Montreal – As Canada hurtles towards its worst wildfire season in history, a conspiracy theory has taken off online claiming environmentalists intentionally set some of the blazes. “I bet a good portion of the wildfires raging across the country were started by green terrorists who want to give their climate change campaign a little boost,” Maxime Bernier, a former foreign minister-turned fringe party leader, said in a June 5 tweet. …On TikTok, a video already viewed almost 20,000 times, claims the fires in Nova Scotia were set “on purpose to push a climate change agenda.” One article speculates that since 90 percent of Alberta’s fires could be “human-caused,” there is a possibility that “ecoterrorists” may be behind them. …As wildfires spread in Quebec, some questioned how all the blazes could have started on the same day. One Facebook video with more than one million views blames “a terrorist attack” for the flames.

Additional coverage in the Toronto Star, by Vinay Menon: Blame Canada? Why the wildfires are fuelling some … pretty wild conspiracy theories