Canada's wildfire season on track to be the second worst on record
OTTAWA—The 2025 wildfire season is on track to be Canada's second-worst on record, federal officials said Thursday, as hundreds of fires burn across Ontario and Western Canada and smoke blankets some urban centres.
Approximately 3.7 million hectares of land have burned so far in Canada, only second at this point of the wildfire season to the devastating 2023 fires during which 15 million hectares were ravaged and more than 200,000 Canadians were forced to flee.
Current forecasts expect higher-than-normal temperatures across the country and a 'hot and dry' summer. The highest wildfire risk remains in Western and Northern Canada.
'We are clearly experiencing and maybe in store for a challenging year, but I would hesitate drawing too many comparisons to 2023 at this point,' Michael Norton, director general at Natural Resources Canada's northern forestry centre, told reporters. That's because a 'slight downturn' in fire activity is expected this month, and drought conditions were worse and several large fires happened at the same time that year.
Ottawa has so far received three requests for federal assistance, two in Manitoba and one in Ontario, as Prime Minister Mark Carney last Sunday deployed Canadian Armed Forces aircraft and personnel to
help emergency
personnel in the northwest of the province. Around 500 international forest firefighters have come from the U.S. and Australia, and more than 100 more are coming from Costa Rica.
Still,
long-debated plans for a national emergency response agency or wildfire firefighting service
do not appear to be in sight, with federal officials saying Thursday the matter was still being considered.
'One of the things that we want to make sure is that we don't end up spending a lot of time and effort duplicating services that are already available and that already work very well,' Emergency Preparedness Minister Eleanor Olszewski told reporters during a news conference on the wildfire situation.
The update comes as Canada prepares to host international leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, for the
G7 Summit in Kananaskis, Alta.
this weekend. Wildfires are expected to be one of
several subjects discussed
at the summit.
Olszewski told reporters that G7 countries have already agreed in principle to a 'wildfire charter' that would include an international agreement on how wildfires should be dealt with globally.
Federal cabinet ministers also faced several questions about the Carney government's decision to try to cut short debate and pass Bill C-5,
its legislation that would give the government new powers
to evade existing laws and regulations to fast-track 'nation-building' development projects, through the House of Commons by the end of next week.
The Carney government on Thursday put forward a motion that would only give one day of hearings from civil society groups, stakeholders and experts next week, many of which have raised concerns about Indigenous consultation and environmental protections.
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