A Burning Issue, but Likely Not Just a Budget Problem

It has been widely reported that this wildfire season has been the worst on record for Canada. There is, however, still some debate as to why this year has been so particularly incendiary.

Prior to this year, the worst wildfire season occurred in 1989 when 7.3 million hectares burned. So far, 2023 has already more than doubled 1989. According to the Government of Canada as of August 30, over 15 million hectares have burned.

Some suggest that changes driven by budget cuts are the culprit. In 2019, the UCP Government announced that to save $23 million, they would be shuttering the Wildland Firefighter Rappel Program, a specialized program that focused on early fire response. Although the program undoubtedly could have played a role in stopping the wildfires, the evidence suggests that the truth is far more complex than merely a budget cut being to blame. Instead, changes to forest management practices that have materially changed over this period should be considered in an effort to prevent fires.

If we look strictly at the issue from a budget perspective, the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan are roughly the same size - but despite Saskatchewan having a smaller budget for fire management at $91.8 million (compared to Alberta’s $100 million), 2.21% of Saskatchewan burned this year (compared to 3.02% of Alberta). Additionally, despite BC budgeting substantially more towards fire management at $204 million – 1.96% of the province’s land burned, a disproportionate result for the amount of money invested.

While there are several potential reasons for this discrepancy, for years experts have flagged the lack of regular preventative burns as one potential factor. Indeed, the impact of fires in both Alberta and Saskatchewan was most prominent in forested areas, with areas like Fond du Lac in Saskatchewan and the Slave Lake Forest area in Alberta going up in flames.

It is worth noting that Alberta, which is roughly 61% covered by forest, has substantially more forest than Saskatchewan (which has only around 44% forest coverage). This sizable difference in forest coverage lends credence to the argument that wildfires may have been spurred by the kindling provided by old trees and forest debris in areas where preventive burns might previously have been used to consume this fuel.

Preventative measures were reduced commiserate with federal budget cuts starting back in the early 1990s.  Additionally, a dislike of prescribed burns among a largely uneducated public who don’t see the preventative value of the practice has made prescribed burns politically difficult and tricky to navigate for governments. The issue is further complicated by legal barriers implemented by the Canadian government which creates a lengthy and complex process to seek approval for a prescribed burn.

In BC, with roughly 60 million hectares of forests, they currently complete less than 10,000 hectares worth of prescribed burns a year.

The efficacy of prescribed burns has been proven in a number of well-respected studies, and most recently a 2023 article in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research once again confirmed the efficacy of preventative burns and urged government to implement the regular practice of controlled burns.

Given the widespread prevalence of wildfires this year, there have been calls for a National Wildfire response team which would allow the federal government to respond to forest fire emergencies as needed, take some pressure off provincial administrations, and presumably implement regular preventative burns. In practice, however, a national initiative would require consensus among the fourteen members of the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC), according to the article “Wildfire management in Canada: Review, challenges and opportunities”, which was published in the journal Progress in Disaster Science in 2020. The necessity for a consensus decision makes the creation of an effective national force unlikely. Instead, regulatory and legislative changes at both the provincial and federal levels of government may be necessary to adequately address future forest fires.  

The issue of wildfires has become a political hot-button issue, and it is possible that had the provincial budget in Alberta been more robust the response to fires that occurred this year may have been swifter and more effective. Fundamentally, however, it seems clear that fire response will not be enough, instead more focus on the implementation of appropriate preventative forest management measures to mitigate future fires is warranted.