Inside Lytton’s contentious recovery, where concerns smoulder 5 years after wildfire

Mayor Denise O’Connor concedes that Lytton, B.C., looks “pretty empty” these days, aside from the homes of about 75 residents and a couple other buildings.

It’s almost five years since a wildfire killed two people and nearly wiped the village off the map. There are plans for major infrastructure — including a $26-million community hub — but for now there’s no grocery store, no playground, and the health centre, bank and post office are in temporary facilities.

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Still, O’Connor, points to progress like ongoing sewer upgrades and planters along Lytton’s streets.

“Some people say I’m too positive sometimes, but, you know, if we start dwelling on the negative, we’re not going to rebuild our town,” she said.

The scant progress is not for a lack of funding. The federal and provincial governments have committed more than $144 million, or about $1.9 million for each of Lytton’s current residents, whose number has dropped by more than half since before the fire.

However, an investigation by The Canadian Press, based on documents and community sources, reveals a contentious recovery process that has unfolded after the fire on June 30, 2021.

Critics contrast the skyrocketing costs with what they see as a lack of progress, and point to a series of developments that trouble them — the hiring of highly paid staff who live in Atlantic Canada, by the village’s Halifax-based chief administrative officer; the payment of almost $230,000 to a charitable disaster response group that promotes its services as free; and the firing of the chief administrative officer at the time of the blaze, who was later sued for allegedly stealing municipal funds.

Leslie Groulx, a retired chief administrative officer from Clearwater, B.C., was called in to help Lytton as acting CAO from late 2021 to the following summer. Groulx briefly returned in 2023 and said she was “gobsmacked” to see how costs had “ballooned.”

“That was a huge concern for me,” Groulx said.

Jennifer Thoss, a member of Lytton’s council, has been critical of the recovery process in the village. It still relies on a roster of recovery staff costing tens of thousands of dollars each month, even as it was meant to shift to more normal operations and the end of this year.

She said the “grift” of Lytton has grown into a systemic problem, due in part by what she sees a lack of oversight by provincial and federal authorities.

“Especially after large disasters, with a lot of money, the system does not support good decision-making,” said Thoss, who was elected the year after the fire.

“People see dollar signs and they want to capitalize on it.”

Some are well-intentioned, Thoss said, “but they’re making money.”

Groulx, who was called back to help the village in the spring of 2023 but opted to leave a week later, agreed the village had been taken advantage of as it recovers.

“Absolutely. A thousand per cent,” she said.

‘MISCOMMUNICATION AND MISUNDERSTANDING’

Next week marks five years since a sweltering heat-dome phenomenon settled over southern B.C., culminating in the blaze in Lytton.

The fire roared into the village that once billed itself as “Canada’s hot spot” one day after it recorded the country’s highest-ever temperature of 49.6 degrees.

The Canadian Press reported in April of concerns among Thoss and other residents that Lytton could face another disaster.

They worried the operational costs of more than $50 million in planned infrastructure could bankrupt the village, which brought in property tax revenue of about $400,000 last year.

Despite the millions in provincial and federal funding, village officials have been looking for other ways to make ends meet.

Last month, Thoss said O’Connor invited people to donate to the community at a car show in Lytton, a move the councillor considered “completely inappropriate.”

She said the mayor stood at a table with slips of paper outlining how to receive tax receipts for donations of $50 or more. The Canadian Press has seen a photo of the slip.

And last week, the village posted a notice to its website saying councillors would hold a workshop “to discuss and explore cost reduction options for the Lytton community hub,” one of the federally funded projects.

Thoss said council members recently received a cost estimate for building the hub and they’re now looking at trimming $4 million to $6 million from the plan.

But interviews and documents reveal concerns about costs and decisions dating back to the immediate aftermath of the fire.

For instance, Thoss said she was “flabbergasted” when she learned the village had paid Team Rubicon Canada more than $229,000 for its deployment, which began in July 2021 and included sifting through ashes and rubble in search of belongings spared by the flames.

“That was not the understanding of the community,” Thoss said of the payment, which was listed on the village’s statement of financial information for 2022.

The charity’s website states, “all services are provided free of charge” and describes the group as bringing together veterans, first responders, emergency management personnel and “kick-ass civilians” to help communities stricken by disaster.

Jan Polderman, mayor of Lytton at the time of the fire, said local officials were not “entirely” aware Team Rubicon would be sending a bill, which originally amounted to more than $400,000 before it was lowered through negotiations.

There was “some disagreement on what Team Rubicon was billing,” he said.

But the bill was paid after discussion with provincial officials. “Basically, you know, they said that they were normal expenses and to go ahead and pay them.”

Polderman said he still thought “very highly” of Team Rubicon and its volunteers, calling them “very disciplined, organized people that came to help this town.”

Tim Kenney, the chief operating officer for Team Rubicon Canada, said the payment was part of a transparent “cost-recovery framework” and attributed confusion over the bill in Lytton to a misunderstanding.

The team’s volunteers donate their time, said Kenney, who hadn’t yet joined the organization at the time of its deployment to Lytton. “But when you’re talking about moving large amounts of equipment, large numbers of people, when you’re talking about feeding all these people, obviously, those services come at a cost.”

The deployment involved 120 volunteers and lasted 90 days, although they were on the ground for about 70 days before they “were able to get permission to start conducting sifting operations”, Kenney said in an interview.

He said Team Rubicon’s billing is focused on recovering the “real and actual costs” of its deployments, which it outlines through the provision of receipts.

“We do not show up at anybody’s home and expect any one of those homeowners or the residents of the home to pay for our services,” he said.

Team Rubicon engages with local authorities before deploying to ensure there’s an agreement in place, Kenney said.

In Lytton, he said “the full amount that we felt that we were entitled to under those original agreements wasn’t provided.

“We accepted that there was some miscommunication and misunderstanding and we adjusted the cost-recovery framework accordingly,” he said.

‘PEOPLE WORKING BACK EAST’

Thoss and others have also questioned the composition and remuneration of Lytton’s recovery staff, especially as they say the village lacks basic amenities.

“Every other meeting we’re doing a report to the province on our recovery spending and I’m finding those numbers astronomically high for the deliverables,” she said.

The village has been spending in the range of $40,000 to as much as $100,000 on recovery staff every month, yet Thoss said it has struggled to complete seemingly simple tasks like installing a water fountain for Lytton’s blisteringly hot summers.

“That’s what gets me upset, to see people working back east, when I don’t see the grassroots people here,” Thoss said.

“I have made it repeatedly clear that I have not seen enough of a leadership presence from recovery staff in the village, like visibly,” the councillor said.

A longtime Lytton resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about potential financial repercussions, said community members were “frustrated and dismayed” by the lack of progress in rebuilding the village beyond the ongoing sewer upgrades and some recent excavation work at the site of the new municipal office.

“We have one big garage. That’s the only thing that the village has constructed,” the resident said, referring to the public works building completed last year.

The village’s Chinese history museum has also been rebuilt.

But there has been “zero progress” on projects that would change the lives of children living in Lytton and the surrounding area, the resident said.

“We need the community hub that was promised so long ago. We need the pool that was promised so long ago.”

The resident also told The Canadian Press they were “shocked” when they looked at the village’s financial documents and saw the compensation for recovery staff.

“We need the village to come alive again and not just be paying exorbitant wages that are leaving the province,” the resident said.

The roster of remote recovery staff includes the village’s current Halifax-based chief financial and administrative officer Diane Mombourquette, accounting manager Lisa McIntosh, whose LinkedIn profile under the name Lisa Burke says she lives in Prince Edward Island, and construction adviser Brendan Nobes, whose profile shows his location as Bedford, N.S., where his employer, rcs Construction, is headquartered.

Sources in Lytton confirmed the trio do not live there. Mombourquette, who assumed her role in early 2023, visits Lytton for about a week most months, Thoss said.

Village documents show Mombourquette has received compensation amounting to more than $850,000 over the last three years.

The Canadian Press reported in April that she was paid nearly $574,000 in 2023 and 2024, plus $5,400 in expenses. The village’s latest statement of financial information has since been released, showing she was paid $271,944 in the 2025 fiscal year, including about $11,700 in expenses.

McIntosh, the accounting manager, was meanwhile listed as receiving $222,500 last year after making $131,892 and $171,246 in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Nobes does not appear on the village’s schedule of payments in 2023 and 2024, but the 2025 statement lists rcs Construction as receiving about $93,500.

Thoss recalls meeting Nobes once or twice. “He’s far from a presence in the village,” she said.

Mombourquette declined an interview request, saying the mayor is the spokesperson for the village. McIntosh also declined an interview request, while Nobes said he wasn’t authorized to comment on the village’s affairs.

The village’s annual plan dated April 2026 shows Mombourquette is paid using provincial “recovery surge funding,” McIntosh through “regular operations” and Nobes through funding from the province and the federal Housing Department.

Groulx said she was “reasonably gobsmacked” when she saw how much money was flowing after Mayor O’Connor called her back to Lytton in the spring of 2023.

“In the year-and-a-half that I’d been gone, it really ballooned in terms of consultants and money and what people were getting paid,” said Groulx.

She was set to reprise the role, but she left a week after starting. “I just felt that it wasn’t a good spot to step into,” she said.

Groulx said Mombourquette’s remuneration of more than $850,000 over three years was “outrageous” and unsustainable for the village.

A staffing transition plan available on the village’s website notes CAOs in small towns typically make between $100,000 and $150,000 annually.

Thoss said Mombourquette was initially “very well received” by the village council.

But as time has passed “and there’s been more and more consultants and more and more large projects planned,” Thoss said she had “made it very clear to both the mayor and to our CAO that I thought it was inappropriate to be living in a different time zone and not be a Monday-to-Friday-in-the-village position.”

O’Connor, however, said the village council had been “unbelievably happy” with Mombourquette’s performance.

It was the CAO’s responsibility to hire staff as required, the mayor said, and Mombourquette “brings any contracts, any hiring, to council, and we approve it.”

O’Connor said she wasn’t sure whether there was a competitive process for the hiring of Nobes and McIntosh and wouldn’t comment further on individual staff.

But the mayor said she didn’t have any concerns about staff working remotely and hadn’t heard any from the rest of council.

“As much as I would love to see everybody living here in the town and working from their area, to me it’s not realistic yet, until we get some things built,” she said.

Lytton is not a typical municipality, she added. “Not only do we have to run the organization of the village, but we also have all (the) recovery and rebuild happening.”

O’Connor may be on happy terms with Mombourquette, but the same cannot be said for the village and Symone Curry, who was fired from the same position over the alleged theft of funds, discovered by staff in the months after the disaster.

A small-claim lawsuit seeking $19,057 alleges Curry unjustly authorized overtime pay for herself from Jan. 11, 2021, her first day on the job, through to the following August.

It also says village staff found Curry had charged personal expenses totalling $9,737 to corporate credit cards, including the purchase of online games, Uber food delivery, electronics and dental treatments.

The alleged theft was not an insignificant amount for a village that struggled to cover its costs before the fire with an operating budget of about $1.4 million.

The village also claims Curry pocketed a resident’s $880 property tax payment that had been made in cash.

Curry had been appointed as CAO within about 18 months after assuming the role of finance clerk for the village.

The village’s claims against Curry have not been tested in court.

The status of the lawsuit isn’t clear. B.C.’s court services website shows there have been no updates since the village filed its notice of claim on Nov. 30, 2023, and the court registry in Kamloops confirmed there was no certificate of service.

That means the lawsuit may not have been served to Curry, who could not be reached for comment.

‘AT BEST LACKING, AT WORST, CRIMINAL’

Thoss said there are still “countless things” that could be done both for residents and to make Lytton more attractive for much-needed investors.

Her frustration is exacerbated by the sheer scale of funding pouring into Lytton.

British Columbia has earmarked about $61.6 billion and Ottawa has pledged more than $77 million, with the bulk of the federal money going to the community hub and a $23-million firehall and emergency operations centre. The governments are also contributing a combined $5.5 million for Lytton’s wastewater treatment plant.

“In my opinion, the oversight has been at best lacking, at worst, criminal, because it will bankrupt us,” Thoss said in an interview earlier this spring.

For its part, Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada said in response to questions that funding recipients are required to attest they will have the financial capacity to maintain building operations for six years following completion.

But the provincial funds are dwindling, and while there is a plan to transition from recovery staffing to a more typical local government structure with an initial target set for the end of this year, the mayor said the village is still in a recovery phase.

“We’re not out of that yet. We still require the staff we have,” O’Connor said.

Asked how the village plans to pay for its additional staff when funding draws to a close, she said officials were “working with the province on what that looks like.”

The village hasn’t yet used all of the existing or expected funding, she added. “So, it will carry over, as far as I know.”

O’Connor said Lytton must keep moving forward.

“I don’t believe it’s as simple as build it and they will come,” O’Connor said. “But if we don’t build it, they won’t come.”

The transition plan indicates there will be an estimated $825,000 remaining for recovery staff at the end of this year, while Lytton’s annual plan said staff were “identifying ways to ensure financial sustainability” as the village returns to normal operations.

Thoss said the village “absolutely cannot afford” the existing recovery staff once provincial funding runs out.

And she is wary of looking through rose-coloured glasses.

She points to an “off-the-charts bad taste” promotional video for ATCO, the Calgary-based logistics and energy company, that was filmed in Lytton after the fire.

The relentlessly upbeat ad is set to an acoustic version of the song “Walking on Sunshine” and shows two girls walking from a home with a white-picket fence, through the fire-ravaged village, while dragging a sapling in a wagon behind them.

“When we were under a state of local emergency and we could not access our properties, (ATCO) came in and filmed this feel good, ‘we’re coming to save the day’ video … using the Village of Lytton, in its worst state, as a backdrop,” she said.

Village officials allowed the filming to go ahead with a donation of $50,000 and a trailer from ATCO, said Thoss.

“It speaks to the lack of judgment by our village, but also the exploitation of the town,” she said.

A statement accompanying the video posted to ATCO’s YouTube page says it is a “work of fiction.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 17, 2026.

Brenna Owen, The Canadian Press