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

George Fontaine remembers waking in the early hours of the morning a few weeks ago to find all phone and internet service down 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 MP Niki 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."

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 city last month, which also forced residents in the nearby community of Cranberry Portage to evacuate their homes for more than a week.

Flin Flon's telecommunications went down after 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.

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 flee their homes.