Another relentless wildfire season across Canada has led to calls for the federal government to change how it reacts and responds, including organizing resources and becoming more proactive with fire mitigation strategies.

Newfoundland and Labrador

Canada has experienced severe wildfires across multiple provinces, forcing evacuations and causing widespread destruction. Many residents and experts believe the country's wildfire response needs improvement, with calls for a more organized and proactive federal approach.

Suggestions include establishing a National Fire Administration to coordinate resources, investing in prevention and mitigation, and creating a year-round firefighting force. Experts also highlight the value of Indigenous knowledge in fire management. While implementing such changes may be challenging due to the country's size, there is growing consensus that Canada must rethink its wildfire strategy.

What a federal wildfire strategy could look like

From B.C. to Manitoba to Newfoundland wildfires this summer have been relentless driving countless Canadians from their homes and wreaking havoc. Situation is catastrophic. Some of the towns are totally wiped out. Eugene Howell was forced to flee his hometown of Northern Bay, Newfoundland this past weekend as flames moved closer. When the order came down to leave, his priority was keeping his 96-year-old mother calm. But having gone through evacuations before, Howell wishes the country's wildfire response was better. This is like going on in Canada many decades now. So I think it's been pushed down and down and down. So should Canada change how it responds to wildfires? The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs thinks so. President Ken McMullen wants a National Fire Administration, a federal agency to organize municipal firefighting resources. We need that coordinating body at a federal level to work on the coordination, the response, the training, the equipment needed in order to most effectively put those resources around our provinces and territories. But Federal Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski says all options are on the table. One of the things that is definitely under consideration is whether or not we should have something like you called it an administration or an agency, some different body at a federal level. And there are other ideas. Yolanda Clatworthy is the interim director of the Mitigating Wildfire Initiative. She says suppression is critical, but argues Canada needs to be more proactive instead of reactive, from where homes are built, to how communities are protected, to how forests are managed. Spending up front on mitigation and prevention actually is an enabling factor that amplifies response as well on the ground and makes it easier for firefighters and frontline folks to be able to anchor in and action a fire to protect communities. Beyond that, a year-round firefighting force could pay dividends, according to wildland fire ecologist Robert Gray. That will enable us to kind of bend the curve on the amount of area that's burning. If we don't start to do more of the mitigation work, then we're constantly just chasing fires. Canada could also tap more into the expertise of its Indigenous population, says Glenn McGilvrey, with the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction. They have millennia-long knowledge in the use of fire and the use of controlled burning and cultural burning. Maybe a ground force, a federal ground force, can be made up of Indigenous peoples. McGilvrey says, in the end, real tangible changes may be hard to achieve, given just how big the country is. But he says Canada needs to start thinking differently about wildfires. The idea that we're going to be able to knock down fire and keep it down across the country is kind of a pipe dream.

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