Canada’s worst wildfire season fuels calls for national agency to tackle threat

By Olivia Bowden
The Guardian
July 29, 2026
Category: Forestry
Region: Canada

As more than 900 wildfires burn across Canada, prompting evacuation orders and pushing Ontario into its worst wildfire season on record, officials are renewing calls for the country to develop a national wildfire strategy through the creation of a federal agency. Canada is the only G7 country that does not have a national emergency agency that is mandated to respond to wildfires. After a disastrous July for wildfires that razed First Nations communities in northeasern Ontario and sent poisonous smoke southward through the US, provincial premier Doug Ford called for a countrywide response to the wildfire threat. “We need a large national fire strategy. We seem to be going through this every single year,” Ford told reporters. … A national wildfire strategy through the creation of a federal emergency agency would help Canada be more prepared, said Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia.

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