OTTAWA, ON – Together, Canada and Ontario are working to protect and conserve biodiversity, habitat, and species at risk in Ontario by expanding parks that protect habitat for caribou, bolstering science, and investing in the conservation and recovery of caribou. The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, and the Honourable Andrea Khanjin, Ontario Minister of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, announced the following progress toward caribou conservation: an investment of $29 million for conservation measures in Ontario; Release of the 2022–2023 Annual Report for the federal–provincial Conservation Agreement; New provincial monitoring data; New Science Assessment Report; and The expansion of provincial parks benefitting Boreal Caribou. Over the coming years, the Government of Canada looks forward to reviewing Ontario’s progress as momentum builds on implementing the many conservation measures in the federal–provincial Agreement.

Wildfires have already started to burn across Canada this year, forcing thousands to evacuate in communities like Fort McMurray, Alta., and Fort Nelson, B.C. One expert said he’s worried the backbone of Canada’s efforts to fight the flames may struggle if the country experiences a summer like 2023, which was the worst wildfire season ever recorded, when 18.5 million hectares of land burned. “The water tanker fleet is old,” said John Gradek, an aviation industry expert and lecturer at McGill University’s aviation management program. “There are no similar pieces of equipment being built.” Global News asked every provincial and territorial government about the number, type and age of their firefighting aircraft. Some governments own and operate their own large fleets, while others contract a smaller number of aircraft for the season. Gradek told Global News the CL-215s and 415s were Canada’s “mainstays” for decades of water bombing and some may be around 50 years old.

Shortly before sunset on Friday, residents of Canada’s Yukon territory discovered their connection to the outside world had vanished. Internet access had gone. Mobile phones showed no signal. Landlines had failed. Chaos quickly set in. Electronic payments couldn’t be processed. In Whitehorse, the capital, most ATMs couldn’t function and the few that did were quickly drained of cash from panicked residents. City officials warned that the ability to call police, ambulance or fire services was non-existent. Across much of Canada’s north-west reaches, a similar spectacle played out after a pair of wildfires damaged two key fibre optic cables. The telecoms company hit by the outage blamed a “perfect storm” of events for the loss. But experts say the total loss of communications was a “cascading disaster” that exposes the broader weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the bare-bones infrastructure of the Canadian north. …In recent years, companies such as Starlink.

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, and Scott Pearce, the President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), announced that FCM’s Green Municipal Fund (GMF) will play an important role in Canada’s ambitious goal to plant two billion trees and contribute to climate action. This will be achieved through Growing Canada’s Community Canopies (GCCC), a new $291-million initiative designed to be implemented in and around communities across the country, both large and small. GCCC will work to ensure that the right type of tree is planted in the right places so that communities across Canada can grow, manage and protect their tree canopies, which will maximize the environmental and social benefits provided by trees, while also ensuring that these trees survive long-term. This funding will also support community-wide planting activities, including planting in parks.