With thousands of fallen trees criss-crossing Calvin Township, council is asking the province to help remove them to mitigate forest fire threats.
Mayor Gould, the mayor of Calvin Township, put forward two motions at the last council meeting. The first called on the province to complete a storm damage report and assess wildfire risk, taking into account the significant damage caused by last June’s storm.
In his motion, the mayor emphasized, “Today we face a comparable, modern-day hazard: vast areas of wind-downed trees from the June 21, 2025, storm combined with extensive standing dead spruce from insect mortality have created a continuous, abnormal fuel load across many private properties and crown land parcels south of Highway 17.”
“Left untreated, these fuels significantly elevate the probability, intensity, and rapid spread of wildfire in the coming fire seasons, placing life, homes, infrastructure, and adjacent public lands — including Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park — at grave risk,” Gould continued.
Given these conditions, council approved the mayor’s motion to request the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry and the Ontario Fire Marshal to conduct a wildfire-risk assessment.
Council also agreed to pass Mayor Gould’s second motion, which calls on the province to support private landowners with cleanup after last year’s storm. That June storm caused both Calvin Township and Bonfield Township to declare states of emergencies to deal with the damage.
While townships are eligible to apply for financial assistance with such a cleanup, private landowners are expected to remove their own fallen trees. For some landowners, the task is near-Herculean, as some acreages have hundreds if not thousands of fallen trees.
The mayor said, “Private landowners are facing significant challenges in addressing this debris due to high costs associated with removal, lack of access to appropriate equipment, limited availability of contractors in rural areas.”
Gould said that many affected residents told him that their insurance does not extend to debris removal unless insured structures have been directly damaged by storm debris. The province’s Disaster Recovery Assistance for Ontarians (DRAO) does not recognize tree removal on private lands as an eligible expense, the mayor noted.
These downed trees can increase risk of fire and create obstacles for first responders if fire breaks out, Gould emphasized.
Specifically, the township is asking the province to amend the eligibility criteria of the DRAO program to allow private landowners to access support for storm debris removal and wildfire reduction. The motion also asks the province to establish a storm debris removal assistance program limited to areas under declared states of emergency.
Further, the township wants to ensure such a program is time-limited and event-specific and does not extend to routine maintenance of private lands. It also asks the province to implement a retroactive assistance program for landowners impacted by the June 2025 declared emergency.
Copies of the motion have been sent to the province for its consideration.