The Economic Impact of the Wildfires with Pedro Antunes and Derek Nighbor

The year 2023 has already marked itself as Canada’s worst forest fire season in history, and it’s only July. A glance at today’s fire map reveals almost every province battling blazes that have spiraled out of control.

In this episode, our guests Pedro Antunes, Chief Economist of The Conference Board of Canada and Derek Nighbor, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Forest Products Association of Canada, discuss the impacts on people, the economy and communities of the forest fires we’ve seen so far this year.  We discuss how climate change is making forestry management a more critical task and how the increased risks we’re seeing from fires and other climate related issues are further complicating the task of economists who are mapping out the direction of our economy.

We discuss what else can be done to prevent forest fires from getting out of control in the future. We also explore whether record breaking forest fires, and the smoke that they bring to communities across Canada, is something that we should be preparing for in the future.

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