Canada’s aerial firefighting system is too slow, and front-line communities are paying the cost

By John Gradek Recently, as hundreds of fires burned across Northern Ontario and smoke pushed Toronto’s air quality to among the worst on the planet, Canada’s minister of emergency management defended Ottawa’s response and said, in effect, that nothing went wrong. In the same news cycle, Ontario’s 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’ notice. However, a request for pre-agreed 24-hour readiness is, by definition, evidence that such readiness does not currently exist. You don’t …