Nova Scotia Health pulls wildfire report after minister says she had 'no idea'

HALIFAX — A report on lessons from the 2023 Halifax-area wildfire has been taken offline by Nova Scotia Health, leaving a resident involved in the research "shocked" and a provincial minister saying she had "no idea" it was coming.

The report, titled "What the Wildfire Revealed: Learning from the 2023 Upper Tantallon/Hammonds Plains Wildfire: Experiences, Lessons, and Recommendations," was done by researchers with Nova Scotia Health and the University of Alberta.

It was posted on Nova Scotia Health’s website Tuesday, and media outlets were offered interviews with the authors. CBC News downloaded the report Wednesday.

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The report was taken off the health authority’s website Thursday, the same day the provincial emergency management minister said her department and other departments had “no idea” it was coming.

"We have a report that is talking about wildfires and no one in [the Department of Natural Resources] was contacted for comment? That's troubling," Minister Kim Masland told reporters after a cabinet meeting Thursday.

Masland said her department was created out of lessons from both the Halifax-area and Barrington Lake wildfires, with some improvements including the Nova Scotia Guard, regional emergency operations centres, and improved firefighter training.

Tricia Murray, a Highland Park resident who lost her home in the fire, was interviewed for the study and sat on the community advisory board that helped guide the report.

Murray said she was happy to finally see the hard work of the researchers pay off earlier this week, and shared the link to the report online. When people started saying the link was no longer working, Murray said she was “shocked” and her jaw dropped.

"The fact that they've pulled it down and they're trying to hide this report is, in my opinion … censorship. And it's not OK, because, you know, we have freedom of speech in Canada," Murray said Friday.

"Residents should be listened to and we should have a voice to share our experience. They don't have a right to remove that opportunity."

In a statement Friday, Nova Scotia Health spokesperson Brendan Elliott said the authority decided to take the report down and “pause” media interviews because the “established approval process for publications and media engagement” was not followed.

"The province did not direct Nova Scotia Health's actions in this matter," Elliott said.

Murray said no one on the community advisory board was told the report would be taken down, and, as of Friday afternoon, board members had not been informed if, or when, it would be back online.

The report was funded through a federal Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant for community-based research on climate change.

As there have been multiple reports analyzing the operational response and emergency management lessons from the wildfire, the Nova Scotia Health study said it was focused on what residents’ experiences revealed about the broader environmental, historical and social context in which the fire happened and recovery rolled out.

"Our hopes for it being shared very widely and publicly was not necessarily to throw down a gauntlet against these government entities," Murray said.

"It was more to be used as a resource to finally hear the experiences of the residents … but also to act as advocacy so that some of these concerns finally get addressed."

The report, which said it paid particular attention to the experiences of historic African Nova Scotian communities of Upper Hammonds Plains and Lucasville, offers 18 recommendations for the Halifax municipality and provincial government.

Those include acting on known risks around egress issues in the affected communities, reconsidering development in areas of significant risk, and improving landscape restoration and mental-health support.

They also suggest removing land-title barriers that can prevent residents in historic Black communities from accessing disaster assistance and fire mitigation programs, while urging provincial and municipal governments to collaborate better on examining and managing risks.

Murray said she and others still have copies of the report and will continue to share it, even if it is not yet as widely available as she hoped.

"Although I do question whether or not them pulling it down like this has now created a controversy around it, which will make … people more interested in reading it," Murray said.

She is asking the health authority to publish the report as soon as possible, and explain why it needed to be removed while Nova Scotia Health finishes reviewing it internally.

With files from CBC News