While some fires are unavoidable, governments are trying to protect communities by closing forest areas to prevent human-caused fires, using non-flammable building materials in high-risk locations and being better prepared.
The federal government has allocated more money to fight wildfires, including C$316.7 million ($227 million) for aerial firefighting capacity over five years and C$47.8 million for the Parks Canada National Fire Management Program. The Ontario government spent C$271 million on emergency firefighting in 2025-26, exceeding its budget of C$135 million. It has allocated C$150 million for 2026-27.
After Canada's biggest wildfire season by area burned in 2023, experts and politicians began calling for a national response organization. Those calls intensified after fires in 2024 engulfed a third of the tourist town of Jasper.
Canada is the only Group of Seven country without a federal agency focused on combating wildfires. Much of the firefighting responsibility falls to provinces.
In June 2026, the Canadian Senate published a report that called for a federal coordinating office for wildfires and emergency response, and proposed funding a national fleet of modern firefighting aircraft, among other measures.
"Wildfires are now a crisis," the report said, noting the record area burnt in recent years.
The federal Office of Emergency Management and Community Resilience said it was considering recommendations on wildfire response and the possible creation of a federal emergency management agency. It cited the leasing of 10 new firefighting aircraft as an example of how it is addressing severe wildfires by bolstering provincial and territorial firefighting capacity.
Canada currently has roughly 126,000 firefighters who work for towns, villages and cities, of which about 90,000 are volunteers. Only 3,000 to 5,000 firefighters are trained to tackle wildland fires across the country, said Ken McMullen, the president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs. A centralized approach would help in coordinating, training and moving firefighters and equipment across the country when needed, McMullen said.
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