By John Gradek Recently, as hundreds of fires burned across Northern Ontario and smoke pushed Toronto\u2019s air quality to among the worst on the planet, Canada\u2019s minister of emergency management defended Ottawa\u2019s response and said, in effect, that nothing went wrong. In the same news cycle, Ontario\u2019s minister of emergency preparedness sent a letter asking the federal government to guarantee that aircraft and crews could be deployed on less than 24 hours\u2019 notice. However, a request for pre-agreed 24-hour readiness is, by definition, evidence that such readiness does not currently exist. You don\u2019t ask for something you already have. In early June, I wrote in The Conversation Canada that Canada\u2019s decision to lease a fleet of 10 firefighting aircraft for the 2026 wildfire season was a useful beginning but not… <\/p>\n
By John Gradek Recently, as hundreds of fires burned across Northern Ontario and smoke pushed Toronto\u2019s air quality to among the worst on the planet, Canada\u2019s minister of emergency management defended Ottawa\u2019s response and said, in effect, that nothing went wrong. In the same news cycle, Ontario\u2019s minister of emergency preparedness sent a letter asking the federal government to guarantee that aircraft and crews could be deployed on less than 24 hours\u2019 notice. However, a request for pre-agreed 24-hour readiness is, by definition, evidence that such readiness does not currently exist. You don\u2019t ask for something you already have. In early June, I wrote in The Conversation Canada that Canada\u2019s decision to lease a fleet of 10 firefighting aircraft for the 2026 wildfire season was a useful beginning but not... <\/p>\n