Tag Archives: Canada

Canada immigration website appears to crash as Trump lead grows

Trump supporters celebrate as election returs come in at Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump's election night rally in Manhattan, New York,

By Jeffrey Hodgson

TORONTO (Reuters) – Maybe some Americans were serious when they threatened they would move to Canada if Republican presidential candidate became successful in his often polarizing campaign for the White House.

Canada’s main immigration website appeared to suffer repeated outages on Tuesday night as Trump took the lead in several major states and his prospects for winning the U.S. presidency turned markedly higher.

Some users in the United States, Canada and Asia saw an internal serve error message when trying to access the http://www.cic.gc.ca/ website.

Officials for the ministry could not immediately be reached for comment, but the website’s problems were noted by many on Twitter.

After some Americans, often jokingly, said would move to Canada if Trump was elected, the idea has been taken up by some Canadian communities. In February, the island of Cape Breton on Canada’s Atlantic coast marketed itself as a tranquil refuge for Americans seeking to escape should Trump capture the White House.

Canada security questioned after FBI tip thwarts attack

Police photograph of taxi where suicide bomber detonated in Canada

By Andrea Hopkins

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Aaron Driver first came to the attention of Canadian officials in late 2014 after he voiced support for Islamic State on social media. In 2015, the Muslim convert was arrested for communicating with militants involved with attack plots in Texas and Australia. Early this year, he agreed to a court order known as a peace bond that restricted his online and cell phone use.

Yet it took a tip from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to alert Canadian intelligence officials to what police say was an imminent attack Driver was planning on a major Canadian city.

Driver, 24, died after he detonated an explosive device in the backseat of a taxi as police closed in and opened fire, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said in Ottawa.

The RCMP said Driver, one of only two Canadians currently subject to a peace bond, was not under constant surveillance before the tip from the FBI came on Wednesday morning.

Driver’s father, Wayne Driver, questioned why authorities did not intervene more decisively earlier. He said he wished his son had been forced into a de-radicalization program.

“I don’t think [the peace bond] was very effective at all. I mean, look at the outcome,” Driver’s father told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

“Why wasn’t he on some kind of parole where he had to report a couple times a month instead of never?”

RCMP Deputy Commissioner Mike Cabana said that even when, as in Driver’s case, there is enough evidence for a court-ordered terrorism-related peace bond, the tool cannot really prevent an attack.

“Our ability to monitor people 24 hours a day and 7 days a week simply does not exist. We can’t do that,” Cabana told reporters at a news conference in Ottawa.

Phil Gurski, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analyst and now a risk consultant, said it takes about 20 to 40 officers in multiple surveillance teams to watch a suspect.

“It is not like Hollywood films where it is one car following one guy,” said Gurski. “So you have to start prioritizing.”

With Driver’s death, one Canadian resident remains under a terrorism-related federal peace bond, a type of restraining order issued by a provincial judge. According to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, nine more such orders are pending, nine have already expired, and three applications for peace bonds have been withdrawn.

LIMITS TO PEACE BONDS

Driver’s peace bond required him, among other things, to get permission before purchasing a cell phone, stay off social media websites and refrain from communications with members of Islamic State and other radical groups.

After Driver’s foiled attack, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said peace bonds have limits.

“Those issues will obviously need to be very carefully scrutinized,” he said in an interview with CBC.

While some 600 RCMP officers and staff were transferred from organized crime, drug and financial integrity files to the counter-terrorism beat in recent years, critics of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new Liberal government have argued that not enough money is being spent to fight terrorism.

The 2016 budget provided C$35-million over five years to combat radicalization, but little in the way of new funding for the RCMP or CSIS.

Trudeau was elected in October 2015 pledging to end Canada’s combat role against Islamic State and roll back some of the security powers his Conservative Party predecessor had implemented.

Ray Boisvert, a former assistant director of intelligence at CSIS, said Driver was likely on an increasingly long list of so-called “B-listers” – people known to law enforcement, but considered lower risk than others and not followed regularly.

“The problem today, of course is that a target can go from mildly radicalized to highly ‘weaponized’ in a matter of weeks – or sooner,” Boisvert, who left CSIS in 2012 and is now a security consultant to private firms, said in an email.

Mubin Shaikh, a former undercover operative with CSIS, told Reuters he considered Driver a threat back in 2015, in part because he was a Muslim convert.

“That’s a red flag,” he said on Thursday.

In October 2014, a Canadian Muslim convert shot and killed a soldier at Ottawa’s national war memorial before launching an attack on the Canadian Parliament. The same week, another convert ran down two soldiers in Quebec, killing one.

Shaikh, now a Canadian counter-terrorism and national security consultant, said law enforcement officers walk a fine line in determining which Islamic State sympathizers are just talkers, and which represent an actual threat to Canada.

“You don’t know who is going to be the one guy who is not just talking but may take action,” he said. “It’s better to assume that they are going to be a threat.”

(Additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, Leah Schnurr in Ottawa, Ethan Lou in Toronto, Rod Nickel in Winnipeg; Editing by Sue Horton, Diane Craft and Frances Kerry)

Philippine General urges martial law to rein in southern militants

Hostages Canadian national Robert Hall and Norwegian national Kjartan Sekkingstad are seen in this undated picture released to local media, in Jolo

MANILA (Reuters) – A senior Philippine army general on Wednesday resumed a push for martial law to be imposed on a troubled southern island where Islamist militants beheaded a Canadian captive, despite a recent decision by President Benigno Aquino not to adopt such curbs.

On Monday, militants of Abu Sayyaf, a small but brutal group linked to al Qaeda, executed Robert Hall on the remote island of Jolo, the second Canadian captive to be killed following John Ridsdel, after their ransom demand went unheeded.

“Declare martial law, that is a right move,” said a senior Philippine army general, who declined to be identified as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

“If you want to immediately solve the problem, there should be a total control by the military in the area.”

Emergency powers were needed because the Abu Sayyaf was using its ransom proceeds to buy the loyalties of the surrounding community, he added.

Aquino said he considered declaring martial law on Jolo three weeks ago but decided against it because there was no guarantee it would work.

“You would need a large force to implement martial law and there is no guarantee it will produce positive results,” he told reporters on a visit to Jolo to inspect troops pursuing Abu Sayyaf militants.

“It might generate more sympathy for the Abu Sayyaf.”

Aquino said he spoke with the prime ministers of Canada and Norway by telephone, thanking them for their understanding and support of his government’s no-ransom policy.

He said he apologized to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the death of Robert Hall and John Ridsdel, who was executed in April.

Trudeau has condemned Hall’s execution, but said Canada cannot, and will not, pay ransom in such cases because it could encourage additional kidnappings.

Abu Sayyaf had initially demanded one billion pesos ($21.7 million) for each of the detainees, but cut that to 300 million early this year.

Hall’s family backed the Canadian government’s policy.

“Our family, even in our darkest hour, agrees wholeheartedly with Canada’s policy of not paying ransom,” it said in a statement.

Abu Sayyaf, based in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, is known for kidnapping, beheadings and extortion.

Security is precarious in the southern Philippines despite a 2014 peace pact between the government and the largest Muslim rebel group that ended 45 years of conflict.

In 2009, the Philippines imposed martial law on the southern Muslim-dominated province of Maguindanao after 58 people were murdered in political violence there.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by clarence Fernandez)

Mexico, U.S. Canada to launch heroin fight at Three Amigos Summit

Paulo Carreno, Mexican deputy foreign minister in charge of North America, speaks during an interview in Mexico City

By Dave Graham and Ana Isabel Martinez

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico, the United States and Canada will unveil a plan to combat increased opium poppy cultivation and heroin use across North America at a summit later this month, a senior Mexican official said on Thursday.

Leaders of the three nations are due to meet in Ottawa on June 29, amid growing concern about the rising North American death toll from opioids such as heroin and fentanyl, and a surge in poppy cultivation in Mexico by violent drug gangs.

In a phone call last month, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto agreed to intensify the fight against heroin production, and government officials say the problem has been under discussion for months.

Paulo Carreno, Mexican deputy foreign minister in charge of North America, said in an interview that Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was also committed to the plan due to be launched at the so-called Three Amigos summit later this month.

“This isn’t just about destroying (plantations), it’s about finding solutions for people forced to cultivate poppies, and there will be an important announcement in this context at the summit on a new cooperation plan between the three countries to deal with problems that obviously concerns us all,” he said.

Carreno declined to offer details but said additional resources would devoted to all parts of the problem.

“To combating it, to eradicating it, but also to reducing demand significantly and addressing the social aspect,” he said.

Pena Nieto took office in December 2012 pledging to bring Mexico’s drug cartels to heel, but sickening gang violence has been a blight on his administration and cultivation of opium poppies used to make heroin has surged.

Between 2012 and 2015, the area under poppy cultivation in Mexico, which officials say is the most important supplier of heroin to the United States, rose from 10,500 hectares to 28,000 hectares, according to figures published by the White House.

At the same time, fatal heroin overdoses in the United States have risen steeply, with some 10,574 deaths reported in 2014, a rise of 26 percent from the previous year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That figure is six times higher than the total in 2001, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse says.

“Right now there’s a lot of concern here in the United States because we are suffering from a major, major heroin epidemic,” said Mike Vigil, a former head of global operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

A large part of the Mexican increase in cultivation has been in the violent southwestern state of Guerrero, where 43 trainee teachers were abducted by a drug gang and corrupt police in September 2014, then murdered, according to the government.

To cut gang violence, Guerrero’s governor has floated the idea of regulating poppy production for medicinal purposes, an option which the Mexican government has studied.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one senior Mexican official said the United States was prepared to offer Mexico more material support to tackle heroin production.

However, a U.S. official said the two sides were still discussing which measures to adopt. One subject under discussion is finding alternative crops for opium poppy farmers to grow.

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Bernard Orr)

U.S. may turn to Canada for help with new NATO force

NATO flag flies at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels during a NATO ambassadors meeting o

By Robin Emmott and Wiktor Szary

BRUSSELS/WARSAW (Reuters) – The United States could turn to Canada to help it establish a new NATO force in eastern Europe as a deterrent against Russia because it is struggling to win support from its European allies, diplomats say.

Despite its show of force with a military exercise across eastern Europe this month that involved more than 20 NATO and partner countries, the alliance is moving slowly in its efforts to build a rotating force of 4,000 troops on its eastern flank in Poland and the Baltics.

Only Britain and Germany have said they are willing to contribute, by providing a battalion of about 1,000 troops each. The United States will provide a third battalion, leaving NATO requiring one more country to provide a fourth.

“European allies have reasons why they can’t come forward. They’re thinly stretched, at home, in Africa, in Afghanistan. They just don’t have the money,” said a senior NATO diplomat involved in the discussions.

The reluctance of some European governments to help the military build-up, the biggest since the end of the Cold War, reflects internal doubts over whether the alliance should be more focused on combating militant groups and uncontrolled flows of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa.

“There are divisions within NATO,” said Sophia Besch, a European defense expert at the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank. “Some allies feel the focus should be on the south.”

Unity is crucial for NATO as Moscow and Washington accuse one another of intimidation close to the NATO-Russia border. NATO and Russia feel threatened by each other’s large military drills and are at odds over the crisis in Ukraine.

Any sense in the United States that Europe is unwilling to pay for its own defense could be damaging. U.S. President Barack Obama has suggested European powers were “free riders” during the 2011 Libya air campaign, and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused them of not paying their fair share.

A senior Polish diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations said NATO would not allow the build-up to fail as it had already been announced, and because Russia might exploit it as a sign that NATO is unwilling to defend Poland.

“The summit in Warsaw will be President Obama’s last (NATO summit) and the U.S. wants it to be a success. It will ensure that the fourth framework country is found, possibly by leaning on Canada,” the source said. “Washington will bend over backwards here.”

“PERSISTENT” PRESENCE

Former communist states in NATO want to bolster its eastern defenses without stationing large forces permanently, worried since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine that Moscow could invade Poland or the Baltic states in days.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed such an idea this week, saying he saw no threats in the region that would justify the area’s militarization.

Russia has also said the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s large-scale military exercise in eastern Europe undermines trust and security, and that it is concerned by the movement of NATO’s military infrastructure towards its border.

NATO defense ministers will next week formally agree on the plan for four battalions to be involved in the new force, part of a deterrent made up of forces on rotation and warehoused equipment ready for a rapid response force in case of attack.

That force includes air, maritime and special operations units of up to 40,000 personnel.

While saying they seek to avoid a return to the Cold War, when 300,000 U.S. service personnel were stationed in Europe, NATO generals describe it as a “persistent” but not a “permanent” presence to avoid breaking a 1997 agreement with Moscow limiting the deployment of combat forces.

Britain is likely to deploy to Estonia, Germany to Lithuania and the United States to Latvia. The United States will also supply an armored brigade to rove around the eastern flank. Only Poland appears to be left out at this stage.

While the United States is increasing its military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion in 2017, defense cuts in Italy, Belgium and France during the euro zone debt crisis complicate military planning.

France says it is focused on fighting militants in Syria and Mali, while there are also tensions with Poland’s new right-wing government, which is seeking to rescind on a $3 billion helicopter tender with Airbus <AIR.PA>, diplomats say. Airbus was provisionally selected by the previous administration.

Spain is leading NATO’s special “spearhead” force that can deploy in less than a week. Smaller countries such as Denmark say they do not have the resources to deploy a battalion.

Italy, a major buyer of gas from Russia — on which the European Union depends heavily for energy supplies — is wary of taking a tough line on Moscow.

Rome is also upset with central and eastern European states for not showing more willingness to take refugees fleeing North Africa across the Mediterranean and into Italy.

That leaves Canada, which has 220 armed forces personnel in Poland.

“Canada is actively considering options to effectively contribute to NATO’s strengthened defense and deterrence posture,” said a spokesperson for the Canadian Department of National Defence.

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz told reporters in Warsaw on Thursday he expected any problems with the NATO plan to be “resolved in a positive manner.”

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Better weather expected to damp down Canadian wildfire

A flock of birds fly as smoke billows from the Fort McMurray wildfires in Kinosis

By Nia Williams and Eric M. Johnson

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Firefighters battling a wildfire that has threatened oil sands facilities north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, looked to cooler weather, a change in winds and the promise of rain to help them on Thursday.

A shift in wind direction from west to east is expected to push the fire back toward areas it has already burned, limiting its growth, wildfire information officer Travis Fairweather said on Thursday.

“That should hopefully result in a little less activity than we’ve seen in the last couple of days,” he said.

The fire, which hit Fort McMurray in early May, destroying entire neighborhoods, surged north on Tuesday, forcing the evacuation of 8,000 oil sand workers, destroying a work camp and prolonging a shutdown that has cut Canadian oil output by a million barrels a day.

Fairweather did not expect the fire to damage any oil sands facilities on Thursday.

The fire covered 483,084 hectares (1.2 million acres) as of Thursday morning, up some 61,000 hectares from the day before. Fairweather said cooler weather and the chance of rain on Thursday also would help contain the fire.

Some of the 90,000 evacuees who fled Fort McMurray as the massive blaze breached the city may be allowed to return as soon as June 1, officials said on Wednesday, if air quality improves and other safety conditions are met.

Some oil sands operations directly north of the city remained shuttered, although firefighters held the blaze back from Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada facilities on Wednesday.

The fire destroyed a 665-room lodge for oil sands workers on Tuesday but officials said on Wednesday they were not aware of further industry damage.

Tuesday’s evacuations were a setback for producers, suggesting production may be suspended for longer than companies and analysts had previously anticipated.

The province’s plan to gradually allow residents back into the city offered hope but also trepidation.

“It’s exciting news but you are also scared to see what you get when you get back,” said Fort McMurray resident Ria Dickason, adding that she was concerned about smoky air.

The air quality health index, which usually stands between 1 and 10, hit 51 on Wednesday morning, before improving to 11.

“We won’t go back if it’s anything close to the levels it’s at now,” Dickason said. “My daughter has asthma so we are more alert to it.”

(Additional reporting by Allison Martell and Ethan Lou in Toronto; Editing by Bill Trott)

Hot weather, winds, complicate battle to control Alberta wildfire

An aerial view of Highway 63 south of Fort McMurray, Alberta. Canada, shows smoke from the wildfires

By Nia Williams

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Hot and dry weather and strong winds were expected to push a massive wildfire near Fort McMurray, Alberta eastward on Wednesday, threatening facilities and work camps in the prized oil sands region.

The fire, which began in early May, forced the evacuation of thousands of workers on Tuesday, prolonging a shutdown that has cut Canadian oil output by a million barrels a day. It destroyed a 665-room lodge for oil sands workers, then blazed eastward toward other camps.

Winds forecast for Wednesday were expected to push the blaze further to the east, putting oil operations in its path, officials said late on Tuesday. Heat and lack of rain also are complicating efforts to control the 355,000-hectare (877,224-acre) fire, which was also stretching toward the Saskatchewan border.

“We expect the fire to spread on the easterly side,” Alberta wildfire manager Chad Morrison said on a Tuesday call.

The latest forecast showed temperatures were expected to reach a high of 24 Celsius (75 Fahrenheit) in the Fort McMurray area on Wednesday, though there was also a 60 percent chance of rain on Thursday.

The wildfire is taking a toll on Alberta’s economy, with one study estimating that the lost oil production will cut the Western Canadian province’s gross domestic product (GDP) by more than C$70 million ($53.91 million) a day.

About 8,000 workers were evacuated from camps and facilities north of Fort McMurray on Tuesday, with both Suncor Energy Inc and Syncrude, majority owned by Suncor, removing all but bare essential staff from their major operations.

None of the oil sands have caught fire, and the industry has redoubled efforts to ensure facilities are well-protected. Officials said facilities have been cleared of vegetation and have lots of gravel on site, reducing the fire risk.

The Canadian supply disruptions have helped boost global oil prices, though Brent crude prices eased on Wednesday as the lost Canadian production was tempered by rising supplies elsewhere. [O/R]

In one encouraging sign for producers, cogeneration electric plants around Fort McMurray increased their output overnight with the restart of Suncor’s Firebag units, the operator of the province’s power grid said on Wednesday.

The roughly 90,000 residents of Fort McMurray are growing frustrated over the lack of an estimate for their return to the oil sands hub, which they were forced to flee about two weeks ago.

Officials told a town hall meeting late on Tuesday that they were narrowing down return dates which they hoped to share “very, very soon,” but added that the city remained unsafe.

($1 = 1.2984 Canadian dollars)

(With additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver, Scott DiSavino in New York and Jeffrey Hodgson and Allison Martell in Toronto; Editing by Paul Simao)

Canadian oilfield workers readying return after wildfire

Burned out homes from Canadian Wildfire

By Nia Williams and Ernest Scheyder

CALGARY/LAC LA BICHE, Alberta (Reuters) – Workers for one of the largest oil sands companies affected by a wildfire in northern Canada will begin returning to the shuttered facilities on Thursday, a union official said, the latest indication the key petroleum production area was slowly coming back online.

Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, the premier of the province of Alberta and the head of the Canadian Red Cross announced that residents of Fort McMurray, the oil-boom town that was evacuated last week because of the fire, would be offered direct financial aid.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau established an ad hoc cabinet committee to coordinate federal relief efforts. Trudeau will tour the fire zone on Friday.

Ken Smith, president of Unifor Local 707, the union that represents 3,400 Suncor Energy Inc workers, said the company would start to fly employees back to its oil sands base plant from Thursday.

“It will take a few days to get the plant up and in condition to start handling feed,” Smith said.

Facilities north of Fort McMurray that had been shuttered largely because of heavy smoke rather than fire were likely to come back on line first, in a matter of days in many cases.

Roughly 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of output were shut down during the fire, about half of the oil sands’ usual daily production.

Late Wednesday, Enbridge Inc said it had restarted its 550,000 bpd Line 18 pipeline, which carries crude from the company’s Cheecham terminal 380 kilometers (236 miles) south to the regional crude trading hub of Edmonton.

Enbridge also said crews were on site at its facilities in the Fort McMurray region and confirmed its terminals were not damaged by the wildfire.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc was the first company to resume operations in the area, restarting its Albian Sands mines at a reduced rate. The facility can produce up to 255,000 bpd.

Syncrude, controlled by Suncor, restarted power generation at its oil sands mine in Aurora, north of the city, on Tuesday as it began planning to resume operations. The site has a total capacity of around 315,000 bpd.

Dozens of repair trucks and other vehicles headed for the oil fields on Wednesday, driving north along the main highway into the area, a Reuters eyewitness said. Some were towing heavy equipment.

Still, some projects to the south and east of Fort McMurray remained unreachable as the fire threat persisted.

The town remained shut to residents.

“The area is still very … dangerous with some hot spots still throughout the city and areas of concern,” said Kevin Kunetzki of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Around 300 RCMP members are patrolling the town and have found 100 homes showing signs of break-ins. This could be a result of concerned residents trying to check on neighbors, rather than burglars, he told a news conference in Edmonton.

The size of the fire was little changed on Wednesday at roughly 229,000 hectares (566,000 acres) and moving away from the community.

There are 700 firefighters, 32 helicopters, 13 air tankers and 83 pieces of heavy equipment units working on the Fort McMurray fire, the government said.

Alberta is making cash available immediately to the 90,000 evacuees from the fire zone. The funds, C$1,250 per adult and C$500 per child, would be distributed by debit cards beginning immediately to evacuees in Edmonton, Calgary and Lac La Biche.

Canadian Red Cross Chief Executive Conrad Sauve said his agency was making C$50 million in funds available to the relief effort now, out of C$67 million that had been raised so far. The money will be distributed as electronic funds transfers of C$600 for each adult and C$300 for each child, he said.

“This is the most important cash transfer we have done in our history and the fastest one,” he told a news conference with Alberta premier Rachel Notley.

The local government council held its first meeting since the evacuations in Edmonton on Thursday. The mood was somber and defiant.

Authorities in Lac la Biche, a small town south of Fort McMurray where many evacuees are staying, opened its fishing season four days early to provide temporary residents “with a well-deserved family recreational opportunity,” a statement said.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Liz Hampton in Calgary and Allison Martell in Toronto; Writing by Dan Burns in Toronto; Editing by Alan Crosby)

Temporary housing first step for wildfire ravaged Fort McMurray

A charred vehicle and home are pictured in the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Fort McMurray

By Rod Nickel and Liz Hampton

FORT MCMURRAY/LAC LA BICHE, Alberta (Reuters) – Reconstructing Fort McMurray will be easier than first feared since much of the city’s critical infrastructure remains intact but the once booming oil town will be smaller than before, according to its mayor.

The first priority is getting new temporary housing so companies can resume shuttered oil production.

Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake said the fire is a chance to “right size” the city after the energy slump left it with vacant houses and unemployed workers well before wildfires hit last week.

With 10 percent of the city burned and more than 90,000 residents evacuated, the combination of a glut of prefire homes and quick-build housing are a solution as the government and oil executives try to jump-start rebuilding.

“If I look at what the circumstance gives to us, I think it’s an opportunity to right-size the community,” Blake told Reuters. “I recognize that this horror is probably going to get some people reconsidering what their futures are, whether it’s in the region or not.”

The fire may have been the final push that some residents needed to leave the isolated northern city, but major oil producers need it back on its feet quickly to restart some 1 million barrels per day of shuttered production.

The wildfire, which has spread over 229,000 hectares (566,000 acres), is still burning, though favorable weather overnight was seen helping firefighters.

While many companies have work camps at the site of their oil sands projects around Fort McMurray, workers from across Canada and around the world moved into the city with their families when the sector was booming years ago.

If energy companies can’t house workers and their families quickly, they risk losing them permanently.

The industry will support efforts to rebuild the hospital, pipelines and electrical distribution center, Suncor Inc <SU.TO> Chief Executive Officer Steve Williams said on Tuesday after a meeting of industry and provincial officials.

“FIRST WAVE”

A recovery will be easier due to the city’s largely intact infrastructure and downtown, but people are already fighting over available housing because several major residential neighborhoods were destroyed.

“We’ve got banks, companies, restoration companies, engineering companies all looking for space now. People need to stay somewhere,” said Bill de Silva, construction manager of Liam Construction, one of the city’s biggest builders.

He said the “first wave” is already trying to secure space in hotels, condominiums and apartments undamaged by the fire, but the approval process in the still-evacuated city isn’t easy.

“We’ve got to get there as quickly as we can. We can play a big role but they have to let us in. All the government red tape doesn’t help us now,” de Silva said.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said officials need to finish damage assessments, set up a welcome center and transportation plan and secure food and supplies before anyone can start moving back in.

“There are hazardous materials and broken power lines. Basic services, gas, water, waste disposal, healthcare and much more needs to be re-established,” she said.

“The city was surrounded by an ocean of fire only a few days ago but Fort McMurray and the surrounding communities have been saved, and they will be rebuilt.”

The province is already speaking to temporary builders.

“They’ve been asking very general questions about what kind of temporary housing solutions we can provide (and a) rough timeline of how long it would take to be installed,” said Troy Ferguson, CEO of Redrock Group, which builds modular work camps and homes in Alberta.

Marc Roy, who was chief of staff for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sees parallels between the two disasters, including the total destruction of some homes.

Longer term, Roy said, authorities need to allocate resources carefully, because some residents likely will not return.

“Are you building with the hopes that you build a field of dreams and people come to fill it, or are you using your resources as wisely as you possibly can at the moment?” he said. “You just can’t put it back exactly like it was and make that your plan. That does not work.”

One wrinkle may be home insurance policies that do no pay out in full unless homeowners rebuild.

“If a customer chooses not to repair or replace, they will receive the actual cash value of the building at the time of the loss,” said Intact Insurance, Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer, in a statement. Because of the oil downturn, that cash value could be less than owners hope.

Debra Bunston, an Alberta realtor, said the disaster may fill vacant homes or spur sales of homes that are already on the market, “a bit of a silver lining in this horrible cloud of smoke.”

(Additional reporting by Allison Martell and Andrea Hopkins in Toronto and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Wildfire destroys homes in Canadian City – delays hit evacuation

Flames rise in Industrial area south Fort McMurray Alberta Canada

(Reuters) – An out-of-control wildfire destroyed much of one neighborhood in the remote Canadian city of Fort McMurray and badly damaged other areas, the local government said on Wednesday, hours after it ordered all 80,000 residents to leave in the biggest evacuation in the area’s history.

Firefighters in the northeastern Alberta city at the heart of Canada’s oil sands were bracing for another tough day. Hot, dry weather has made it difficult to being the fire under control. A forecast for potential fire intensity showed much of the area around at class 6, the highest possible level.

Some 44,000 people had fled the city by late on Tuesday, but evacuations were delayed by gasoline shortages, local officials said. No injuries or deaths were reported.

In a bulletin posted on Twitter in the early morning, the regional government said 80 percent of Beacon Hill, a residential area at the south end of town, had been lost. Two other neighborhoods, Abasand and Waterways, were listed as “serious loss.”

By early Wednesday morning Shell had closed one oil sands mine and was in the process of closing another. Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said the company’s priority was safety, and to support the community. Henry said upgraders, which process oil sands to produce crude, would operate for a few more days.

Alberta Health Services said in a statement that all patients had been successfully evacuated from Fort McMurray’s hospital.

The fire broke out southwest of the city on Sunday, shifting aggressively with the wind to breach city limits on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Frances Kerry)