Canada’s wildfire strategy comes with a price tag—sovereignty always does
OTTAWA—Wildfire season is once again driving headlines and dominating public discourse. From Ontario to the British Columbia Interior, fires have destroyed public and private property, disrupting livelihoods and eliminating access to community infrastructure.
Extreme weather events are no longer an anomaly on the summer calendar. In 2021, the world watched with horror as the Village of Lytton, B.C., was engulfed in flames in just a few hours after temperatures reached a record high of 49.6 C—taking two lives and levelling the town. Excluding the costs of evacuation and firefighting, provincial, federal, and insurance costs are estimated to be more than $200-million to support debris removal and the rebuilding process.
The village is still working to rebuild, and many residents remain displaced years later. Just last month, Lytton was again placed under an evacuation warning due to the threat of nearby fires. While the notice was later rescinded, it is a reminder of how precarious life is in certain parts of the country.
Due to the nature of Canada’s urban boundaries, the largest metropolitan cities tend to find themselves geographically removed from the physicality of wildfires burning across their respective provinces. And yet, they, too, bear the consequences of wildfire season. Smoke knows no physical boundaries, leading to diminished air quality that has blackened skies and limited the mobility of some Canadians during the season.
United States President Donald Trump has used air quality as a cudgel in his latest rhetoric against the federal government, threatening greater tariffs on the Canadian economy. Other prominent border-city Republicans, too, have penned a letter to the prime minister stating they are “done accepting apologies in place of action,” and have gone so far as to float the idea of imposing a U.S. solution to the issues.
Even in the event that Trump leaves office without making good on his proposed tariff threats, it’s unlikely that the issue of jurisdiction isn’t relitigated by future administrations—irrespective of party affiliation. Canada’s political leaders in turn must recognize the gravity of this moment, if not for domestic reasons, then for international ones.
In a roundabout way, Trump’s relentless attacks on NATO offer Canada a potential avenue to bolster its wildfire defences. By forcing allies to not only meet, but exceed previous NATO spending targets on the road toward a five-per-cent benchmark, there is an opportunity to leverage expanded military budgets for domestic crisis management.
Investing in the dual-use technology that protects public safety while safeguarding critical infrastructure is essential to arming communities against immediate threats. The Carney government appears to recognize this potential, as demonstrated by its recent conditional sale of surplus military planes to a B.C.-based company that will retrofit them for emergency response capabilities.
Securing the right equipment is only the first step in tackling a crisis of this scale; the second is sustained, year-round intervention by provincial and federal governments to protect critical infrastructure, human life, and property. Decision-makers can no longer respond to these events in isolation, nor can they treat wildfire management strictly as a domestic issue.
Changing how federal and provincial governments handle wildfires is no small feat. It will be expensive, and will require serious political will to reframe wildfire management from a localized provincial concern into a matter of vital national interest. But as cost concerns mount, political leaders must ask a harder question: what happens if nothing changes, not just in terms of lost livelihoods, but also in damage to Canada’s reputation as a nation capable of defending its territories from internal and external threats?
Josie Sabatino is a vice-president at Summa Strategies. Prior to joining Summa, Sabatino spent nearly a decade as a Conservative political staffer, providing communications and issues management advice to Members of Parliament and the leader of the official opposition.
The Hill Times