Canada’s ability to prevent and fight wildfires has been questioned by several U.S. lawmakers after smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted into the United States, prompting debate over whether Canada is doing enough to reduce the impacts of forest fires and the resulting smoke.
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Canada with tariffs because of the smoke, and this follows a letter from U.S. lawmakers sent last week to Prime Minister Mark Carney demanding Canada do more to combat wildfires, saying, “sovereignty comes with responsibility.”
But whether Canada is doing enough isn’t simply a ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ experts say, because major challenges exist in controlling some of these fires from getting out of control. The biggest challenge is that Canada’s natural landscape is covered by dense boreal forest that is often inaccessible.
“The question of ‘what is enough?’ is a really tricky one, and that’s always a question of trade-offs too, of course, but I think there certainly is a lot we need to be doing on the mitigation front,” says Eric Kennedy, associate professor of disaster and emergency management at York University.
“That is a problem that I think we’re only just beginning to grapple with the magnitude of.”
How Canada manages forest fires
Parks Canada’s strategy to manage the risk of forest fires focuses on four pillars.
First, mitigation, which includes FireSmart community risk reduction, clearing flammable vegetation from surrounding areas, public education, adhering to local fire bans and collaboration through various agencies to maintain effective communication.
Second, preparedness, which means strategizing how response resources are utilized to be ready for when forest fires start so they can act quickly.
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Third, the response of those same resources to fires as they break out, which are also shared with internal and external agencies where possible.
Finally, restoration of the forests by using prescribed burns and managed fires, including traditional Indigenous practices to not only manage fires, but also rehabilitate landscapes and build climate resilience.
Canada has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to improve wildfire response and prevention.
Ottawa launched an initiative in 2022 with more than $500 million spent to improve wildfire prevention, preparedness and response. This included equipment, First Nations firefighting gear, training of 1,000 additional firefighters and a specialized wildfire monitoring satellite system.
Budget 2024 also added $145 million over five years to strengthen climate resilience and deploy structural mitigation strategies, and 10 additional firefighting aircraft were leased this year.
When it comes to preventing forest fires from becoming destructive wildfires, experts say mitigation and restoration, including prescribed burns, are some of the most important, but applying these strategies for the entirety of Canada’s forests is nearly impossible.
“The boreal forest is 300 million hectares in size. There’s no way we can or should even attempt to fuel manage that entire forest. It’s just not happening. It’s not physically possible,” says professor emeritus David Martell at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Forestry and Conservation.
What is Canada not doing?
Although the four pillars from Parks Canada serve as a framework for managing forest fires, what Canada is not doing is attempting to manage the fuel load across all forests, which experts say is one of the biggest challenges.
Doing so is not realistic because it’s expensive and these forests are difficult to access. Agencies, instead, are prioritizing high-risk areas while accepting that some remote fires will burn because the alternative is impossible.
“Yes, there are strategies that can mitigate risk through forest management in areas where you have some development or an established forest industry, planning where harvesting is occurring to break up areas of continuous fuel, in some cases thinning, prescribed burning, all these things that we hear about can be effective, but it’s very contextual around where you are,” says Taylor.
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“To look at doing that in remote areas, it’s just the scale of the issue is just, you know, is very challenging.”
Is there too much fuel to burn?
The challenge of expanding prescribed burns and other forest fire management strategies comes as years of fire suppression strategies may have inadvertently contributed to the buildup of vegetation that can fuel larger fires.
“Decades of wildland fire suppression approaches, such as discouraging the intentional use of fire on the land by Indigenous Peoples or extinguishing small wildland fires near communities, have changed the makeup of Canada’s landscape. This has led to a buildup of flammable vegetation (trees, shrubs, or grassland). The forest’s natural ability to recover from a wildland fire has been interrupted, making it easier for them to spread to where people live,” said Natural Resources Canada in its 2024 Canadian Wildland Fire Prevention and Mitigation Strategy.
This means Canada’s forests may be at higher risk of seeing these forest fires increase to large-scale wildfires as a result of prior efforts to reduce forest fires from starting in the first place.
Forest fires, in some cases, can actually be good for the longevity of those forests because they allow for regeneration.
“We have to make decisions on fire to let it go, because it’s a natural cycle. That’s how our boreal species get regenerated, how (the) forest cycle goes back.”
But those fires which may be left to burn, whether for the sake of the forest’s own long-term health, or for a lack of resources to combat the fires, or both, can result in more smoke being circulated into the atmosphere and spreading to nearby communities and beyond.
Kennedy says despite calls from the U.S. for Canada to do more to prevent wildfires and smoke from spreading, collaboration between the two countries has been and must continue to be used to combat a problem that knows no borders.
“Fire does not know borders and we have decades of collaborating between these two countries to work together where we help with American fires that blow smoke into Canada and they help with Canadian fires that blow smoke into the United States,” says Kennedy.
“There is probably a lot of room for shared goals when it comes to increasing our investment in mitigation, in preparedness, and in effective and efficient response.”
20 yrs of cuts to forestry management clearly isn’t doing “enough”.. it’s doing less.. why ask a dumb question when the answer is plainly evident via action (or lack there of).
No because they purchased zero water bombers.
The one thing this author doesn’t realize is that there are companies such as Coulson aviation, which is a company who has trained night jumpers who can parachute into any remote area day or night to fight fires. The liberal government did not have a contract with them and while the fires in BC could’ve been put out earlier had they hired them instead people’s house is burned down.
Billions of dollars spent on carbon capture yet the forest fires emitted more CO2 in a week than carbon capture will capture in a year. If the Liberals really cared about the environment they would buy hundreds of water bombers
The Liberals like forest fires. It keeps us peasants afraid of climate change, making us easier to manipulate.
Danielle stopped a coal referendum?
July 21, 2026 at 11:04 am
Phuck off “paycheck.”
Since when do men control lightning strikes?
I see Minnesota has fires. Last year it was Hawaii.
Danielle Smith the trumper fired her helicopter firefighters. That’s on her.
You really have no reading comprehension do you? DUUUUHH!
Instead of borrowing money and giving it to a corrupt Ukraine, we could buy 50 or 100 Airtankers (about $30 million per plane) and fight those fires.
We need to start lynching the politicians and billionaires and millionaires too
Off course we aren’t doing enough – we just approved another great, useless pipeline, so we can add more CO2 to the atmosphere and make the problem *worse*. But hey – it shut those whiny Albertans up for about five minutes, so it *must* be worth it.
Phuck off “paycheck.”
Since when do men control lightning strikes?
I see Minnesota has fires. Last year it was Hawaii.
Danielle Smith the trumper fired her helicopter firefighters. That’s on her.
No!
What they are doing is spending way too much GDP money on defence to satisfy DJT. When was the last time Canada got attacked by an enemy?
Yet everyday we are attacked by mother natures force one way or another. Geez figure out the priorities instead of caving into the pressure of another country’s eccentric leader.
I’m curious. We are told that in our area a couple nights ago, there were over 2100 lightening strikes in the forests. How come always so many in the forests and never anything much in towns and cities? We may see one or two strikes a year on a building etc, no fires. Funny how storm clouds are always over the forests and not over the cities.
All this seems to happen in forests where only ‘government’ meteorologists see.
2100 strikes and only a couple small fires. At that rate it should be conflagration complete.
Yet the incidents of human caused fires seems to generate more and dangerous fires, yet we aren’t really told that. They harp all over weather and climate change. That those are the main factors and of course, we are the drivers.
I think we are being manipulated huge. That all this is a big, big dangerous scam for control. It smells like W E F. It talks and acts like W E F.
If gov was doing enough, the fires wouldn’t be out of control. End of story. Our fire fighting capabilities are pathetic given the amount of forest we need to protect and the amount of structure loss. Not even the FN leadership is equipping their people with the billions they have been given, nor are our exulted Liberal ‘leaders’. And the Libs aren’t the only blame. ALL PARTIES HAVE FUDGED AND CUT FIREFIGHTING IN ALL CATAGORIES! Just like they took out any care for folks on the street who should be institutions!
We have this oh so marvelous Ai tech we could put on the problem but the problem really is money! Money going for bombs bullets war instead of fire protection and nation building. Hence politicians. They have it all. Same with the billionaires. As long as these greedy pieces of garbage hoard as much as they can, the rest of us will suffer.
Go after politicians and the rich! THE HAVE PUT THIS CONTINENT WHERE IT IS AT!
That means the grocery oligarchs, the oily barons, the politicians and their empire on both sides of the border. For sure pieces of dung like Trump, Musk, Bezos and all the rest!
Any c*ck s*cking greedy person that has a few billion or million more dollars than they need to live is the problem.
But no, these garbage people blame the taxpayer and climate change that apparently only we cause. They THINK they are entitled to it all. Trump being a perfect example of a greedy capitalist f*scist p*g. Carney is the same, just the cowardly side of it all.
Binding it all together and feeding it to us is MEDIA. Media like Global who uses weaponized censorship. Whose continued deletion of truth and facts in favor of garbage and disgusting comments has become the norm now. F*cism is running very deep on this continent and we are being smothered!
The USA with 80% of the amount of Canadian forests has 8 times the forest fire fighting equipment.
No we aren’t. everything under Liberalism is controlled decline all our institutions and basics necessities have been allowed to crumble. Dont worry plenty of your tax dollars for Ukraine or Brookfield
The most telling part of the Climate Change™ scam is that not one of the experts even talk about the ozone layer anymore. It was the number one topic in the Global Warming™ grift during the 1990’s and 2000’s.
Carney gets us 60 billion dollars further into debt and we are talking 145 or 200 million extra for fighting wildfires?
Maybe stop wasting billions on natives and the useless military, what’s the sense of protecting our so called sovereignty when everything is burning to the ground every year and the Indian says it’s all their land.
The problem is the lack of old-growth forest. Can’t believe experts blaming climate change for this when 75-80% of our forests are “managed.” It doesn’t take an expert to look at a stand of toothpicks and wonder why it wants to spontaneously combust compared to virgin forest. But then again I’m not educated in liberal arts so what do I know?
No. It is one thing when an isolated northern community smaller than a village requires evacuation. When it is cities with hundreds of thousands to millions of people being harmed by toxic smoke, it is a violation of our rights that our government does nothing but point a finger at human made climate change while being the human in control.
Nah we are doing fune send all the money we pay for to ukraine and all the unfortunate ppl of the world Carnage and trudeau bull
considering all our resources are going to ukraine…we are drowning for funding where its important
Wild fires are essential, if eco warriors did not light these fires then how would.they show the world the dangers of global warming
Imagine if we had an additional 30 billion dollars to purchase more water bombers, fire fighters, and equipment… Better it keeps a war going on the other side of the planet though
If NDP and liberal voters stop starting forest fires how will they be able to promote global warming
Most of the fires are human set.
Light a fire in Trumps mouth!! No more smoke!!
Not even close