Wildfires have posed largest economic risk to Manitoba of all provinces, Statscan says

Globe and Mail

6 hours ago

An aggressive start to the wildfire season this year has jeopardized Manitoba's economy more than any other province in the country, according to new research from Statistics Canada.
The federal agency released reports on Wednesday that use experimental estimates of economic activity affected by wildfires, representing those values as a percentage of gross domestic product.
Statscan said that as of mid-June this year, Manitoba had the largest proportion of its gross domestic product at risk among all of the provinces, amounting to 2.4 per cent. While the figure shouldn't be interpreted as a decline in the province's economy, it offers an estimate of the percentage of Manitoba's economic activity that was concentrated in regions covered by wildfires.
Thousands of Manitobans were set to return to the northern city of Flin Flon on Wednesday, after a wildfire forced them to evacuate a month ago. About 21,000 residents across the province have fled their communities this year due to the fires.
Meanwhile, the economic impact of wildfires nationally – as reflected in Statscan's experimental estimates – is much smaller, with just 0.125 per cent of Canada's GDP jeopardized by the fires.
The federal agency noted that while wildfires appear to have had limited effect on economic activity at the provincial levels, the disruption caused to local communities has been significant.
'In north Manitoba, where some of the largest fires are concentrated, economic activity in wildfire-affected areas amounts to over one-quarter (26.3%) of the region's GDP,' Statscan said, adding that northern Saskatchewan has faced a similar level of disruption to its economy.
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The statistics agency cautioned that these estimates shouldn't be taken as comprehensive measures of the actual economic impact of wildfires, noting it will take time for those effects to be fully realized.
The estimates also don't account for economic activity lost in resource extraction and utilities, because the dataset only included businesses in industries where their production and operations are in the same location. (Natural resources companies typically have their corporate offices in a different location than their production sites.)
However, Statscan said that the relevance of these industries to local communities could be significant. Several oil and gas companies shuttered their operations this year due to wildfires, evacuating their workers from sites in Northern Alberta.
There have been more than 2,000 wildfires this year across the country that have affected nearly four million hectares of land, which is four times the 10-year average, according to data from Natural Resources Canada.
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Statscan also looked at the economic disruption caused by wildfires in the previous two years, showing strong regional disparities.
The federal agency singled out Yellowknife and Kelowna, B.C., in 2023, as well as Jasper, Alta., in 2024, for the duration of evacuations that led to a sizeable loss in working days.
In Kelowna alone, nearly 30,000 residents were evacuated for about a month, which meant 10 per cent of their working days were lost due to the fires.
Nearly three-quarters of the Northwest Territories' GDP was also exposed to wildfires in 2023, which was Canada's most destructive season ever recorded, burning an area larger than England.
With a report from The Canadian Press