A firefighter monitors a pump in a river bed used for wildfire sprinklers in the evacuated neighbourhood of Grayling Terrace in Fort McMurray, Alta., on May 16.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Spring is here, bringing with it wildfires. There’s something different about it, though. What in the past was part of a natural cycle of annual renewal is now, due to climate change, a deadly fact of Canadian life.
More than 130 wildfires exacerbated by hot and dry weather were reported this week, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Most of them were in Alberta and British Columbia, but Manitoba was hit, too, and parts of Northern Ontario were considered to be at high risk.
About 6,600 residents of Fort McMurray, many still traumatized by the 2016 mega-disaster that burned 2,400 homes in their Alberta oil sands city, were ordered to evacuate this week as a fire came within 5½ kilometres of their neighbourhoods. In B.C., 4,700 people were ordered to flee because of flames eating their way toward Fort Nelson. In Manitoba, some 550 residents were ordered out of Cranberry Portage.
The smoke from the fires is again choking upper Midwest American cities, and Ottawa has issued air quality alerts in parts of Alberta, B.C. and Manitoba.
Especially for the people in areas currently being affected, but also for Canadians everywhere, the new wildfire season is anxiety-inducing.
Last year saw the most devastating wildfires in Canada’s history; at one point in June, 2023, fires were burning out of control in every province and territory except Prince Edward Island and Nunavut. The amount of forest consumed – 184,493 square kilometres – was seven times more than the 10-year average of 27,538 square kilometres. About 235,458 people were subject to evacuation notices. The cost of the property destruction alone was well into the billions of dollars.
Will 2024 be a repeat? With a little luck in the weather department, it won’t go that way. But there can be no doubt we are in a new era in which massive wildfires, dramatic evacuations and compounding trauma are as reliable in spring as apple blossoms and prairie crocuses.
The Alberta government acknowledged this fact last week when it announced it is changing the province’s fixed election date from the spring to the fall, because springtime natural disasters, which include flooding and drought as well as fires, are so clearly on the rise.
And in a moment of catharsis for travel agents, federal Tourism Minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada acknowledged this week that the consequences of climate change are making people from other countries look askance at Canadian destinations.
As one frustrated attendee at Canada’s largest annual tourism convention protested, “the whole country is not on fire” – hardly a bracing slogan for a travel campaign, but somehow an apt motto for a new reality.
Wildfire season is now effectively Canada’s fifth season, as defining as winter, summer, spring or fall. It touches parts or all of every province, if not directly with destruction and evacuations, then indirectly with dangerous air quality and a stark rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
A new mapping of the areas that are at risk of wildfires found that “60 per cent of all cities, towns, settlements, and reservations across Canada” have a significant potential for what is dryly called “wildfire-urban interface.”
It’s a national problem that needs a national response. Ottawa is spending hundreds of millions to support the provinces and territories, to improve training and to help provide equipment. It also plans to launch three satellites in 2029 that will be able to monitor the size, spread and speed of fires and their smoke – a sort of early-warning system.
And, as seen in Alberta, B.C. and Manitoba this spring, officials are being pro-active and ordering evacuations as soon as fires appear to be threatening populated areas.
But more will be needed. Wildfires that are as common as flooding in spring will inevitably raise questions about where homes, industries and infrastructure can be located.
They will also raise house insurance rates for people living in fire zones, something that is already happening. Ottawa might be forced to create a national low-cost insurance program for people in risky areas, similar to the one it announced in its latest budget for people living in flood zones.
The bottom lines is that Canada is going to have to get very good at dealing with the new normal. The lessons learned through hard experience in 2023 have to inform the future, so that Canadians can go into wildfire season every year knowing they won’t be facing it alone.