The wildfire season has become a yearly crisis, endangering countless lives and putting entire towns at risk of total destruction. Climate change, spurred on by the relentless pursuit of profits under capitalism, has created the perfect weather conditions for fires to spread rapidly. Despite knowing this, our federal and provincial governments have been caught completely off-guard.
Bureaucratic nightmare
As of June 19, there were 259 active fires in Canada, more than half of them designated as out of control. Across the whole year, there have been over 2,000 fires and nearly 4 million hectares of land burned. Despite starting slightly later in the season, the situation is rapidly approaching the scale of devastation of the record-setting 2023 wildfires.
Two years after the worst wildfire season to ever happen in Canada, which had triggered calls for the federal government to create a national disaster response agency, there is still no such thing.
In fact, at the moment, the federal government plays very little role in managing disaster responses. It is instead handled by a combination of local, provincial, private, non-profit, military and international organizations and supports.
This bureaucratic nightmare has led to horror stories at every step of the response. Two people have been killed. Tens of thousands have been evacuated from their homes. Smoke from the fires has led to air quality alerts across Canada and the U.S., impacting the health and quality of life of people far from the fires.
First to be mishandled is the firefighting itself. The actual firefighting is largely done by private sector companies, which are always looking to save costs to maximize profits. This means firefighters are paid low wages and given insufficient equipment. Crews are being thrown into life-threatening situations under-equipped and with very little experience. Unsurprisingly, the industry faces high turnover and labour shortages, and therefore lacks not only the equipment, but also the manpower to adequately fight the fires.
Canada is also poorly equipped in terms of heavier equipment like water bombers, with only a small fleet of outdated aircrafts. The industry has had to rely heavily on international help for equipment and firefighters, which has slowed the process down, allowing fires to spread in the meantime.
The evacuation process has also been mishandled. Last-minute evacuation notices and a lack of coordination have led to massive lines of people waiting hours to board ferries, planes or helicopters while flames close in on them. The rapid spread of the fires has even led to some people being evacuated twice, first from their hometowns and then from the supposedly safe location where they were sent.
Even after being evacuated, things don’t get any easier for those affected by wildfires. While dealing with the fear of losing their homes, people have to navigate the bureaucratic maze of support services. Reports have emerged of families living in parking lots and overcrowded hotel rooms, trying to get by on meagre stipends from the province, with very few of their belongings and no idea when or if they will be able to return to their homes.
Don’t hold your breath
For years, environmental experts, fire chiefs, and even military leaders have stressed the need for a national disaster response agency, similar to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States. This would allow for a centrally coordinated allocation of resources across all provinces, and a properly coordinated national response to wildfires. Such an agency would be an essential first step in resolving the bureaucratic chaos of the current system.
But in a period of federal cuts, while public services and infrastructures are crumbling, such an endeavour is not on the cards. Carney’s government has money for guns and corporate subsidies, not for services and safety for people.
Far from trying to build Canada’s firefighting capacities, Carney is instead adding fuel to the fire. As part of his response to Trump’s trade war and Canada’s lagging economy, the Liberals are planning on accelerating pipeline construction. They also tabled Bill C-5, a bill designed to bypass environmental regulations for large infrastructure projects.
As Canadian capitalism grows weaker and more desperate, protecting the environment and people’s safety is a luxury they can no longer afford.
