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The cause of the McDougall Creek Wildfire in and around West Kelowna is still under investigation.

One can only hope that investigators are not looking to lasers from space, evil firefighters or god for the reason why more than 180 properties were damaged over the past week.

But those are some of the theories running around social media, not only for the McDougall Creek fire but other fires in Canada and around the world.

“The so-called firemen are setting fires in Sorrento,” one woman tried to comment on an iNFOnews.ca story.

“Genocide is going on,” the woman posted. “That’s how China got 15-minute cities and aborted sisters and that’s now BC. China owns BC.”

In June, Art Lucier, head of the Kelowna-based Harvest Ministries International, had a rally in Quebec cancelled by the provincial government.

He posted a video suggesting that cancellation triggered fires across southern Quebec.

READ MORE: Kelowna minister sues Quebec government, hints canceling his 'freedom' rally triggered wildfires

At about the same time, Rolling Stone Magazine reported that Stew Peters proclaimed it was statistically impossible for all those fires to start at the same time and, therefore, the government used “directed energy weapons” (lasers) from space to start the fires.

Peters is the same man who produced a film claiming COVID was caused by synthetic snake venom.

CBC reported last week that various posts on X (formerly Twitter) claimed the deadly Maui fire that killed more than 100 people was started by similar light beams.

One video purporting to show such a laser, CBC reported, got 11.9 million views and 18,000 repost. Turns out it was actually a video of a transformer explosion in Chile in May.

So, what’s going on here?

It is true that firefighters did light some fires near Sorrento, since back burns are a common firefighting practice. The 15-minute city and China don’t seem to have any role to play in that Bush Creek Wildfire.

At the bottom of these claims seems to be the transformation from a society that once sought control and certainty in their lives through a heavy reliance on information from radio, TV and newspapers to one that primarily consumes its news on social media, where experts and reliable sources are mixed with uninformed opinions and conspiracy theorists.

Making matters even worse is the reality that Meta has now blocked media outlets from posting their stories on Facebook.

“If you cut people off from information, as Meta has done, they’re going to look for other ways to achieve control and certainty and one of those ways is going to be conspiracy theories,” Sean Holman, professor of climate and environmental journalism at the University of Victoria, told iNFOnews.ca. “If you don’t know what is going on, you’re going to make your best educated guess as to what is going on and some of those educated guesses will be profoundly uneducated and informed by the noxious politics that is polluting our public square.”

Certainly, conspiracy theories and “noxious politics” have been around a lot longer than Meta’s spat with the federal government over whether it will pay news media companies to run their stories.

But, given the fact that BC and Canada are in their worst wildfire season ever and there are floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters all over the world, the time is ripe for such theories to really take hold.

“That’s why the news media is so important during times of disaster because information allows us to make these decisions that permit us to have control, or at least a measure of control, over otherwise uncontrollable situations,” Holman said.

But the fracturing of media through platforms like Facebook means people get their news “spoonfed” to them through algorithms and “friends.” And it's not just conspiracy theories, wrong information created panic for many people. During evacuations, persistent posts of highway closures created chaos, despite the fact the highway was never closed. "Scanner" social media reports and others listening to firefighters on public websites — which have always been notoriously unreliable — were reported verbatim, causing even more unneeded panic and concern.

Some residents in Kelowna's Mission — far from any danger or even evacuation alerts — posted publicly wondering how they'd get out of the city. 

READ MORE: Group calls for Facebook, Instagram boycott on Aug. 23 and 24

It's not just locals that have misperceptions.

A poll by Nature Canada and the Natural Resources Defence Council found that almost half of Conservatives supporters and nearly two-thirds of those who support the People's Party of Canada said arsonists are the main reason so much forest burned this year, which is a record-breaking wildfire year.

According to the Government of BC, 60% of fires in the province are caused by lightning. Right now, out of 374 active wildfires, 84% are believed to be caused by lighting, including the Bush Creek East Wildfire in the Shuswap and the Donnie Creek Wildfire north of Fort St. John which, at more than 580,000 ha, is the largest wildfire in BC history. Both are still burning out of control, Donnie Creek since mid-May.

READ MORE: Canadians unified on forest protection although wildfire cause divisive: poll

The arson response may have been influenced by an Infowars video in July 16 (that has now been taken down by Meta) saying that the RCMP had determined dozens of wildfires were started by arsonists this year, according to an article in PolitiFact.

The Nature Canada poll was conducted between July 28 and Aug. 9.

That video, according to PolitiFact, did cite several cases of arson but the vast majority of those were not wildfires and none were wildfires this year. It also pointed out that the RCMP does not determine the cause of wildfires.

“You have Facebook where the news of disaster across the country comes in anecdotal and personal snippets, if at all,” Holman said. “On Facebook there’s bush fires among the people you know but the larger picture often seems to be lost.”

That larger picture being that the entire country is, or in recent months has been, on fire.

“Conspiracy theories are a way of achieving control and certainty because it provides an easy answer to an otherwise complex problem,” Holman said.

“We could be turning towards a very scary world where we look to extremist ideologies and theologies for certainty and control and those ideologies and those theologies don’t care about the facts. They don’t care about the evidence. They only care about providing cheap control and cheap certainty against a backdrop of a global people who are going to be frightened every day of their lives.”

In the short term, BC Premier David Eby and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are right in calling on Meta to back off during the current wildfire crisis in BC, he argued.

READ MORE: B.C.'s premier urges Meta to allow news sharing in B.C. amid wildfire crisis

The challenge with that is, the next climate disaster in Canada is only months – if not weeks – away.

“The future is going to be far worse than this,” Holman said. “This is an echo of the future, a ripple of the wave that is yet to come.”

He believes the fight between Meta and the federal government will be resolved, in time. But by then, conspiracy theories will have more time to take root and flourish so there may be even less appetite for returning to the mainstream media on Facebook.

(Of course, readers can always go directly to news sites like infotel.ca.)

Already, one Facebook group called Shuswap Everything Friendly Goes has changed its approach to membership and seems to be trying to take on the role of mainstream media.

"Times are tough right now so some of the rules are changing here, for the time being," the post to the private group that claims 34,400 members says. "As we all know there is no news outlets on Meta/Facebook so we are being the news for the community. News reporters will not be allowed in the group to keep us local!"

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