Canada’s wildland firefighters are stretched thin. Where are resources falling short, and can they catch up?

The ability to share firefighters, water bombers and other resources reached the breaking point this summer, when numerous wildfires burned across Western Canada. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which co-ordinates sharing of personnel and equipment coast to coast, reported that demand for resources was “extreme.”
The CIFFC publishes a daily “national preparedness level.” At Level 1, few wildfires are burning, new ones seem unlikely to start, and there’s plenty of firefighters and equipment available if they do. But at Level 5, resources are fully committed throughout the country, and calls go out for international assistance.
The NPL surged to Level 5 in mid-July and remained there for a full six weeks before finally easing in late August, signifying an intense fire season.
Fire seasons are increasingly playing out in that manner. Last year’s was exceptional: The NPL hit Level 5 by mid-May and stayed there all the way through until September. Canada borrowed firefighters and equipment from the U.S., as well as Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, France, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea. More than 7,300 personnel were mobilized, amounting to more than double the previous record.
Sharing resources makes a lot of sense. Fixed budgets for wildland firefighting in large provinces such as Ontario, B.C. and Alberta have neared $200-million or more in recent years, even before additional costs incurred during busy fire seasons.
Fire occurrences vary considerably from year to year, and there are likely to be at least a few provinces with unused resources to share. Staffing up for the worst-imaginable fire season, on the other hand, would be enormously expensive.
But with wildfire activity surging in so many different places simultaneously, relying heavily on neighbours is becoming a riskier strategy. Does Canada have enough crews, choppers and water bombers to fight wildfires amid the 21st century’s rapidly warming climate? Recent NPL data suggest that it does not.
“We can’t continue with yesterday’s level of resources, from back to the eighties, and expect that we’ll be able to manage the fire scenario of today,” said Cordy Tymstra, a wildfire scientist and consultant who once worked with Alberta’s wildfire management branch. “That’s just not working. We need more resources.”
In its review of the 2023 fire season, the CIFFC concluded that “the needs anticipated will undoubtedly increase with the changing climate.” A few years ago, the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers held a series of dialogues aimed at devising a national wildland fire prevention and mitigation strategy. A 2022 report notes that participants offered a consistent message: “Stable investment on a significant scale” was needed to address wildfire.
“Deferring investment over the medium-term is all but guaranteeing major financial risk and a requirement for reactive, disaster-focused spending in the future,” it warns.
To understand the resources available today, The Globe and Mail surveyed firefighting agencies across the country. Little about this exercise proved straightforward. A small number of smaller agencies – New Brunswick’s Wildfire Management Branch; Newfoundland’s Department of Fisheries, Forestry and Agriculture; and Parks Canada – did not respond despite repeated inquiries spanning nearly two months.
Differences in agencies’ structures and geographies, and the different fire regimes they face, mean that making comparisons between provinces is difficult. Most agencies employ a hodgepodge of crews and aircraft; some are directly employed or owned, while others are hired from private contractors, either for the season or as needed. Some agencies often had difficulty providing firm numbers to the resources available from contractors or volunteers.
Typically, agencies directly employ Type 1 firefighters – a CIFFC designation. They’re the most highly trained, and can be sent to all manner of fires, on difficult terrain. But agencies often acquire firefighters with lesser training – known as Type 2 and Type 3 firefighters – through arrangements with private or First Nations contractors.
Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources brings in Type 2 crews, for example, to “mop up” fires that have been brought under control. Type 3 firefighters are often municipal firefighters but may also work for private companies; Quebec’s Société de protection des forêts contre le feu (SOPFEU) relies on more than 500 of them. Nova Scotia’s firefighters don’t use these designations, but it supplements its own resources with hundreds of municipal and volunteer firefighters when needed.
The picture is similar with aircraft, which can be crucial in moving crews to attack remote fires and attacking large fires. Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources has its own fleet of 28 aircraft, the majority of which are assigned to combat wildfires during warmer months. SOPFEU and the BC Wildfire Service contract all of their aircraft; the latter has access to 39 this season through long-term contracts, but can expand its fleet to more than 150 using short-term contracts. Many agencies, including in the Northwest Territories, employ a mix of owned and contracted aircraft.
According to a report published by the CIFFC last year, there are clouds on the horizon for Canada’s air-tanker fleet. It’s aging, and much of it is nearing end of life. Many birddogs – small aircraft that direct air tankers where to drop water or retardant – are so old that they can’t keep up with new water bombers. That same report observed that agencies are struggling to recruit aircrews: “The current shortages are expected to persist or worsen,” it notes.
So just how many additional firefighters and aircraft does Canada need? How much larger should budgets grow? Such questions never brought easy answers in the past.
To begin with, there are limits to what additional firefighters and planes can accomplish, particularly in the face of megafires. A consultant’s after-action report on fires last year in Alberta’s Yellowhead County notes that 850 personnel were brought in from outside. Even so, one expert told the consultants: “We could have had every firefighter in the province in Yellowhead County and we would not have stopped those fires.”
Mr. Tymstra put it this way: “About 3 per cent of fires escape. You could have resources hovering right over where the fire is gonna start. And that fire is going to take off, because the conditions are just too explosive and conducive to extreme wildfire behaviour.”
It so happens that these same megafires do by far the most damage and overwhelm firefighting agencies.
Nonetheless, resources matter a great deal. Most fires in North America are contained when they’re small. Provided they’re detected early enough, initial attack crews typically head off by truck or air. The larger this crew is, and the earlier it arrives, the more likely it’ll put out the fire before it gets out of control.
But if the agency’s resources are stretched to the limit, it might not have enough to attack new fires. That could produce a ripple effect: More fires might suffer delayed initial attacks, allowing them to grow larger, and in turn make it more difficult to bring them under control.
David Martell, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto who specializes in forest fire management, wrote the textbook chapter more than 20 years ago on how resource levels are selected. Fire management agencies, he explained, have to figure out how many personnel to hire, and where they should be posted. The more aircraft an agency buys or charters for the season, the less often it’ll have to pay for pricey short-term charters.
But there’s a long lag time between when such decisions are made, and when results arrive. Type 1 wildland firefighters are highly trained, so it can take a long time to recruit or replace them. And it can take years for large air tankers to be delivered. Once a base has been established, relocating it will be a major undertaking.
“The way such strategic decision-making problems are resolved, therefore, has significant impacts that can ripple throughout a fire organization for many years,” Prof. Martell wrote.
The cost of additional resources must be weighed against burnt homes and other structures, not to mention trees and other natural resources and the cost of evacuations.
Fire managers, of course, rarely set own budgets; their political masters do that. Some observers have noticed a distinct pattern: Governments often increase budgets after a bad fire season, only to claw them back after a few milder years as complacency sets in and it becomes difficult to justify what appears to be overabundance and waste. One example is Alberta Wildfire, which analysts say has endured a series of budget cuts in recent years, resulting in a reduced ability to attack new fires.
After 2023′s disastrous fire season, political momentum for increasing resources has increased. The Alberta government said it recently hired 100 new firefighters, and contracted two more air tankers and night vision aircraft. The BC Wildfire Service says it now has 162 initial attack crews, which is 13 more it had in recent years. It’s also trying to sign more leasing agreements for additional planes and helicopters.
“Our focus is on a diverse and modern set of aircraft suited for B.C.’s vast and challenging terrain,” Jaedon Cooke, a fire information officer with the service, wrote in a written response to questions.
Ontario’s government has announced 100 new permanent firefighting positions and offered attraction and retention bonuses of up to $5,000 to fill front-line positions. SOPFEU said it plans to hire 50 new firefighters this year, and 30 more in 2025.
And Saskatchewan’s government says it will pay $187-million to buy four new air tankers to replace its current fleet of Convair 580s, which are nearing the end of their useful lives. The first new aircraft is set to arrive next year, and the balance by 2027.
Many of these purchases have received support from Ottawa. The 2022 federal budget committed $256-million over five years to cost-share with provinces and territories when procuring firefighting equipment.
Provincial governments are availing themselves: In March, the Nova Scotia government secured $12.8-million of that funding, most of which will be used to purchase four Airbus H-125 helicopters for more than US$19-million. And while it has no fixed-wing aircraft, it’s considering whether it should procure some, even in the face of long wait times owing to supply chain issues at aircraft manufacturers.
“We anticipate wildfire seasons will become more severe across the country so it may become harder to borrow these resources if we need them in the future,” Adele Poirier, a spokesperson for the province’s Natural Resources Department, wrote in an e-mail.
Ottawa also established a $28-million training fund in 2022, aiming to recruit 1,000 additional wildland firefighters. The lion’s share of the more than $8-million allocated so far has gone to Indigenous non-profit organizations to train new wildland firefighters. This year, Prince Edward Island introduced a new training program that has already trained 26 new Type 3 firefighters.
Yet, despite such additions, Mr. Tymstra said provincial firefighting budgets have yet to reflect the additional needs imposed by a changing climate.
“Over all, I would say, the agencies are cranking up a little bit, but not much in terms of the amount of resources,” he said.
“It’s too slow and it’s too incremental.”
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