Alright, folks, welcome to this little segment I like to call “New Rule: Don’t Spray It If You’re Gonna Burn It.” Up there in the Great White North, where the forests are vast, the winters are brutal, and apparently, the fire risks are being engineered by the very geniuses supposed to protect them. That’s right, we’re talking about how some provinces in Canada—I’m looking at you, British Columbia and Ontario—are dousing their woodlands with glyphosate, that weed-killing wonder chemical from the fine folks at Monsanto, now Bayer, because nothing says “environmental stewardship” like turning diverse ecosystems into flammable matchsticks.Let me set the scene:
Picture this. You’ve got these industrial forestry outfits, backed by provincial regs that basically mandate they turn logged areas into conifer cash cows. We’re talking pine, spruce, Douglas fir—the trees that make lumber barons salivate. But to do that, they gotta wipe out the competition: those pesky broadleaf trees like aspen, birch, alder, and maple. You know, the ones that actually help prevent wildfires from turning into Armageddon? Yeah, those. So, they load up helicopters and ground crews with glyphosate and spray the hell out of thousands of hectares every year. In B.C. alone, in one year, they hit 12,812 hectares, and over three years, it was more than 42,531. Nationally, from 1990 to 2020, they’ve planted conifers on nearly 12 million hectares versus a pathetic 61,000 for deciduous trees. That’s a 193:1 ratio, people! It’s like they’re building a monoculture army, but instead of defending against invaders, it’s inviting the flames right in.
Now, why is this a problem? Because glyphosate doesn’t just politely ask the broadleaves to leave; it kills them dead, dries them out, and leaves a carpet of crispy fuel on the forest floor. Those deciduous trees? They’re nature’s firebreaks—higher moisture, smoother bark, cooler understories. Aspen groves are basically the “asbestos forests” of the wild; fires hit them and fizzle out like a bad date. But conifers? Oh, they burn like they’re auditioning for a Michael Bay movie—5 to 10 times faster, thanks to that resinous sap, low branches, and bark that catches like tinder. Critics, including ecologists like Lori Daniels and activists like James Steidle, are screaming from the rooftops: This is turning forests into tinderboxes! And guess what? The data backs it up. B.C.’s own Ministry of Forests admitted in a 2019 report that dead stems from glyphosate are a high fire hazard. Their Forest Practices Board in 2023 linked this crap to bigger, badder wildfires, like the monsters in 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2023, when nearly 19 million hectares went up in smoke—way above the average.
But here’s where it gets even stupider, because it’s not just the spraying—it’s the whole damn system of playing God with the forest while ignoring the basics. Take fire suppression: For decades, these clowns have been stomping out every little blaze like it’s a cigarette butt at a gas station, leading to “forests full of deadfall, which is basically kindling.” That’s straight from the Globe and Mail editorial board, who ripped into Canada’s “decades of decisions around fire suppression, logging and replanting, made worse by the punch of climate change, although we are in an overall cooling phase, we are seeing a blip in a heat cycle.”
Overgrown and dense with excess deadwood and undergrowth? That’s what happens when you suppress fires reactively instead of getting proactive with controlled burns. But no, they’d rather let the forests turn into “overgrown tinderboxes” because, hey, who needs prescribed burns when you can blame climate change and call it a day?
And don’t get me started on the media and the eco-zealots pushing this catastrophe narrative. Ecologist Jim Steele nails it: “I do not feel the media is educating us about the science that affects fires. They’re just trying to push a catastrophe narrative that’s been going on way too long.”
Yeah, climate change is real—longer dry spells, warmer temps cranking up lightning strikes—but it’s amplified by boneheaded management. Mark Heathcott, former controlled burns coordinator for Parks Canada, calls out the hypocrisy: “A lot of lip service is paid to it but very few agencies do it. People don’t understand the benefit of fire.”
Green ideologies and chronic underfunding? That’s the real arson here, folks. Instead of embracing proactive stuff like regular burns to clear out the junk and build resilient forests, they’re spraying poison, planting monocultures, and suppressing fires until everything’s a powder keg waiting for a spark.
New rule: If you’re gonna manage forests, don’t turn them into death traps. Ban the glyphosate genocide on broadleaves, start burning smart, and stop pretending climate change is the only villain when your own policies are handing it the matches. Canada, you’re better than this—or at least, you used to be before the lumber lobby and lazy bureaucrats turned your wilderness into a barbecue pit. Wake up before the whole country goes up in flames!
marksdeepthoughts.ca 
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