Manitoba premier hints at using emergency powers to open up hotel rooms for wildfire evacuees

Manitoba's premier says his government could use emergency powers to free up hotel rooms for people who escaped the wildfires still raging in the province's north.

Premier Wab Kinew told reporters Thursday the province along with partners in the hotel industry have opened thousands of rooms for the more than 21,000 people who've fled the fires — but that there's still many families sleeping on cots weeks after the government declared a provincewide state of emergency.

"We have emergency powers. We've been very restrained in how we're using them and we don't want to use them," he said, calling on hotel operators sitting on rooms to voluntarily open them up for evacuees.

"For those operators of hotels who aren't stepping up, we need to see more," he said. "We all know that there's more rooms out there that we could be tapping into."

The premier made the remarks after landing in Winnipeg following a trip to the front lines of the battle against the largest wildfire currently raging in the province.

For his final stop, Kinew toured the congregate shelter that's been set up to welcome evacuees in Thompson, about 400 kilometres north of Winnipeg as the crow flies.

It's "pulling at the heartstrings when we see families with kids sleeping on cots in a hockey rink," he said.

"There's rooms in Thompson people could be accessing and I'd like to see those opened up. There's rooms in other parts of the province.… We're not talking about forever here."

Some First Nations leadership have been urging the province to free up the hotel rooms for evacuees.

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Last week, Pimicikamak Cree Nation Chief David Monias wrote a letter calling on the government to use emergency measures to make the rooms available.

Kinew said he hasn't heard feedback from any hotels declining to host evacuees, but that the province has "a lot of data" about the rooms that are currently occupied.

"I feel confident saying we know that there's more that some in the hotel sector can do," he said.

The premier started Thursday's tour in Bakers Narrows — where firefighters are staging their response to the fire threatening the City of Flin Flon and other communities.