The level of freakout in Ottawa over the wildfire-smoke-filled skies is… absolutely not astonishing. But the amount of government-growth-inclined progressives to “not let a good crisis go to waste,” is… also not astonishing.
Yesterday I read that (no doubt in light of the smoke affecting the elites in sacred Ottawa — dear God or whatever, now it’s serious!), the federal progressives of the Liberal Party variety were ready to launch a whole ‘nother branch of government — yes, yet another one — to deal with fires and floods. Now that Ottawa is smoky. Because Canada doesn’t have enough government or bureaucracy — or taxation — yet. None of the 500 government agencies or departments — not even the Ministry of Public Safety — can do more than what they’re doing (or “doing”) now. Smokey the Bear, hold my beer!
As if on cue, here’s the Liberals’ state-owned CBC division reporting exactly what the Liberals told them to report and scant little else (because that’s what they do), which is that yet another government agency is under discussion (and note that it’s filed under the state-owned CBC’s heading “Politics”):
City “News” never misses its own cues as it joins in exploiting the crisis to help promote the latest Big Progressive Government agenda rather than question the hell out of it as they’re supposed to do as journalists:
Wherein I of course had to blurt out…
Speaking of government control over utterly all aspects of life in Canada, it took hardly any time at all for Jagmeet Singh and his very own NDP socialist squad to try to make bank on the situation, or at least use it as a political springboard, as he does most every situation including the ever-present crisis called “the Cons are winning!!*!%!!#” and “the ‘ultra-wealthy’ are making money we must stop them ahhhh!*@!!#!” :
But lose the dogma and grab some objectivity and perspective and maybe a fresh approach and you get the likes of this (this is a free WSJ link):
There is a lot of good writing from climate realists about the notion of diverting more time and money to mitigating the impacts of any earthly changes, rather than simply trying to stop earthly changes from happening. And I think most of that work and investment is best left to the free market. But Canada has gone the wrong way. And as the progressives yearn for government to grow, because that is literally the point, they will find any excuse to make that happen.
Governments poorly manage the forest, and then as if by the magic of nature, the forests burn easily. Then govs require more gov resources to put them out. Coincidentally the fires also cause more pollution and CO2 than all the CO2 that the govs have tried to reduce by prior taxation of everything including cars and gas and “carbon,” and by heaping piles of “climate” regulation at business and industry and residents too; but, see, maybe that’s another opportunity because now, still more government and more resources and more rules and higher carbon taxes are required because of all that smoke! Rinse and repeat.
As the progressives say, this isn’t “sustainable.”
It’s more a management problem than a resource problem, and more a political/ideological problem than anything else, as are so many things in Canada and in government and the “news” media alike.
More government isn’t the answer.
UPDATE June 9, 2023:
Canada’s burning because of bad forest policy, not climate change | National Post
UPDATE June 15, 2023:
The truth about forest fires goes up in climate-change smoke | Financial Post
Bonus humor:
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