Ontario Premier Doug Ford meets with firefighters and emergency personnel in Thunder Bay during the province’s ongoing wildfire crisis. Photo courtesy Doug Ford/X.

The wildfire situation in Northwestern Ontario has drawn growing global attention. There have been extraordinary stories of close calls and narrow escapes from the rapidly advancing fires. Complaints are coming (ironically) from the United States over the impacts of the resulting fire smoke on American cities.

In the short term, attention has rightly focused on the immediate responses to the fires. The Ontario and federal governments were slow to recognize the scale and significance of the fires, and the threats they posed to Northern communities. The efforts of local officials to respond to the emergency have been praised, but many communities have expressed feelings of abandonment by the province and Ottawa, both in terms of the lack of warnings and inadequate responses.

At the same time, the fires need to be viewed in a longer-term context. Increased incidences of large-scale forest fires, particularly in the boreal region stretching across Canada from Labrador to the Yukon, have been a predicted impact of climate change in Canada for more than three decades.

Major forest fires have become a defining feature of Canadian summers over the past decade. The immediate impacts are severe enough—smoke blanketing large parts of the continent, the loss of communities and homes, and people finding themselves in life-threatening danger.

The fires also........

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