Canada’s $6.9B Wildfire Is the Size of Delaware and Still Out of Control

Inviting a totally foreign country in which you're in a) fighting a proxy war with in yet another part of the world; and b) fighting a passive battle for northern sovereignty/control with seems like an incredibly stupid idea.

Canada has many forest fires on the go every year and are generally only worth fighting when they threaten communities. Forests are meant to burn. I have friends who work in emergency fire fighting in Saskatchewan and they have not been deployed to the Northern fires because it is not the problem the media is making it out to be!

I still think Edmonton is cooler, and would never live in Calgary, cuz, well, I'm from Edmonton area... :-) But it seems a little less cowboy these days.

Still sprawly, though.

Drought conditions and the heat traps that are cities prevent proper rainfall which stops them and changes we've made to the landscape can prevent burn outs which also make fires last longer.

And more importantly while forest fires are natural it doesn't mean it's good, we had at least one fire related extinction event, and even considerably smaller scale fires can be disastrous to humans so while it's true that to some extent the policy is let it burn in this case it's not longer really the case.

And while I would also agree that Canada is in a political muck with Russia it doesn't make sense to deny their help, Israel accepted Turkey's help to combat forest fire when their relationship was arguably at the lowest point shortly after the flotilla incident. Governments should know when it's a good time to put a halt to their differences and emergencies are as good as an excuse as any.

P.S. With forests being natural carbon traps climate change is now just as important factor as threat to communities and livelihood with the amount of CO2 were putting into the atmosphere we might not be able to longer afford for forest fires to take their natural course if we actually want to start reversing some of the changes we've made. This isn't some clear cut case, and in this case it seems that Canada does take help from certain countries but for some reason refrains taking it from others and in such cases politics should really be the last thing on your mind.

That's blatantly incorrect.

- The US unemployment rate is 9.7% on the U6. The Canadian equivalent would be closer to 13%-15% [1] (the Canadian R8 is not the equivalent of the U6). That's not a marginal difference, it's a significant difference. The US U6 rate peaked at near 18%, six years ago. A 50% reduction is a very obvious signal that the recession ended a long time ago. The U6 rate before the recession in 2006 was 9%. If the recession had never ended, the U6 rate would still be extremely elevated.

- The US has gained a massive number of full-time jobs since the recession. That metric is at a record high. [2a] [2b]

- Total US employment is six million higher than the peak before the recession.

- US manufacturing output is at all-time highs and has climbed dramatically since the recession [3]. Total construction spending on manufacturing in the US is three to four times higher than it was in 2002-2006. None of that would be happening if the US were in recession.

- Real hourly earnings have been expanding since 2012-2013 [4]. While simultaneously inflation has been tame by most measures. Hourly earnings are about 7% higher than 2006. If the recession hadn't ended, that would not be the case.

- Government tax revenue, which is highly dependent on income taxes, is at record highs.

- The labor force participation rate has been stable for three years, despite millions of boomers retiring.

- In terms of income vs debt, US households have dramatically de-leveraged from the debt highs leading up to the great recession, and are in far better shape than Canadian households [5a] [5b].

- US household median disposable incomes are among the highest on earth. That metric obviously would not be doing so well if the US had spent the last ten years in a recession. US GDP per capita is ranked #5 out of all nations, 25% higher than Canada - an excellent sign of high economic productivity. [6]

So US economic productivity is extremely high, US unemployment has fallen by 50% back to a historically healthy level, full-time employment is at record highs, wage growth has been outpacing inflation for years, household income to debt ratios have improved dramatically, household balance sheets have never been higher, manufacturing output is at record highs. Uh, so what's the problem exactly?

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ec...

[2a] http://i.imgur.com/ERDhQLZ.jpg

[2b] http://i.imgur.com/zCC6ytm.png

[3] https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/OUTMS

[4] http://i.imgur.com/5Q7c27x.jpg

[5a] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ca...

[5b] http://business.financialpost.com/investing/outlook-2016/can...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28no...