Hundreds of wildfires are straining local resources and reigniting the discussion on the need for a national firefighting service in Canada. Currently, emergency response management is handled by provinces and territories, but calls for a more proactive federal process have intensified. Richard Cannings, a member of Parliament with the New Democratic Party, called for an emergency debate in Parliament to address the wildfire crisis.
Canada’s system typically relies on resource-sharing among provinces and territories. But the current widespread fires have made that impossible and led to shortfalls. The country has sought support from international firefighters, including those from the United States, South Africa, France, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the Canadian Armed Forces.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed gratitude on Twitter for the additional help from the United States and addressed the situation with President Biden. Although Parks Canada, the national parks service, has a firefighting department, the country has never had a national firefighting force, according to Brian Wiens, managing director of Canada Wildfire, an organization for provincial agencies and research institutions to study fire management policy.
Wiens said that when the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center was established 40 years ago, the founding assumption was that “you wouldn’t have everybody in crisis at once.” However, this is precisely what is happening now which is affecting resources, and Canada is struggling to keep up. To improve the existing system, Kovacs suggests prioritizing increasing capacity by funding more firefighters or establishing wildfire building codes identical to those in California.
Paul Kovacs, executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, opposes changing the current system to a nationally coordinated system. He feels that this is a good and effective system that normally works every year, and although it is being stretched this year due to the ongoing crisis, as an expert, he sees no reason to change it. Meanwhile, Bill Blair, public safety minister, maintains that America’s firefighting resources are assisting Canadians to meet some of its needs. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center has spontaneously organized the movement of firefighters, equipment, and resources from the federal government to provinces. Blair said that the agency was recently able to source six water bombers from Montana to be dispatched to Nova Scotia, and when things got better there, the bombers were redeployed to Quebec.
