Policy makers’ response to the half dozen Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports seems to be “TL;DR”, and we are now staring down a visceral version of those thousands of pages of ignored warnings. One of the worst wildfire seasons on record has displaced more than 300,000 people in France, Spain, and Portugal. Sweltering heat waves in Europe have created conditions incinerating 2,500 square kilometres and counting . In Northern Ontario, one First Nation had to flee by boat as a wall of fire consumed their entire community, and many are now demanding a public inquiry into how emergency planning, or lack thereof, went so wrong.
Averting the worst of what the future has in store requires an urgent combination of prevention and preparation. Halting as many climate destabilizing emissions as soon as possible should be top priority, while ensuring we adequately resource our emergency response. Sadly, Canada is failing badly on both those fronts.
Prime Minister Mark Carney fessed up this summer that his enthusiastic embrace of new fossil fuel developments – often propped up by public money – will mean his government has essentially abandoned its emissions targets. Billions in taxpayers’ dollars are available to backstop a new bitumen pipeline to the west coast or dubious carbon capture technologies, but apparently the cupboard is empty for emergency preparedness funding.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) reported that about half of their members working at a national centre for disaster response were fired in January. “The Government Operations Centre (GOC) is responsible for coordinating our national emergency response,” Sharon DeSousa, PSAC’s national president, told Global News.“Gutting it by almost half puts people across the country at risk, including frontline workers who are battling wildfires, supporting evacuations, and risking their lives.”
Even before these drastic cuts, morale at the GOC was near rock bottom with an internal memo revealing “significant staff exhaustion” in the fall of 2024. The comparative pennies saved by cutting experienced frontline emergency staff is dwarfed by the billions Carney is prepared to throw at the highly profitable fossil fuel sector.
Ontario First Nations are likewise livid that dozens of dozens of recommendations they made to the government of Premier Doug Ford to better prepare for this fire season were apparently ignored. Ford instead found time to promote yet another bitumen pipeline from Alberta to his province, through their recently incinerated Traditional Territories.
Despite gutting clean energy regulations and the federal emissions cap, a new one million barrel-per-day bitumen pipeline to the west coast may be 90 percent taxpayer-funded, costing up to $43 billion. Won’t all those increased emissions make the oil industry look bad? Not if the federal government also foots much of the bill for a massive carbon capture scheme that wildly profitable bitumen-producing companies refuse to fund themselves.
Canadians eager to see credible evidence of our newly muscular nationalism are instead treated to the same tired capitulation toward extractive industries dating back to confederation. When will “elbows up” apply to the army of oil industry lobbyists so successfully extracting money and concessions from our elected leaders? A recent report from Environmental Defence Canada found the fossil fuel industry booked almost 1,000 meetings with federal officials in 2025.
Meanwhile, Canadian communities burn, displaced families sleep on gymnasium floors, and our governments commit billions to a polluting sector making this tragic situation even worse. Carney’s climate credibility is falling fast. He would be wise to remember how quickly the country soured to our southern neighbour when faced with a jarring sense of betrayal at Trump’s tariffs and threats to Canadian sovereignty. Carney could face a similar fate if he continues to side with Bay Street buddies and oil industry bigwigs over climate beleaguered Canadians.
As the kids say, shit is getting real. It is never a good sign when normally staid climate scientists use words like “mind–blowing” to describe our unfolding climate catastrophe. People in Europe or Northern Ontario or smoke-choked British Columbia do not need a 180-page expert report to appreciate the urgency of the situation, they can just look out their window – assuming they still have one.
