EDMONTON -- Fire season is weeks away, so is flooding season.
It's the mindset of the Alberta government trying to manage a public health emergency, an economic downturn and the looming potential of natural disasters all at once.
"To be blunt, we are quite concerned about the possibility of managing this pandemic, and then having a lot of wildfires at the same time like we did last summer and spring," Premier Jason Kenney said Monday.
The province's preparations include renovating the Emergency Management Act, amendments for which were tabled Tuesday, to better accommodate coexisting states of emergency issued by Alberta and municipal governments.
If passed, the changes will make punishable any violations of orders issued during an emergency, not just evacuation orders, and allow municipalities to declare a state of emergency for 90 days.
Bill 13 also edits the legislation so that an emergency can be called during any pandemic, not just an influenza-related one as was previously defined.
"We also have to start to prepare as a province to be able to manage multiple emergencies," Government House Leader Jason Nixon said Tuesday.
The provincial government has sat in recent weeks to debate amendments to the emergency legislation, first to ensure a provincial state of emergency – which has not been declared by Alberta for COVID-19 – does not nullify local states of crisis.
Nixon said, "While we’ve created an act that allows us to co-manage the pandemic, we still may need to take action on other emergencies during this time where the province needs to take control of an area."
Alberta's fire season runs March 1 to Oct. 31. Last year, the province counted 883,000 burned hectares, the second-highest amount since 1968, and recorded two of the province's largest blazes: the McMillan fire at 273,000 hectares, and the Chuckegg Creek fire at 350,000 hectares.
Kenney said Alberta will be opening its fire tower observation centres earlier than normal, begin helicopter patrols, and soon issue fire and off-road vehicle bans as preventative measures.
More details are expected to come Thursday.
The Official Opposition said it would be consulting municipalities on the proposed changes.
The Alberta government is also sitting this week for two other pieces of legislation to allow mobile tenants to deal with disputes through the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service, and define human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Alberta law. The legislation would also dedicate a day of awareness to the issue, and create a statutory tort for victims to sue their traffickers.
The Official Opposition wants to see the latter, Bill 8, dealt with after the pandemic is over to give it "the attention it deserves, not just lip service." However, Nixon said because the piece was brought forward in the house before COVID-19, it is currently stuck in "no-man's land."
