On Oct. 14 we noted that after a bunch of climate-change panic hype over a number of forest fires in Canada in July, by October the cumulative burned area had fallen “well below the ten-year average for this time of year”. Just a day later, the Canadian federal government issued an “update” that instead attempted to portray the place as a constant blaze. It started “Wildfire seasons are now longer, more complex and more challenging than in the past, and 2026 was no exception.” Well, except for ending up below the decadal average. And while habitually governments fib that they’re managing a file better than they are, here they fib that things are out of control because they want to be in charge of the weather and to get unlimited power in that regard they have to persuade you that only they can save you from things never before seen, like “complex” fires. And fire seasons that are fairly quiet except for the yelling.

The press release is a masterpiece of misinformation. It conceded “a slower than average start to the season” before doing a happy dance that things got worse. As in “wildfire activity, driven by periods of prolonged heat, drought and low humidity, became significant in several regions across the country.” Perhaps because with over 300 billion trees Canada always has fires? And indeed had much worse ones two hundred years ago and more?

Ah but nay. Instead they pick cherries with:

“Wildfire activity was also extremely intense in the Northwest Territories, which accounted for over one third of the total area burned in Canada in 2026.”

Is it unusual? That territory is just over 11% of the Canadian land mass, and particularly inaccessible. But remember that just as half of all drivers are below average (at least), so wildfires are not evenly distributed geographically just as they are not evenly distributed temporally. Some might be happy that other places burned less. But they try to make it sound bad by leaving out the comparative data:

“Overall, Canada had more than 5,400 wildfires this year that burned approximately 4.5 million hectares.”

So how bad is it? Well, not very:

“While the situation on the ground has improved significantly, there are several wildfires still active across the country.”

Fully several? We are all going to fry.

It being 2026 in Canada, they work in the obligatory indigenous references including:

“As a result, since April 2026, wildfires forced more than 33,750 people from their homes, including more than 8,800 people from First Nations communities.”

Other minorities don’t even get mentioned nor do women. But they were presumably hardest hit.

Being utter weasels, they don’t mention climate though the implication of that “longer, more complex and more challenging” is clear that something has changed. Which they reinforce by wrapping up with “As Canada continues to face longer and more complex wildfire seasons” without offering any evidence that they are either longer or more “complex”, whatever a “complex” fire season might be. Different coloured flames, perhaps? Fire in the sky as well as underground? Fires that are cold as well as hot?

Nobody reading that press release would possibly get the message that as fires are bad it is nice that in 2026 Canada had a relatively quiet season. Which is, oddly, the truth, despite the incompetence as well as confusion of our federal government on the file.