Hundreds of fires have overwhelmed local resources, prompting renewed calls for a national fire service in Canada, where emergency management of wildfires is handled by the provinces and territories.
Richard Cannings, an MP for the left-leaning New Democratic Party, called an emergency debate in Parliament this week to discuss the status of the wildfires.
“It is clear that we need to reassess the federal role in protecting and responding to wildfires and develop a more proactive process rather than the current reactive one,” Mr Cannings said.
Canada’s system is usually based on the sharing of resources by provinces and territories. But the widespread nature of the current fires has made this impossible and created shortages. Therefore, firefighters from the USA, South Africa, France, Australia and New Zealand, as well as members of the Canadian Armed Forces, support the local firefighters.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a message on Twitter He spoke to President Biden by phone on Wednesday and thanked him for the American firefighters on site and for the additional help from the United States.
Parks Canada, the national parks service, has a fire department, but otherwise the country has never had a national fire department, said Brian Wiens, executive director of Canada Wildfire, an organization that brings together provincial agencies and research organizations to study fire safety policy.
He said that when the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center was founded four decades ago, one of the basic assumptions was that “not everyone would face a crisis at the same time.”
“That’s what we’re seeing this year: everyone has fewer resources, hardly anyone can release any, and that’s why we’re really struggling,” said Mr. Wiens.
Increasing the capacity of the existing system by funding more firefighters or introducing wildfire building codes like in California should be a priority, said Paul Kovacs, executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University in London, Ontario.
“This nationally coordinated system is a good and effective system,” he said. “As we are having an extraordinary year, I don’t see why you should replace a system that works almost every year – and this year is really overwhelmed – with another system.”
Public Safety Secretary Bill Blair said some needs are being met through other channels, such as through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, which coordinates the deployment of firefighters, equipment and resources on behalf of the federal and provincial governments. The agency was recently able to recruit six water bombers from Montana to be sent to Nova Scotia and, once the situation there improved, to Quebec, he said.
“They have done a really excellent job of coordinating the delivery of people, equipment and depth charges to different parts of the country,” Blair said. “This kind of efficient use of limited equipment is very important to our firefighting efforts.”
