Hundreds of wildfires have overwhelmed local resources and renewed demands for a national fire service in Canada, where fire emergency response management is handled by provinces and territories.
Richard Cannings, a member of parliament for the left-leaning New Democratic Party, called an emergency debate in Parliament this week to discuss the state of the fires.
“It is clear that we need to reevaluate the federal role in wildland fire protection and response and develop a more proactive process instead of the current reactive process,” Cannings said.
The Canadian system usually relies on the sharing of resources by provinces and territories. But the widespread nature of the current fires has made that impossible and has led to shortages. As a result, firefighters from the United States, South Africa, France, Australia and New Zealand, along with members of the Canadian military, are supporting local firefighters.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau he said in a message on Twitter On Wednesday, he had spoken to President Biden by telephone and thanked him for the American firefighters on the spot and for additional help from the United States.
Parks Canada, the national parks service, has a fire department, but the country has otherwise never had a national fire force, said Brian Wiens, chief executive of Canada Wildfire, an organization that brings together provincial agencies and research to study fire management policy.
He said when the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center was established four decades ago, one of the founding assumptions was that “you weren’t going to have everyone in crisis at the same time.”
“That’s what we’re seeing this year, is everyone has shorter resources, hardly anyone can get rid of them, and so we’re really struggling,” Wiens said.
It should be a priority to increase the capacity of the existing system by funding more firefighters or establishing fire building codes like those in California, 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. “Because we’re having an extraordinary year, I don’t see why you should change a system that works almost every year — and this year has been really stretched — to a different system.”
Bill Blair, public safety secretary, said some needs were being met through other channels, such as the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, which coordinates the flow of firefighters, equipment and resources on behalf of the federal government and provinces. The agency was recently able to recruit six water bombers from Montana to be sent to Nova Scotia, and when the situation improves there, to be redeployed to Quebec, he said.
“They’ve done a really outstanding job of coordinating the delivery of people, equipment and water bombers to different parts of the country,” Blair said. “This kind of efficient use of limited equipment is very important in our firefighting efforts.”