James Moore is a former federal cabinet minister under prime minister Stephen Harper, and is a contributing columnist for CTVNews.ca. As of Aug. 10, 2026, there are more than 600 known and officially active wildfires in Canada. Those fires cover more than four million hectares. In the past 48 hours, British Columbia has declared a state of emergency due to the challenges the province is facing, with more than 100 active wildfires that cover more than 341,000 hectares of land. Canada has gotten good at tracking fires in real time across the second-largest country in the world. We must, because the problem of wildfires is getting worse every year. For those who doubt this, for those who shrug off the assertion that wildfires in Canada are growing in frequency, scale and consequence, the data is clear and undeniable. The area burned annually in Canada has been climbing for decades. A study in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research that tracked fires in Canada between 1959 and 2015 found that the annual area burned increased by more than 30,000 hectares per year, with an 11 per cent year-over-year increase in the 2006–2015 decade. Very large fires (20,000+ hectares) are getting bigger and now account for a growing share of total area burned, and fire seasons are roughly two weeks longer than in the late 1950s. In more recent years, the trend has grown even worse: 2023 was an apex year for fires, when about 14.9 to 18.4 million hectares of forests (depending on the dataset) burned. This was more than seven times the 1986 to 2022 average of 2.1 million hectares and the worst year on record. In 2024, about 5.3 million hectares burned, which was the worst year this century outside of 2023. Then, in 2025, a new second-worst ever year hit at roughly 8.92 million hectares burned due to over 6,100 fires. And 2026 is running well ahead of historical norms as well. The decades-long trend So, it’s not just that we have had ‘some bad years’ lately that just happen to have clustered close together. The underlying trend line has been rising for over 60 years, and the last several seasons have accelerated well beyond it. Hotter and drier conditions and dried-out vegetation have extended the windows during which fires can ignite, and the ease with which fires can be sparked – whether by lightning, a cigarette, a firework, a spark from an ATV on a trail, an arsonist– makes it increasingly likely that fires will occur more often. Are Canada’s policies and investments in forest fire management working well to mitigate the growing risks? The honest answer is: yes and no. Investments have clearly increased since the record 2023 season. The federal government launched over $500 million in initiatives in 2022, covering equipment, First Nations firefighting gear, training for 1,000 additional firefighters, and a wildfire-monitoring satellite system. Since then, federal spending has continued: $346.1 million over five years (2022–23 onward) for training and equipment through Natural Resources Canada and Indigenous Services Canada, and $316.7 million over five years for new national aerial firefighting surge capacity, with new aircraft arriving this year. Provincial governments have also raised their spending well above historical levels to keep up with the tragic scale of the demands. But cracks are showing under the stresses of the current crisis. Provinces have been accused of having a pattern of underbudgeting. Ontario has underbudgeted for firefighting for at least a decade, sometimes spending double what it planned, and in June 2026 budgeted just $150 million despite having burned through nearly double that the year before. Insufficient upfront budgeting leads to a scramble for funding when the predictable demand spikes, and the catch-up game of filling gaps versus proper planning leads to a firefighting regime that is reactive and not properly planned. Cracks in the system Ontario’s auditor general also found the province had made “little or no progress” on two-thirds of its own wildfire recommendations as of a 2024 follow-up, territories, which prompted which prompted a fresh auditor general audit of the wildfire management system that opened in mid-2026. There also seems to be a clear lack of national coordination of our assets and capabilities to mitigate fires, allocate resources and expertise across Canada, and treat this as a matter of national concern rather than merely provincial management. Calls for national coordination of capacity and planning seem long overdue and deeply in demand by Canadians who are growing anxious about the threats of fires and the virtue of getting maximum value and velocity out of the tax dollars invested to fight fires and keep our communities safe. The last time federal, provincial, and territorial governments formally sat down together on wildfire policy was April 27 of this year when federal, provincial, and territorial (FPT) ministers responsible for emergency management met virtually ahead of the 2026 wildfire and flood season. It was co-chaired by federal Minister Eleanor Olszewski and New Brunswick’s Robert Gauvin, and covered the 2026 risk assessment, mutual aid and resource-sharing arrangements between provinces, and progress on renewing Canada’s national Emergency Management Strategy. There was also a related, less formal gathering just before that: British Columbia hosted a National Wildfire Symposium in Vancouver on Dec. 5, 2025, bringing together government officials from multiple jurisdictions, Indigenous partners, and technical experts to discuss a national wildfire leadership strategy—though that was a symposium rather than an official FPT ministers’ meeting. Demand for leadership Since then, federal officials have issued periodic public updates and reminders of funds allocated to the cause of fighting fires, and it all seems performative and reactionary. That’s not at all a bad thing, and I don’t want to be a cheap Monday-morning quarterback on these things when clearly a great deal of work has been done. However, the scale of the threat to Canadian lives, our environment, our quality of life, homes, businesses, health, wildlife, habitat, and our economy demands better leadership and better governance going forward. I have no doubt that Canada’s premiers, the prime minister, everyone, sincerely wants to get this right and reassure Canadians that matters are in hand and that policies, spending, resource allocation, capacity, mitigation, surveillance, recovery, all of it – is being done as well as it can be done. When we get through this season and the crises immediately in front of us, I hope Prime Minister Mark Carney and his cabinet take ownership of the need to modernize our policy and governance of these issues. Goodwill exists everywhere. Fear and anxiety exist everywhere as well. Significant government leadership should take ownership of this file in cooperation with provinces, territories, Indigenous and municipal leaders to draw in new ideas consistently on the growing and evolving threat of fires and a result of our warming and drying planet. I have always believed that good policy is good politics. Canadians will thank and reward those who understand this moment and demonstrate the thoughtful leadership we all need and deserve in the face of this growing crisis.
