B.C. to get $32 million in federal wildfire funding

The Canadian government is providing further financial assistance to B.C. and the Northwest Territories as crews continue to battle wildfires.

On Thursday, federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson announced that $32 million will be directed toward B.C., while the territory would be getting $28 million. Both jurisdictions continue to deal with wildfires that have prompted thousands of evacuations and have burned millions of hectares of land.

Wilkinson says the money will be spread over five years and require contributions from each provincial or territorial government.

“This funding has been and will continue to support these provincial and territorial governments’ fire management capabilities and will allow them to procure the resources they need to fight wildfires to the scale and severity that we have seen,” he said, adding the money comes from a $256-million pool of federal funding for wildfire efforts.

Related Stories:

• B.C. family to rebuild after losing home to fire twice in 4 years

• 2023 B.C. wildfire season declared DFA eligible: province

Wilkinson says the latest federal forecast calls for the chance of increased fire activity from eastern Alberta through to central Ontario at least until the end of September. Some fires burning in B.C. and the Northwest Territories, he says, are expected to smoulder for months longer.

“Wildfires have always occurred in Canada. But what is new is their frequency and their intensity, and what is clear is the root cause of this is climate change,” Wilkinson said.

“Government’s first priority must be to protect Canadians’ lives and livelihoods. Increasingly, this starts with accepting the scientific reality of climate change and taking thoughtful, impactful action to address it.”

The federal government says there were 1,052 wildfires burning in Canada as of Thursday, with 791 classified as out of control. Overall, there have been a total of 6,174 wildfires reported in Canada this year, with 16.5 million hectares of land burned.

Canada looking abroad for emergency response strategies

Meanwhile, federal Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan says the Canadian government is looking to update the way it responds to natural disasters. He says the government is looking at other countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, about their emergency response capabilities.

“We need to make sure that we have a catered response to Canadians. The regions in Canada are very unique, especially what we’ve seen in the Northwest Territories, but even within the Atlantic Coast and those provinces, we have to be ready to respond,” he said.

“We’re looking at wildfires, yes. But we also need to look at floods, we also need to be ready for potential earthquakes. So we’re looking at all different types of disasters, doing the lessons learned, then we’ll come up with the appropriate response.”

In the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, responds to such disasters and helps to coordinate the emergency response.