Children’s advocate says province fell short on emergency preparedness for young wildfire evacuees, calls for ‘urgent action’

Manitoba's Children and Youth Advocate is condemning the failure of government leaders to protect young people evacuated by wildfires from further harm or their right to access education.

Sherry Gott is calling on the Kinew government to take “urgent action” and develop child-friendly emergency response plans before the 2026 bushfire season.

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

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Sherry Gott, an advocate for children and youth in Manitoba, is calling on the Kinew government to take “urgent action” and develop child-friendly emergency response plans before the 2026 wildfire season.

Gott said this reaction is especially inexcusable given the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which has wreaked havoc on education and the long-term effects of the health crisis on student well-being.

Her office, also known as MACY, is an independent, non-partisan division of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly.

MACY publishes regular reports on children's rights issues and raises awareness of the lived experiences of Manitobans' youngest residents with the public services they receive “or should receive.”

After the last wildfire season, Gott said it became clear to her that Manitoba needed to take a comprehensive approach to better support children who are forced to leave their home communities.

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

The advocate recommends that the province create a task force to develop culturally appropriate policies and protocols.

Children's voices need to be included in their development, says Gott, a member of the Sapotaweyak Cree Nation, a remote community in northwestern Manitoba.

Zapotaveyaku, about 500 kilometers from Winnipeg, did not have to evacuate during the wildfire season, but hundreds of residents were forced to flee when heavy smoke engulfed their community in 2018.

Gott noted that, as is usually the case, the majority of evacuees this year were Indigenous.

Families from Marseille Columbus First Nation, Pukatawagan and Leaf Rapids, among others, have been displaced for more than three months this year.

MACY estimates that more than 32,400 people from about 12,400 households in Manitoba were evacuated during the spring and summer.

During unprecedented forest fires, hundreds of children and young people were evacuated more than once.

Drawing on her belief system as a woman and Indigenous advocate, Gott said evacuated children have physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs that have gone unmet.

“It was just overwhelming,” she said, noting that many Indigenous students missed out on both academic and land-based classes.

Fishing and berry picking seasons have been disrupted in many remote communities, if not missed entirely.