Wildfire Blame Game Ramps Up, With Ontario’s Premier Taking the Heat

TORONTO — While President Trump is blaming Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, for the clouds of wildfire smoke drifting across much of the northeastern United States this week, many Canadians are pointing the finger in another direction — at Ontario’s combative premier, Doug Ford.A firefighters’ union, Indigenous tribes, and opposition politicians have been unsparing in their criticism of the province’s state of preparedness and response to the more than 200 blazes engulfing more than 1.5 million acres of forest north of Minnesota and Lake Superior.Mr. Ford, who previously irked Mr. Trump with a World Series television ad that used an old speech by President Reagan to argue against American tariffs, has fiercely defended the province’s response and suggested that, rather than complain, America should send help.Some of the sharpest criticism of Mr. Ford has come from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents more than 1,000 front-line wildland fire rangers and aviation crew members across Ontario.“Ontario is burning,” union president JP Hornick said in a press release this week. “Fire crews and the staff who support them are overworked and exhausted. People are being evacuated from their homes. Communities are being destroyed. Air quality is among the worst in the world. When is Doug Ford actually going to step up to Protect Ontario?”The union argues that budget cuts under Mr. Ford’s Conservative Party government left the province with roughly 153 crews available to fight the fires, far fewer than the 250 crews that the union believes are needed.“Whole communities are burning down,” Mr. Hornick said. “Not having enough staff is a result of intentional choices by the Ford government. The alarms have been sounding for years, and this is the tragic fallout.”Indigenous tribes, meanwhile, are accusing the province’s Ministry of Natural Resources of being too slow to order evacuations from threatened communities, leading to panicky last-minute flights from the fast-approaching flames.Chief Lawrence Wanakamik, leader of Whitesand First Nation, told the Toronto Star that his community contacted the ministry seeking guidance but did not receive instructions to evacuate until a day after one of the fires came close.A lawyer and senior adviser to the tribe, Darian Baskatawan, complained that the ministry is “so under-resourced and understaffed that they couldn’t see fires that are happening so close to different communities.”“They don’t have the resources necessary to protect full towns, even where their bases are,” he added. “So if they can’t protect a base or a town that has one of their bases, what are they doing?”Opposition politicians have joined in the pile-on, with provincial legislator Tyler Watt linking the wildfires to the government’s response to recent flooding in his Ottawa-area constituency.“When Ontarians need their government most, this government is falling short,” the New Democratic Party politician wrote on X. “We need a government that is prepared, invests in prevention, and is there for communities before, during, and after disaster strikes.”The blunt-spoken Mr. Ford responded vigorously to the criticism during a pair of public appearances this week. “We would never underfund our firefighters ever — never ever,”he said at a hospital opening at Windsor, Ontario, on Thursday. “We’ve more than doubled the base funding for emergency firefighting.”A Natural Resources ministry spokesman said the province has added nearly 170 permanent fire personnel since 2024 and has an existing fleet of more than 50 aircraft, including helicopters and waterbombers.During a Friday press conference, Mr. Ford pointed out that provincial police and Canadian armed forces personnel had rescued two groups of American campers from a fire-engulfed lake, earning an expression of gratitude from Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz. Record smoke clouds from fires in Mr. Walz’ state is contributing to the overall problem.Addressing American critics of the wildfire response, Mr. Ford pointed out that Ontario has put water bombers on standby to assist with wildfires in California and has sent linemen to North Carolina to help reconnect electricity after hurricanes there.“If there’s some politicians out there chirping away, well maybe what you should do rather than complain is send support, send help, because we have done the exact same thing for our American friends. That’s what you’re supposed to do,” Mr. Ford said.If the remarks were intended to silence American criticism, they had the opposite effect. Just hours later, Mr. Trump announced he was planning to call Mr. Carney to discuss what he described as a “totally unacceptable” situation.“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air,” the president wrote in a social media post.“This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying.”While the blame game rages, experts say some causes of the growing number of wildfires are beyond the control of either regional or national governments. These include climate change, which is contributing to hotter, drier weather, insect infestations, and increased lightning strikes.The Forest Products Association of Canada, in a January 2024 report, points to another, ironic, driver of the problem: Past successes in suppressing forest fires have in fact made the forests more vulnerable to devastating future fires.“A combination of climate change, increasingly frequent pest infestations, and an unnatural accumulation of fuel loads (i.e., highly flammable branches, leaves, and tree segments that normally would have burned) — which are accumulating from decades of aggressive fire suppression activities without corresponding efforts to remove flammable materials — are creating severe wildfire seasons that are far more damaging than natural fire cycles,” the report says.

Wildfire Blame Game Ramps Up, With Ontario’s Premier Taking the Heat

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