WINNIPEG, Canada—The Canadian province of Manitoba remains in a state of emergency as rapidly moving fires continue to displace thousands of people across huge swathes of land. These are among the most devastating fires that the province has ever seen, and certainly since 1989, when over 25,000 people were evacuated from more than 30 communities.
The city of Flin Flon, with a population of over 5,000, has been entirely evacuated save for firefighters. In the Rural Municipality of Kelsey, Cranberry Portage is undergoing evacuation for the second time in 12 months, in what threatens to become a terrifying annual ritual. Already, there have been civilian deaths near Lac du Bonnet, and the fire area is estimated at ten times the size of Winnipeg.
With as many as 17,000 evacuees arriving in Winnipeg, Thompson, and the Pas, as well as many smaller communities, the close interdependency of urban and remote communities is clearer than ever—as are the acute disparities in water infrastructure, emergency services, and resources characteristic of persistent colonial underdevelopment. Nine First Nations have been evacuated so far, and many more are quickly adapting to accommodate thousands of displaced.
An air quality alert remains in effect for most of the province as the fires emit black and brown carbon, which, in addition to being a serious health hazard, significantly contribute to global heating. The smoke and haze have spread across Central and Eastern Canada as well as the U.S. Midwest and Northeast.
As extreme wildfires gain in range and frequency due to warming, regional ecosystems are caught in an amplifying feedback loop with increasingly deadly outcomes, with Earth’s own regulatory systems behaving as a weapon. Historically, the boreal carbon cycle would have alternated healthy burns, clearing out old vegetation and protecting biodiversity, with lengthy periods of growth and carbon sequestration.
This is the reality of catastrophic climate change, which continues to elude political attribution. To look at the province of Manitoba’s FireView map, one might conclude that these fires were the result of mischief or human error, as the large majority of red zones, denoting an “Out-of-Control” burn, list an unspecified “human” cause.
In an abnormally dry season, it’s expected that campfires and industrial machinery will initiate discrete fires—one of the burns near Flin Flon began in a landfill, for example. And while Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew strongly refuted a reporter’s suggestion that one of the larger fires began at a mining camp, a longer accounting for our climate crisis doesn’t permit such easy cover.
While many headlines fret the impact of wildfires on mining companies—the Tanco lithium mine and warehouse are under serious threat, as well as a Hudbay Minerals service hub in Flin Flon—it remains the case that Canada’s carbon-intensive industries are contributors, and not passively exposed, to the flames.
Fires increasingly threaten remote industrial operations, but with 12% of the Canadian population living in a highly susceptible “wildland–human interface,” these commercial disruptions are as likely to coincide with major displacements and compelling extinction events.
Canada’s contribution to the climate crisis is deceptive, where the emissions from our oil and gas exports elude national accounts. As Canada’s oil production continues to grow, exports accounted for 81% of total crude oil production in 2023. Where the parameters of our “world on fire” are precisely those of the imperialist world system, reporting by country will always misrepresent Canada’s part in a truly planetary crisis, just as it fails to protect us from the regional effects of rising average temperatures.
The fact is that this new reality, in which large swathes of territory across Canada are annually decimated by high-intensity, uncontrollable fires, is the culmination of capitalist development and deep colonial incursions on Indigenous land and cultural practices. It’s well known that the fire-suppressive practices that have characterized large-scale and industrial forestry have created highly combustible conditions.
These approaches privilege harvestable growth and remote property values over sensible, cyclical burns, including time-tested regenerative practices such as Indigenous people have practiced for millennia. Indigenous fire stewardship has been systematically excluded from Canada’s resource management practices for over a century, even as remote First Nations are the most directly impacted by the uncontrollable burns that result. Indigenous communities account for almost half of all evacuations due to wildfire in Canada since 1980.
As author D.G. describes in an article for Rebel Youth, written at the height of the fires that ravaged British Columbia in summer 2023, “the combined factors of the suppression of Indigenous cultural practices and promotion of monocultural forestry contributes to a situation where a single spark spells devastation for entire regions.”
And yet most accounts portray Canada’s corporate stewardship as already sustainable, where logged areas are promptly reforested and large swathes of growth remain untouched. This may be true by industry standards, where the necessity of reforestation doubles as a green indulgence for carbon-emitting capital, but industry-led resource management can only ensure that Canada’s forest remains a monetized tinderbox.
In the United States, President Donald Trump’s Department of Agriculture has announced an executive order that proposes an immediate expansion of timber production as a solution to wildfire disasters. Where this order simultaneously designates an emergency situation across millions of acres of national forest and seeks to streamline timber production, the blurring of commercial and non-commercial harvest is extremely worrisome.
The interference of the profit motive in responsible forestry is a threat for Canada as well. In Alberta, environmental advocacy groups have raised concerns that the province’s new Community Hazardous Fuel Reduction might follow the U.S. path, proposing clear-cutting in the buffer zones around fire-prone areas.
In British Columbia, the practice of post-wildfire salvage logging continues to negatively impact biodiversity, emphasizing the planting of fast-growing conifers as it damages the soil and underbrush. Simply put, logging companies cannot set the pace or priorities of reforestation.
Only last year, Wuskwi Sipihk First Nation sued the province of Manitoba and Louisiana-Pacific, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of mass timber, over a lengthy list of harmful practices in the Duck Mountain region. Overarchingly, the suit alleges that Louisiana-Pacific had been carrying out forestry operations without a Forest Management Plan for almost two decades, and that “Manitoba’s regulatory framework for timber cutting constitutes an unstructured, discretionary regime” that infringes Treaty rights. This follows a 2022 lawsuit against the same parties by Minegoziibe Anishinabe, similarly concerning a failure of the Manitoba government to consult on commercial forestry.
As of June 2024, both First Nations (as well as Sapotaweyak Cree Nation) have signed a memorandum of understanding with the province pledging cooperation on a long-term forestry plan in the Swan Valley. It remains to be seen what transpires on the other side of the current five-year Forest Management Plan, particularly given the susceptibility of timber markets to tariffs, but Manitoba’s practices so far paint a dismal picture.
These are only some of several areas of concern stemming from a corporate-led and unsustainable approach to resource development. There is no establishing direct causality where ecological catastrophes like climate change are concerned, insofar as colonial and monocultural forestry operate within a carbon-intensive system of life from which our corporate governments cannot be dissuaded.
Oil and gas companies continue to offer far-fetched and potentially disastrous alternatives that only kick the can down the road, such as the massive carbon capture and storage projects at Cold Lake and throughout northeastern Alberta. These, too, face opposition from First Nations, who are being forced to assume the risks associated with this energy-intensive and controversial means of mitigation on behalf of industry.
(Cold Lake First Nation is already confronting the compounding environmental impacts of fighter jet training at the nearby Canadian Forces Base, and it’s equally worth noting that even though the military is the most carbon-intensive department of the federal government, its emissions are not included in Canada’s reduction targets.)
These wildfires are the direct outcome of industry’s stranglehold on climate policy and corporate practices, which have continually produced the hottest temperatures on record. As Manitoba’s summers are increasingly characterized by drought-like conditions, those very forests that ought to be a precious reserve in the fight against climate change threaten to ignite with yearly frequency.
As devastating wildfires occur with greater frequency, the practices of daily solidarity that we develop to accommodate domestic climate refugees and to repair unprecedented damage to communities must be transformed into a properly political, long-term climate strategy—one based in Indigenous knowledge rather than assent, and in responsible science rather than economic coercion.
People’s Voice
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR
