Good morning and thank you for the warm introduction and last night’s hospitality.

Also, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you about our recent audit report on how well interface fire risks are managed in the province

This symposium fits well with our audit. Many of the stakeholders that work together to manage interface fire risks are represented here today.

I am sure this symposium offers all of you a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness of the issues involved and to build on your working relationships.

Before I deal with our report, I want to tell you a little about the Office of the Auditor General and me.

I became the Auditor General of British Columbia a little less than 2 years ago.

Prior to that, I was the Provincial Auditor of Saskatchewan for nearly ten years. I am a chartered accountant.

As the Auditor General, I am an officer of the Legislative Assembly. My reports—which are public—are automatically referred to the Public Accounts Committee.

This eleven person Committee of legislators is chaired by a member of the opposition and has the responsibility to deal with my reports in meetings open to the public.

In general, the role of an Auditor General is to help all legislators and, thus, all citizens, hold the government accountable for its use of public resources and for its management of the considerable responsibilities entrusted to government.

I have a relatively small Office of about 90 people with a wide range of professional credentials and experience. We have access to all parts of government, to all types of information, and we decide what to examine and when, and what to report. And, our reports our public.

We have four main lines of business:

• First, we examine financial statements to ensure they present reliable measures of such key items as surplus or deficit.
  
  
  • In February, we reported on the finances of government focusing on the last five years to March 31, 2001.
    
    
• Second, we review the quality of performance information published by the government
  
  
  • Also in February, we reported on the quality of government performance information—much is changing on that front—good changes—for example, for the first time, the performance plans or service plans of many government agencies were tabled at the same time as the government’s budget on February 19^th.
    
    
• Third, we help legislators make use of performance information in their scrutiny of government
  
  
• Our fourth line of business is to assess how well government manages the key risks it faces in achieving its planned results. Our recent risk work focused on subject matters such as:
  
  
  • The extent to which we are prepared for earthquakes,
    
    
  • The extent to which we provide children a safe learning environment,
    
    
  • The extent to which we monitor the financial integrity of credit unions and trust companies,
    
    
  • The extent to which we safeguard our drinking water sources.

And, of course, the subject of this symposium—the degree to which we are prepared for major interface fires

In our initial planning of this audit, we looked at the broad topic of forest fire suppression but after several interviews with key stakeholders, we quickly decided that managing interface fire risks warranted our attention.

Audit Focus

The purpose of our audit was to assess the degree to which governments in British Columbia are prepared for major interface fires.

Following consultations with numerous stakeholders, we focused on 4 questions.

• First, are the responsibilities for managing interface fire risks clearly assigned through legislation or otherwise?
  
  
• Second, is enough being done to prevent interface fires and mitigate their effects if they occur?
  
  
• Third, is the province adequately prepared to respond to and recover from interface fires?
  
  
• And fourth, is the right information gathered to know the magnitude of the risk, to raise awareness, to plan appropriate actions, and to report on preparedness?

Audit Evidence and Approach

As you would expect, our work and reports are evidenced based.

We obtain evidence from three main sources: interviews, surveys and document reviews.

Our interviews focused on staff in the Ministry of Forests, Office of the Fire Commissioner, Provincial Emergency Program and local governments throughout the province.

We surveyed all chief administrative officers, fire chiefs, development/planning directors, and emergency coordinators to obtain their assessments of interface fire risks and how well risks are being managed.

We also collected and analyzed more than 200 documents from a variety of jurisdictions containing research results and other information about the management of interface fire risks.

Project Team and Advisory Committee

Our project team included several experienced professionals within my Office and a risk management expert with interface fire experience. With me today is Wayne Schmitz who works within my Office and was a key part of our project team.

We also established an external advisory committee with 3 private citizens. One had extensive experience as a local government official, one is a former fire chief; and one is a past leader of a provincial fire protection agency.

Together, our advisory group helped to ensure that our audit approach, findings and conclusions were reasonable. We establish advisory groups for most of our risk audits.

Conclusions, Findings and Recommendations

We concluded that governments in British Columbia have much to do to be well-prepared for major interface fires. No doubt, you know this far better than me.

In reaching our conclusion, we focused our work on the four questions I stated earlier.

Roles and responsibilities

Clarity is needed to ensure that there are no gaps in managing risks.

We found that roles and responsibilities are relatively clear about responding to an interface fire but less clear about who is responsible for prevention, preparedness and recovery planning.

In addition, clarity of roles and responsibilities for managing fire risks on first Nations lands is particularly weak.

We think a lack of clearly defined roles and responsibilities leads to other weaknesses we found and to the limited attention given to interface fire risks by both levels of government.

Prevention

Our second question focused on what is being done to prevent interface fires and to limit their effects when they do occur.

All of us know that preventing problems is a whole lot easier and less costly than dealing with them once they occur.

Prevention involves ensuring local governments and residents are aware of the risks of wildfires and how to take actions to reduce those risks.

We found that provincial agencies, for example, the Protection Branch in the Ministry of Forests, work hard each year to promote prevention work in communities.

Our evidence, however, suggests that community awareness levels and efforts to reduce risks are still not good.

For example, many communities do not do risk assessments and many make limited use of techniques available to control risks such as requiring fire resistant materials be used in new construction.

Preparing to respond and recover

Our third question focused on whether communities are prepared to respond to and recover from interface fires.

Preparation means taking action ahead of time to ensure that all those involved are adequately prepared to react effectively when a fire emergency takes place.

We found that many aspects of response planning are done well in the province. No doubt, this has helped limit the number of major interface fires.

For example, our wild land fire service is well trained and equipped and many communities have excellent structural firefighting and emergency response services.

Also, regional organizations such as the Thompson Okanagan Interagency Committee—the sponsors of this symposium—and the Kootenay Interface Steering Team do excellent work to help deal with interface fire risks.

But, despite many strengths, we think there is much room for improvement.

We think a key priority should be to improve the state of local emergency planning.

Many jurisdictions lack emergency plans, and even when plans exist the plans don’t deal adequately with interface fires or recovery.

Some jurisdictions test their ability to respond to a significant fire, but many do not.

We found that both local firefighters and emergency responders know they need to improve their training and equipment, and both groups believe their communities are poorly prepared to deal with major evacuations.

We also found that much needs to be done to find ways to reduce risks in small communities that do not have structural fire services or only have small but valuable groups of volunteers.

Information Gathering

We found that the term ‘interface fire’ is not defined in a consistent manner. As a result, the information being gathered is likely to be unreliable.

In addition, the statistics collected by the Protection Branch and by the Fire Commissioner are never combined to provide a complete Provincial picture.

With incomplete and unreliable information, raising awareness and encouraging focused attention is even more difficult a task.

Recommendations

General

In our public report to the Legislative Assembly, we made 37 recommendations - we intend to follow up on each one.

One key recommendation is that the provincial government establish an Interface Fire Committee with representatives from the Provincial Emergency Program, the Ministry of Forests, and the Office of the Fire Commissioner.

This coordinating group is needed in order to clarify roles and responsibilities and to foster a province wide approach.

Eight of our recommendations are directed at this Interface Fire group.

Provincial Emergency Program

We directed over 20 recommendations at the Provincial Emergency Program which as you know is the provincial emergency coordinating agency and leader in emergency management.

Ministry of Forests Protection Branch

We think the Ministry of Forests Protection Branch has played a key role in managing interface fire risks. In our public report, we commend the people in this Branch for their significant efforts.

We did, however, direct five recommendations to the attention of the Protection Branch.

For example, we think that the Branch’s response priorities should be set out in legislation because when firefighters focus on protecting human life and property, they can be criticized for not protecting forests.

Other jurisdictions, such as Alberta and Oregon, plan to set out priorities in legislation—we think BC should do the same.

We also note the need to complete hazard mapping, to resolve community concerns about working arrangements between the Protection Branch and local fire departments, and to improve communication capabilities among response personnel during fire emergencies.

Office of the Fire Commissioner

With a small staff, the Office of the Fire Commissioner is to enforce fire safety laws, investigate fires, inform the public about fire safety, and certify firefighters.

As you know, the Commissioner responds primarily to major emergencies.

In our report, we ask this Office:

• to help find practical solutions to situations where local governments are not willing to let their fire departments respond to fires outside their boundaries because of legal liability concerns.
  
  
• We ask the Commissioner to help establish mutual aid agreements among fire departments located close to each other.
  
  
• We also ask the Commissioner to find ways to help improve public safety in areas that lack fire department services.

What Has Happened So Far?

Now, has anything happened since we released our report last summer? —in addition, of course, to the ongoing build up of combustible material close to where people live and work.

All of our reports go to the Public Accounts Committee which is made up of eleven MLAs and is chaired by a member of the opposition.

In December, this Committee reviewed our report and asked questions of officials from the three provincial agencies.

After a lengthy and sometimes intense discussion (some members have real life experiences with interface fires in their districts), the Committee endorsed all of our recommendations.

The Committee also urged the three provincial agencies to form the Interface Fire group we had suggested and to report back on when our recommendations would be implemented.

In January, the beginnings of this group met to make progress

When we issue reports, we follow up on each of our recommendations and report back to the Public Accounts Committee on progress. We will do this in the fall.

One of the benefits or curses of having a group of dedicated auditors is that we do not go away, we are relentless. We want to ensure that all legislators and thus all BC citizens know whether government is making progress.

While progress is often not as fast as I’d like, in almost all cases positive actions occur within government and elsewhere. Our recommendations and advice do make a difference.

In this audit, some communities have already taken actions linked to our report.

For example, a community near Victoria—Langford—which has significant interface fire risks recently sent me the results of work they’ve done to help manage their risks.

My staff tell me that Langford has done some excellent work. A copy of that report is available at this symposium.

We do hope that the Provincial Interface Fire group might establish an Internet site to allow sharing of examples like this and other relevant material—for example, the processes used by the Kootenay Interface Steering Committee and the Thompson Okanagan Interagency Committee to establish local committees.

Conclusion

I realize that you face significant challenges in managing the risks associated with interface fires and must do so in an era of what seems like never ending decreasing publicly available financial resources.

All of us need to work together to make the best use of those resources.

A key purpose of my work is to encourage awareness within our community of provincially elected officials. And, I plan to continue doing this.

I know you will do your part and I wish you all of the best.

All of our reports and the detailed results of the four surveys we conducted in this audit can be found on our office website, www.bcauditor.com

Now, if you have any questions I or my colleague Wayne Schmitz will do our best to provide you with answers now or during this symposium.

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