By mid-summer, more than three million hectares have burned in Canada, with nearly a thousand fires still active. BC and Ontario are the worst hit. In BC, fire has claimed the life of one woman, destroyed hundreds of buildings and forced 22,000 people to flee their homes. In Ontario, smoke is drifting over Quebec into the American Northeast. Across the Atlantic, France has declared its first national wildfire emergency and begun the largest peacetime evacuation in its history.

Meanwhile, Canada’s conversation about why this is happening and what Ottawa plans to do to reduce such climate change-induced events is the quietest in a decade. Last month, during a heat wave and on the fifth anniversary of a heat dome that killed 619 British Columbians, the Prime Minister and two premiers announced a West Coast oil pipeline without acknowledging higher emissions. Last fall’s budget introduced a “climate competitiveness strategy” that declined to say where Canada stands on its 2030 and 2035 targets. Since then, the government has scrapped the consumer carbon price, the electric vehicle availability standard and the proposed oil and gas emissions cap. It is clear emissions — and wildfire frequency — will rise and Canadians will pay the price. 

Ottawa didn’t decide to stop talking about climate policy. It learned to. For more than a decade, the news media has made technology the hero of the climate story and policy its villain. Governments have read the........

© National Observer