The province declared a state of emergency on Friday to access temporary authoritative powers to tackle fire-related risks, as out-of-control fires ripped through the Interior, partially shutting some sections of a key highway between the Pacific coast and the rest of Western Canada, and destroying many properties.

“The current situation is grim,” Premier Daniel Eby told reporters on Saturday, saying some 35,000 people were under an evacuation order, and a further 30,000 were under an evacuation alert.

Eby said the province is in dire need of shelter for evacuees and firefighters and ordered a ban on non-essential travel to make more temporary accommodation available. Officials also urged residents to avoid operating drones in the fire zone, saying it could impede firefighting efforts.

The fire is centred around Kelowna, which has a population of about 150,000.

Forest fires are not uncommon in Canada, but the spread of blazes and disruption underscore the severity of its worst wildfire season yet.

About 140,000 square km of land, roughly the size of New York state, have already burned, and government officials project the fire season could stretch into autumn due to widespread drought-like conditions in Canada.

B.C. had experienced strong winds and dry lightning in the past few days due to a cold mass of air interacting with hot air built-up in the sultry summer. That intensified existing forest fires and ignited new ones.

“We are still in some critically dry conditions, and are still expecting difficult days ahead,” said Jerrad Schroeder, deputy fire centre manager at the Kamloops Fire Centre.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau convened a meeting of key ministers and senior officials on Saturday to discuss wildfires. The Incident Response Group, which met for the second time this week, agreed to make “additional resources available” to both B.C. and the Northwest Territories.

Main east-west road under threat

A wildfire burning out of control in Yellowknife had triggered evacuations of almost all of its 20,000 residents this week. One patient died when he was being transferred out of Yellowknife, an N.W.T. minister said on Saturday.

Currently, the fire is not expected to reach city limits by the end of the weekend, officials said, with some rain and cooler temperatures helping to slow its progress.

The TransCanada highway was closed near Chase, around 400 km northeast of Vancouver, and between Hope, 150 km east of Vancouver, and the village of Lytton.

The highway is the main east-west artery used by thousands of motorists and truckers heading to Vancouver, the country’s busiest port.

Kip Lumquist, who works at a gift shop in Craigellachie, B.C., a tourist spot on the highway, said she saw a lot of devastation over the past week.

“It was crazy, we couldn’t see the hills, the mountains, the trees, anything, probably (for) two and a half days,” said Lumquist. “I drive a white vehicle, and when I walked out to get in my car… it’s just black… It’s devastating to the community.”

By Friday, the fire in southern B.C. had grown more than a hundredfold in 24 hours and forced more than 2,400 properties to be evacuated.

The flames have destroyed several structures in West Kelowna and authorities have been warning that the province could potentially face the worst couple of days of the fire season this year.

B.C. currently accounts for over a third of Canada’s 1,062 active fires.

Some 5,000 customers are also without electricity in interior of the province, the main utility said.

The fires have drained local resources and drawn in federal government assistance as well as support from 13 countries. At least four firefighters have died in the line of duty.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; writing by Denny Thomas.

The post B.C. wildfires intensify, evacuation orders double appeared first on Farmtario.

Canadian police made several arrests on Sunday and cleared protesters and vehicles that occupied the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, after a court order on Friday.

The blockade had choked the supply chain for Detroit’s carmakers, forcing Ford, the second-largest U.S. automaker, General Motors and Toyota to cut production.

The bridge carries about US$360 million a day in two-way cargoes — 25 per cent of the value of all U.S.-Canada goods trade.

A Windsor Police official told reporters that 20 to 30 arrests had been made. Police also seized vehicles within the demonstration area, according to an earlier statement.

Police stepped up their presence on Sunday with more than 50 vehicles, including cruisers, buses and an armoured car, as the number of protesters dropped to around 45 from roughly 100 on Saturday. Windsor Police tweeted “there will be zero tolerance for illegal activity.”

In Ottawa, counter-protests started blocking vehicles trying to join the protests on Sunday, with residents losing patience over the three-week-old demonstrations.

In British Columbia, the Pacific highway border crossing at Surrey was temporarily closed on Sunday afternoon, for a second day, by a group of about 200 protesters, according to a Reuters photographer on the scene. A small group of protesters gathered on U.S. side of the border, blocking incoming vehicles.

The “Freedom Convoy” protests, started in Ottawa by protestors opposing a vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border truck drivers, entered its 17th day on Sunday. But it has now morphed into a rallying point against broader COVID-19 curbs, carbon tax and other issues, with people joining in cars, pickup trucks and farm vehicles.

“We’re fed up, we’re tired. We want Ottawa to be boring again,” said an Ottawa resident at a counterprotest in front of the city’s police headquarters.

The Canadian government had discussed whether to invoke special emergency powers to deal with the protests in the capital, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told CBC News on Sunday. Blair said the lack of police enforcement in Ottawa was “inexplicable.”

The rarely used Emergencies Act, in place since 1988, would allow the federal government to override the provinces and authorize special temporary measures to ensure security during national emergencies anywhere in the country.

The act’s predecessor, the War Measures Act, was only used once in peacetime — by Trudeau’s father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau — in 1970.

The premiers of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan said Monday they oppose invoking the Emergencies Act in this case.

“We would prefer that the Emergencies Act not be invoked, but if it is we would very much prefer that it not be applied to Alberta,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney told a news conference.

Strangling bilateral trade, protests have spread to three border points, including in Alberta and Manitoba. Canadian police have said the protests have been partly funded by U.S. supporters, and Ontario froze funds donated via one U.S. platform GiveSendGo on Thursday.

The estimated loss so far from the blockades to the auto industry alone could be as high as US$850 million, based on IHS Markit’s data, which puts the 2021 daily flow in vehicles and parts at US$141.1 million a day.

“Today, our national economic crisis at the Ambassador Bridge came to an end,” Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said in a tweet.

In Europe, a convoy of 150 cars protesting COVID-19 restrictions left Paris on Sunday morning and headed towards Brussels, protesters told Reuters.

— Reporting by Shivani Tanna in Bangalore, Kayla Tarnowski in Windsor and Chris Helgrin in Ottawa; additional reporting by Julio Cesar Chavez and Carlos Osorio in Windsor and Jen Gauthier in Surre; writing by Denny Thomas.

The post Windsor-Detroit trade corridor reopens after police clear protesters appeared first on Farmtario.

OPP secured the area just east of Belleville, Ont., Canadian National Railway Co (CN) said, and CN technicians were inspecting the tracks and signals.

“CN is pleased that the illegal blockade in Tyendinaga has come to an end,” the company said in a statement without saying when rail service would resume.

Tyendinaga Mohawk campaigners barricaded the line in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en from British Columbia, who are seeking to stop construction of a gas pipeline over their land.

Dozens of OPP members descended on the site of the blockade a little after 8 a.m. ET.

Media were kept at a distance. But a group called Real People’s Media, which is affiliated with an indigenous clan, posted a video on Twitter showing police wrestle two men to the ground after they refused to back away from the tracks.

“All demonstrators were given the option of leaving the site or being arrested. Ten people were arrested and face multiple charges. All have been released on conditions,” OPP said in a statement posted on Twitter.

CN obtained an injunction on Feb. 7 against those preventing rail traffic from running along its trunk line near Belleville, but provincial police took their time to enforce it in a bid to ease tensions.

In Ottawa, hundreds of protesters met in front of Parliament and marched through downtown in support of the Wet’suwet’en.

“We worked extremely hard to obtain a peaceful solution to this situation, but we couldn’t allow these barricades to continue,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Parliament.

On Friday, Trudeau demanded aboriginal groups lift the rail blockades amid railroad layoffs and shortages of goods such as propane.

Trudeau has said it is his government’s priority to reconcile with indigenous peoples, who face higher levels of poverty and violence and shorter life expectancies than the national average.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said the government was still seeking dialogue with the Wet’suwet’en and is “even more committed to a peaceful solution.”

The Wet’suwet’en band in British Columbia has been fighting the construction of TC Energy Corp’s planned Coastal GasLink pipeline for a decade, but savvy social media use and years of outreach won the group allies from across Canada.

— Reporting for Reuters by Chris Helgren at Tyendinaga, Ont.; additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa and Allison Lampert in Montreal; writing by Steve Scherer.

The post OPP clear rail blockade, arrest 10 appeared first on Farmtario.