Ontario burns amid Ford’s failing response to climate change

OTTAWA—On July 13, the small Ojibwa community of Namaygoosisagagun First Nation located in a wilderness-bound area 220 km north of Thunder Bay, Ont., was told that they were in no danger from a smouldering fire some distance away.

Despite what was heard from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), Chief Helen Paavola told people to pack a bag and get the boats—the only feasible way of escape—ready anyway.

Within hours, the 25 members of the 60-member community who were there at the time were climbing into their old aluminum motorboats on the edge of Collins Lake as the wildfire roared into their village. “If we had waited any longer, we would have been dead,” one resident later told a reporter.

Photos of the departing boats with a mountain of flames and smoke behind them will forever stand as an emblem of the desperate situation in which First Nations people were left by Premier Doug Ford’s government in the worst summer of forest fires ever in Ontario. 

“My members barely escaped with the clothes on their backs,” Paavola said afterwards. “My community was left to evacuate without notice and support.”

As of this past weekend, nearly 200 wildfires were burning in northern Ontario, with most of them in the northwest. First Nations have borne the brunt of the resulting evacuations. In all, nearly 3,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

With some First Nations complaining they were given no warning of impending fires by the MNR or left to self-evacuate, chiefs are asking for a public inquiry into what they are calling a systemic failure in the province’s response. They are also calling for the “immediate removal” of officials in charge—including Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford. 

Chief Sol Atlookan of Eabametoong First Nation, which was under evacuation, explained that his band was forced to call Ottawa for help after the MNR—thinking the wind was blowing a fire away—left them alone in the face of an advancing conflagration. “Ontario has completely disregarded the safety of Indigenous communities in Northwestern Ontario,” he said. Gull Bay First Nation Chief Wilfred King added: “The lack of communication and evacuation support should horrify all Canadians.”

Don’t count on any inquiries, of course, by Ford who insists his government has managed the wildfire catastrophe well.

Indeed, it wasn’t too long ago that the premier, in an initiative widely seen as an act of climate change denial, spent $30-million on a legal action against then-prime minister Justin Trudeau’s consumer carbon tax to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now, like leaders the world over, Ford is reluctantly confronting the disastrous consequences of rapidly worsening global warming.

Whatever the premier might say about his government’s response to this year’s explosion of wildfires, the record shows his policies and funding decisions have left Ontario unprepared for the heightened risks from climate change.

The government neglected to budget adequately for 2026 despite a devastating fire season a year ago. Last year’s budget for emergency firefighting, set at $135-million, ended up costing $271-million. Nonetheless, Ford only allocated $150-million for 2026-27.

And it’s not as if the government hasn’t been warned. Ontario government studies going back as far as 2005 have raised concerns about inadequate emergency preparedness and responses for natural disasters. In particular, reports by the Ontario auditor general in both 2017 and 2022 said the province’s outdated, neglected, and insufficient policies for wildfire prevention and response basically needed a complete overhaul.

The 2022 report found provincial officials did not track and fully document the reasons for delays in response times of forest fire crews; conducted few after-action reports to improve management capabilities; and provided little funding—especially in communities facing high fire risks—for the FireSmart program meant to help communities increase resilience to wildfires.

And a follow-up report in 2024 found little progress had been made on the auditor general’s recommendations to upgrade Ontario’s forest fire defences.

Northern Ontario chiefs want a full review, including on the MNR’s operational decision-making, emergency co-ordination, communications with First Nations, evacuation planning and execution, resource allocation, and overall provincial preparedness.

In its environmentally backward way, the Ford government has clearly failed to adjust to the mounting threats of global warming. The results in the form of out-of-control forest fires are being felt across the province’s North and indirectly in its smoke-enveloped cities, and beyond across the continent in the form of air-quality warnings.

At home, events of the last few weeks have demonstrated in the most graphic fashion that this scandalous foot-dragging has put Ontarians, and especially First Nations, at tremendous risk in wildfire emergencies worse than anything seen before.

Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times.

The Hill Times