EDITORIAL: Where there’s smoke there’s ire

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Last week, a group of U.S. Republican lawmakers said they plan to make a formal complaint about Canada’s wildfire management to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Joint Commission, an organization that adjudicates cross-border disputes on water and air quality between Canada and the U.S.  State lawmakers from North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin are calling for an investigation of Canada’s wildfire management policies and are seeking solutions under international law.

We have sympathy for people like Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, who has rebutted such criticism by pointing out that people have died, people have lost their homes and thousands of people have been displaced by the wildfires.

Kinew accused the critics of “playing politics” with the serious issue of wildfires. He pointed out that American firefighters are helping Canadians right now and Canadian firefighters rushed to California to help that state with its wildfire emergency last year.

“These are attention-seekers who can’t come up with a good idea on health care or on making life more affordable. So, they’re playing games with something that’s very serious,” he told the Canadian Press.

Canada’s response has largely been to throw our hands up and blame climate change, without doing the self-examination needed to see what we can do proactively to prevent wildfires, rather than responding reactively when they occur.

A 2023 report by the Fraser Institute points out that Canada’s wildfire problem is not so much related to climate change as it is to forest management. It quotes a 2020 report by Cordy Tymstra and others in the journal Progress in Disaster Science, which found that our wildfire management came up short.

“A major barrier in Canada … is the inadequate funding to support the vision of an innovative and integrated approach to wildfire management,” it said.

“Despite the increasing occurrence of wildfire disasters in Canada, funding to support wildfire prevention, mitigation and preparedness has not kept pace with the increasing need to mitigate the impacts from wildfires and be better prepared when they do arrive.”

The Fraser Institute urges this country to adopt “more sane, real-world, real-time management of fire risk in Canada’s forests, a practice that Canadian governments have failed at for decades.”

Perhaps we should listen to our neighbours for once and make some changes.