People of Northwestern Ontario have witnessed one of the worst fire seasons in years past.
This year alone a total of 1154 forest fires have been discovered in Ontario this fire season, compared to the 581 fires discovered last year.
Northwestern Ontario native and Kenora Liberal candidate David Bruno have seen the effects forest fires have had on the region, and if elected wants to make add more firefighting resources to the region.
“There are things that the government has put in place in order to mitigate that, and that’s not the solution. One of these points of mitigation is to hire 1000 more firefighters, which is more jobs for Canadians and a new workforce in order to protect our forests so that these disasters don’t get out of control,” said Bruno
“There are other things that we can do. We can take Finland for example and how they’re extremely good at forest management and I want to help apply that here as well. There are things that we can do, the government is working on it, it is not blind to them and we’re the only ones with a clear climate change agenda,” added Bruno
The Finnish forest management strategy is to spot and contain the fires before they grow in size with the addition of fire watchtowers, the addition of aerial guarding routes, and continuous thinning of their forests.
This effort has caused the country to have small, low-intensity surface fires that do not escalate into larger out-of-control fires.
Bruno's climate change agenda if elected is to promote the forestry industry in NWO by removing single-use plastics and replacing them with wood products that can be made in the Northwest region of Ontario.
Bruno’s campaign continues this weekend as he has announced his Liberal Campaign Launch that will take place at 12:00 p.m. on Saturday, August 28, 2021, at 130 Main Street, Kenora. Minister of Health Patty Hadju will be in attendance for the launch as well.