This is Vanese Ferguson with Coffee Talk. Smoke from hundreds of wildfires burning across northern Ontario has blanketed large parts of Canada and drifted deep into the United States this week, triggering air-quality warnings from the Midwest to the East Coast and threats of tariffs from the U.S. President, who argues Canada is not doing enough to control and prevent the fires. Which makes me wonder whether the same criticism could be applied, say, when California is engulfed in wildfire, as it is want to do, and that smoke drifts south into Mexico. There is a fake news release being shared online, totally tongue in cheek, from the Department of Forest Tidiness and Transboundary Fresh Air which says every able bodied Canadian will be drafted and designated to help remove debris from the forest which it says consists of 347 million hectares. According to Natural Resources Canada – the real ministry – not a fake one – Canada is home to approximately 369 million hectares (ha) of forest which covers about 40 per cent of the nation’s total land area and makes up nearly nine per cent of the world’s entire forested land. In Saskatchewan at least this year the majority of forest fires have been started by lightning, not human started. Don’t get me wrong – having several key pieces of Saskatchewan forest fighting capability grounded doesn’t reflect well on our committment to deal with wildfire but lets face it, fires starting in remote areas aren’t necesarily detected asap. This fake news release calls it the Forest Undergrowth Clearing and Kindling Operation for Foreign Friends. I’ll leave you to determine the acronym which probably heartfelt by many Canadians.