Children’s advocate calls for ‘urgent action’ after province fell short on wildfire emergency preparedness

The Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth is calling on the province to do more to protect the educational rights, and lungs, of young wildfire evacuees.

Sherry Gott wants the Kinew government to take “urgent action” and seek out students’ perspectives to update crisis response plans before Manitoba’s 2026 wildfire season.

“We’re really disappointed in Manitoba’s preparedness, which did not consider children and youth as a specific group in need of special care and attention,” she said Wednesday.

Gott called the wildfire response particularly inexcusable after the disruptions to education during the COVID-19 pandemic and the lasting fallout on student well-being.

The advocate’s office is an independent, non-partisan unit of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. It publishes regular reports on children’s rights issues and raises awareness about government services they receive “or should be receiving.”

Gott’s team is recommending an all-hands-on-deck approach to better support future evacuees, who will continue to be negatively impacted by smoky conditions.

The advocate recommends the province establish a task force to develop culturally appropriate prevention and response protocols.

Children’s voices need to be taken into account in developing climate policy and recovery initiatives, Gott said.

She noted that young people across the province are bearing the physical and emotional brunt of a climate crisis they did not create.

Not only do children typically spend more time outside than adults, but their developing bodies also face greater risks of harm from inhaling smoke.

Between May 28 and Sept. 6, the Canadian Red Cross registered upwards of 32,600 evacuees from more than 12,500 households in Manitoba.

“Red Cross can’t do everything,” Gott said.

As is typically the case, the overwhelming majority of young evacuees this year — the worst wildfire season in 30 years — were First Nations.

Gott is a member of Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, a remote community in northwestern Manitoba. Sapotaweyak, located roughly 500 kilometres from Winnipeg, was not forced to evacuate this year but hundreds of residents fled in 2018 when heavy smoke engulfed the community.

Fourteen First Nations were affected in total this summer. Wasagamack, Garden Hill, St. Theresa Point residents had to evacuate on two different occasions.

Families from Pukatawagan (Mathias Colomb First Nation) were displaced for nearly four consecutive months.

Drawing on her belief system as an Indigenous woman and advocate, Gott said evacuee children have physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs that went unmet.

“It was just so overwhelming,” she said, noting many First Nations students missed out on both academic and land-based lessons.

Fishing and berry-picking seasons were interrupted in many remote communities, if they were not missed entirely.

Gott’s office deployed support workers to emergency shelters to hear from children living in congregate settings.

“They lost their social connections. They were housed in unsafe situations. It was loud. It was crowded environments. They lacked privacy,” Gott said.

Whether they are evacuated due to fires, floods or otherwise, children need immediate access to psychological services and temporary learning spaces or tutoring, she said.

The education minister and cabinet member who oversees the natural resources portfolio were both unavailable for an interview, a cabinet spokesperson said Wednesday.

Natural Resources and Indigenous Futures Minister Ian Bushie said in a statement that his office will do an in-depth review of the wildfire response.

This process will take into account how schools, child care and recreation programs were impacted, Bushie said.

At the same time, the minister said public servants “worked hard” to run kid-friendly programming at nine congregate shelters.

School divisions in evacuee hot spots worked with chiefs, principals and Manitoba Education to temporarily transport and teach displaced children in satellite homerooms.

Families critic Jodie Byram questioned how long an internal review would take.

“There’s going to be learning loss and gaps… There needs to be something more tangible, more actionable now to help,” the Progressive Conservative MLA said.

Byram noted that northern students generally miss more school than their peers in Winnipeg, owing to snowstorms and related transportation challenges.

There have been more than 430 wildfires in 2025, which is well above the historical average at this time of the year.

More than two million hectares of land has burned.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca