vote

“People are worried what the summer might bring, people are worried what the future might hold for themselves, for the next generations.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world and climate change is a big part of it. We need to continue to step up in our fight against climate change so that we can minimize the extreme weather impacts, whether it’s storms or floods or wildfires or any range of impacts that we’re increasingly seeing.”

Following that, Trudeau then fielded questions from reporters.

He was asked about the Israel-Hamas conflict, to which he said “Canada has stood on a historic position for decades now that the only true solution for the Middle East is to have a two-state solution – a peaceful, secure Israel, alongside a peaceful, secure Palestinian state.

“Unfortunately, over the past while, we’ve seen us move further away from that two-state solution.”

Trudeau said the Israeli government “has unacceptably closed the door on any path towards a two-state solution. We disagree with that fundamentally.”

He also said Hamas “continues to govern as a terrorist organization in Gaza, continues to put civilian lives in danger, continues to refuse to recognize the state of Israel in ways that are also unacceptable.

“So Canada has decided to change our position from ‘no’ at the UN to abstaining … reflecting that our longstanding position that you could only recognize the state of Palestine as an outcome at the end of a process leading to a two-state solution, we now recognize that it may happen sooner than at the end of the process as a way of pushing towards that two-state solution.”

Trudeau added, “in the meantime, we will continue to be there, calling for Hamas to lay down its arms and release all hostages; calling for Israel to ensure more humanitarian aid is flowing into Gaza.”

The Prime Minister also touched on the recriminalization of public drug use in B.C. when asked about that topic.

Trudeau said Ottawa worked with B.C. “and we moved forward with them on this pilot project, and when they came back recently and said ‘we need to make an adjustment to it,’ we granted them that adjustment in terms of public spaces.”

He continued, saying “we’re going to continue to take an approach grounded in public health, not criminal justice, for people living with addictions.”