{"id":117545,"date":"2025-09-03T20:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T20:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117545\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T20:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T20:09:10","slug":"national-wildfire-centre-a-slam-dunk-for-the-sault-councillor-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/117545\/","title":{"rendered":"National wildfire centre a ‘slam dunk’ for the Sault, councillor says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our bid to become the home of the new Canada Water Agency sank like a bowling ball, but city officials think this new idea will float everyone’s boat<\/p>\n

Still desolate\u00a0after\u00a0being rejected as home base for the new Canada Water Agency, Sault Ste. Marie is now planning to waterbomb federal officials for another prize: a national\u00a0forest fire\u00a0agency.<\/p>\n

“We totally should have gotten the Canada Water Agency here. We were a better fit, and we had a\u00a0great proposal,” Ward 2 Coun. Luke Dufour said at a city council meeting tonight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We should have got the Canada Water Agency,” agreed Mayor Matthew Shoemaker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If you look at Canada on a map, Winnipeg is not terribly close to any bodies of water that are significant. But nevertheless, we will take what we learned from that exercise and apply it to forest-fire fighting, and hopefully be successful in this one and build from what we’ve done in the past,” the mayor said.<\/p>\n

City councillors voted tonight in favour of launching a campaign to make Sault Ste. Marie home to a national wildfire centre,\u00a0or even a national headquarters for all Canadian emergencies.<\/p>\n

Some council members expressed hope that we can make an even stronger case to become a forest-fire fighting centre<\/a> than a water headquarters.<\/p>\n

Ward 5 Coun. Corey Gardi said\u00a0he talked about the idea recently with\u00a0Shoemaker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We\u00a0talked about those as a country, as it relates to forest fire management and the like.\u00a0And then when the federal government started talking about how they might tackle it more comprehensively as a nation, we thought we would be in a position to be a leader in this effort.”<\/p>\n

“I think it’s a slam dunk,” said his ward mate, Coun. Matthew Scott.<\/p>\n

“I think Sault Ste. Marie has a lot of the ingredients to make this kind of an agency a real success.” Coun. Dufour said.<\/p>\n

“We have a lot of expertise in this area locally that doesn’t often get talked about or advertised. And I think being a border city is also an advantage here. We have a lot going for us.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our bid to become the home of the new Canada Water Agency sank like a bowling ball, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,65660,66],"class_list":["post-117545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-sault-ste-marie-city-councilnational-fireighting-agency","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}