Clearing the air: time to deal with Ontario’s wildfires

In case you hadn’t noticed, the air across much of southern Ontario has been verging on unfit to breathe in recent days.

Instead of being a clear, summery blue, the skies have turned hazy and grey. And instead of basking in the July sun, people with respiratory and heart conditions have been advised to retreat indoors. To put it in a greater context, Toronto was named the fourthworst place for air quality earlier this week — in the entire world. Communities in and around the GTA have experienced poor air quality, too.

While on other occasions the fingers of blame would be pointed at the exhaust-belching cars, SUVs and trucks we drive, the main source of this dangerous pollution is the 170 forest fires now burning across Northern Ontario.

To grasp the seriousness of the situation, consider its scope. There have been 3,925 wildfires recorded across Canada so far this year, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. That’s well above the 10-year average. In Northern Ontario, the number and size of wildfires is already substantially higher than average and has forced thousands of people to flee their First Nations communities.

Across Canada, the area burned by wildfires each year has gradually doubled since the early 1970s, says Mike Flannigan, research chair for predictive services, emergency management and fire science at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. And modelling, he adds, suggests that area could again double — or even increase up to 11 times — by the end of this century. Forest-fire seasons have grown longer, too.

At this point, many readers will attribute these frightening trends to human-created climate change. And a large body of science indicates this is indeed a big factor. The rising temperatures and prolonged droughts associated with climate change dry forest debris into a kindling. These are the conditions being experienced where wildfires are burning in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario.

If Canadians needed another reason to step up their fight against global warming, this summer’s wildfires and the lung-choking air pollution they have generated should provide an irrefutable one. But the wildfire smoke, with its particles and gases that contain chemicals harmful to human health, should lead to other action — in Canada’s forests.

The ways we manage and mismanage this country’s vast forested lands have made wildfires more, not less, likely. Ironically, when humans suppress fires they allow a buildup of underbrush and deadfall on forest floors. Researchers in British Columbia believe that in earlier centuries, naturally occurring forest fires of small- to-moderate size would consume much of that debris but leave large trees standing. So while it seems counterintuitive, such fires actually contributed to the overall health of a forest — protecting it from the larger wildfires we’re witnessing this summer.

This explains why U.S. President Joe Biden plans to double the work being done in the United States to protect forests by cleaning out deadfall and employing prescribed burns. Such proactive measures should become more commonplace in this country.

Even if that happens, the accelerating impacts of climate change suggest no quick fix lies on our smoggy horizons. For now, those most vulnerable to polluted air, especially the very young, very old and people with serious medical conditions, will have to change their behaviour when faraway forests burn. But long-term, Canadians simply can’t let this become our “new normal.”