The real story about Doug Ford and the northern Ontario wildfires isn’t the loud press conference he’s holding twice a day in Thunder Bay. It’s the 72 hours before anyone thought to bring him a microphone.

Let’s go back a couple of weeks. Namaygoosisagagun (also known as Collins) First Nation Chief Helen Paavola says she called the Ministry of Natural Resources for evacuation help before the fire destroyed her community on Monday, June 13. Nobody came. Whitesand First Nation ended up trying to protect its own infrastructure because, as the Chiefs of Ontario put it, there was “a lack of communication from government officials” about how to even declare a state of emergency. And residents of at least one evacuated community went back in against orders because they didn’t trust the province was committing enough to protect their homes in the first place.

Read on…