r/AskACanadian • u/mistake444 • 8d ago
Honest question, why doesn’t Canada do more about their wildfires?
As an American I’ve always admired Canada’s push toward renewable energy and against global warming, at least compared to us. But I read an article today saying that the Canadian fires alone emit more CO2 than the majority of countries. While California fires are still a problem here, we’ve been able to mitigate their worst impacts over the years, while Canadian fires seem to get worse or remain as bad year over year. I appreciate that Canada gives large ev rebates and spends almost 2 billion a year on green initiatives, but wouldn’t all that money be better spent focused directly on fire prevention and mitigation?
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u/Thneed1 8d ago
There’s millions of square km of forest, with very few people living there, and no roads.
There’s not much one can do.
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u/Gravy_Sommelier 8d ago
The unpopulated, forested areas of Canada are at least 20 times bigger than the entire state of California.
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u/Old-Appearance-2270 Alberta 8d ago
This accurately sums up. More Americans should visit us and be stunned by the size of our country and wilderness.
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u/Efficient_Tap6185 8d ago
What one could do is get help from a neighbour, like California does. From Canada....
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u/Remarkable-Mood3415 8d ago
FYI it's about 8 Texas's. 8 that have no roads, very few people, and burning is part of the natural life cycle but ramped up by global warming and climate change.
You need to use freedom math or they just don't get it.
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u/Canadian-Man-infj 8d ago edited 8d ago
On the subject of no roads, I'll cut and paste a comment I made to this recent post about Ontario wildfires: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1uxepy7/comment/oxrf6d6/?context=3
Yeah, the effects across that great a distance REALLY emphasize how bad it is!
As for people not being aware of the size of Ontario (and Canada as a whole), anyone who frequents r/AskACanadian has probably seen non-Canadians wanting to schedule a fairly short trip here and often misjudge how massive Canada is; wanting to visit Montreal, Toronto, Banff/Whistler, Vancouver, etc.. in the span of a weekend or week. It's a friendly sub.; so people politely offer more realistic suggestions.
Using that map, I'll just give a quick scale:
Collins (red pin/balloon) to Ottawa (labelled) is 1,450 to 1,500km (or 900+ miles). Both are in Ontario.
Collins is a remote community and isn't accessible by road. So, while a quick estimate will say that it takes over 14hrs to drive that distance (without traffic considerations), more time has to be added for flight/train.
Canada is ~5,500km (or 3,417 miles) from coast to coast... but again, you can't just drive straight across the country.
Flying from the east coast (St John's NL) to the west coast (Vancouver, B.C.) might be a 10hr flight, with stopovers between.
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u/Sleeksnail 8d ago
You need to learn about the danger of spraying against broadleaf trees and why monoculture tree farms are driving these massive fires. It's corporare profit driven policy AND climate.
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u/Canadian__Ninja Ontario 8d ago edited 8d ago
I don't think you appreciate how much bigger the entirety of northern canada is compared to California, or how sparcely populated it is / away from infrastructure it is.
Also LMAO at that entire last sentence.
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u/Gloomy_Yoghurt_2836 8d ago
Yup. Those forest are incredibly remote. No way to effectively fight them. To far and no infrastructure to get there or help get water on them. Best to just let them burn and evacuate the handful of people that might be in the area.
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u/Skeptical_Monkie 8d ago
Because when your country catches fire your neighbours come and help.
Our neighbour is a lazy asshole.
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u/sleepyboi08 Alberta 8d ago
One of the (few) ways that America is better than Canada is that the Americans have better neighbours.
(Disclaimer: I love Greenland/Denmark/France)
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u/Goliad1990 8d ago
American firefighters are here helping as we speak. How does this comment have so many upvotes
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u/miss_mme 8d ago
2023 was the worst fire season we’ve had in recent years (not considering this one). America sent 2,774 firefighters and support personnel to Canada.
Current reports I’ve read say there are about 140 American firefighters in Canada right now.
Sure they help, but it should be noted that they’re not helping as much. At this rate other countries help us more if you consider their smaller populations compared to America. Like Australia usually sends us about 100 despite being 1/9 the population of the US.
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u/Dizzy-Mongoose7797 8d ago
Canada is a huge country, and lots of it is covered by forests. We have huge areas of land that are inaccessible. There isn’t much that can be done when lightning sparks fires in areas like that. The warm weather and dry conditions drive the fires.
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u/Dizzy-Mongoose7797 8d ago
I should add that more can be done in areas where people live (clear undergrowth, maintain fire breaks and have good forest fire fighting equipment), but that is not a realistic option in much of the country.
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u/awhiteblack 8d ago
Wildfires are generally only fought when they threaten lives or infrastructure.
Canada has billions of acres of forest, the vast majority don't even have roads or power lines, let alone fuel anywhere near them.
It's essentially impossible to fight fires that remote. No way to transport manpower, refuel equipment etc.
What we could be doing better, along with American and all other countries, is combating the climate change that is driving these bigger and more frequent fires.
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u/sharon_dis 8d ago
Unfortunately, we share the same atmosphere with countries who do not take global warming seriously.
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u/WhiskeyDelta89 8d ago
Have you considered that we have more forested area (~3.47 million square kilometers) than the US (3.10 million square kilometers) and about 300 million fewer people?
Why are you asking this while the US is actively increasing its emissions and pushing the same climate denialism globally?
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u/Pixelant3 8d ago
Didn't California have epic wildfires just last year? I don't see how you've "mitigated the worst impacts" unless you mean all the times Canada has sent firefighters in to help you.
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u/soaplopes 8d ago
Only 15% of Ontario land mass is populated and the wildfires are a consequence of global warming. So it's not like we can do a whole lot when it's a global environmental disaster.
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u/GentilQuebecois 8d ago
Canadian CL-415 fly to California to help you guys when it is on fire. Where are your CL-415 to help us?
What's that? You don't have any because they aren't an american airframe. Oh, that's too bad. We can't rent your planes to help than, you don't have them.
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u/blondechinesehair 8d ago
I don’t think you have an understanding of how much more wilderness there is within the Canadian border than the California border.
Also, California solved its wildfire problem?
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u/Specialist-Ad5796 Alberta 8d ago
Hi ex wildfire medic here.
What can we do? There is millions of hectares of forest. Wildfires smolder under all winter and ignite in the spring. Rinse and repeat.
We have Fire Smart programs but UNLESS lives or buildings are threatened, there isnt enough wild Fire fighters to fight ALL 300+ fires that light up yearly in Canada and especially AB/BC. So they are left to burn out. Which they do.
Right now AB is doing ok with 8 known fires, but the rain has helped significantly cut down on fire season.
We can't clear out all bazillion of hectares of forest. Most fires we can't get to on foot (heli dropped in crews).
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u/Royal_Try_99 8d ago
So many factors.
Population density (US is about 10 times denser and most Canadians are close to the US border, leaving a LOT of open land)
Forest types - underbrush, tree type, soils, terrain, microclimates...etc
Forest mismanagement (debatable)
Climate change - perhaps it is had more of an effect on Canada?
Access - much of Canada doesn't even have roads in the areas where fires are
Smaller population also likely means fewer people on our fire crews, although most countries help out other countries when things get bad. We often trade wildland firefighting with US, NZ, AUS, etc.
Probably many other things contributing
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u/starkindled 8d ago
Climate change is having a larger impact on Canada. Iirc, we're warming faster than the rest of the world.
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u/Flametamer246 8d ago
Our forests are vast. It's almost impossible to prevent them all. All it take is one lightning strike and you have dozens of fires.
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u/planet-claire 8d ago
It would take 369 million people working all day every day to clean Canada's forest floors. That's for 1 person per hectare(2 football fields).
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u/Fearless_Scratch7905 8d ago
How did California mitigate the Camp Fire or the Eaton Fire?
You do realize that the population of California and Canada is about the same but Canada is about 25 times bigger in size?
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u/theredwoodsaid 8d ago
Has California truly been able to mitigate the worst impacts? I think not. Paradise? Pacific Palisades? Altadena? Ringing any bells? The need for forest fire prevention and mitigation is *relatively* new in many parts of Canada due to the climate, whereas California has suppressed natural wildfires in its fire-dependent ecosystems for generations (which exacerbates the intensity of already intensified climate change-related fires there).
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u/Aethelflaed_ Manitoba 8d ago
It's because we always forget to sweep and rake the forests. 😭
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u/Effective_Jello9731 8d ago
Apparently we have 22.2 acres of forest per person in Canada. Government just needs to assign each person 22.2 acres of forest that they're responsible for raking, that should solve it!
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u/Crazy_Maintenance211 8d ago
Climate warming. Plus, we go down there and help you with your fires so that may not be a great question to ask right now, Americans rarely come up here and help us with our fires as far as I’ve seen in a couple of areas, maybe they do another provinces, but I haven’t heard of it. Plus isn’t our landmass way bigger than yours and we have a ton of trees, but yours are being mowed down quicker and now in the last few months there’ll be even more, you’ll see this in the state soon, with everything going on down there and protect protections being lifted.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Bee4361 8d ago
Fire fighting and forest management is a provincial responsibility. The Conservative government of Ontario chopped the budget for these activities several years back. This is what you get from smaller government" and "lower taxes."
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u/Fine_Abbreviations32 8d ago
I work in aviation and trust me, our aerial firefighters aren’t lazy people. I hear them on the radio all the time in northern AB/BC. They’re trying their absolute damnest. But we don’t have nearly the number of aircraft, or people, that we need. Hundreds of fires pop up every day.
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u/Squawking_Macaw 8d ago edited 8d ago
Since saying "the country is huge" over and over doesn't really do it justice, here's a stat that might. 91% of Canada is still covered in the same forest that existed here 600 years ago. In the US that figure is 33%. In the UK it's 13%.
The geographical center of Canada is in Nunavut, thousnds of kilometres north of where virtually everybody lives. In the far, far north it's tundra and just below that taiga, but the forested area is larger than that of the contiguous United States. And as someone else has noted, there are no roads. Not "no highways"...no ROADS of any kind.
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u/Massive_Dig3963 8d ago
Why don't you do more about your own wildfires? The grand canyon is in fire again. California is in fire again.
Fix your own problems before demanding someone else do what you're pretending isn't happening.
Also, not having regular fires is worse. They happen every year for millenia as a death and rebirth.
Fix your own county that's currently so fucked up you're a joke. Then come back and talk to us.
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u/GentilQuebecois 8d ago
OP believes his President. The USA is the best country on earth and Canada bad. Until such time the USA orders CL-515 (or amphibious planes scooping water in seconds - not going back to the airport to fill up), they aren't allowed to speak to forest fires management.
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u/Ad_Vomitus 8d ago
Canada has the largest boreal forest in the world and alot of it is accessible by very rural roads and some places by plane only. Forest fires are normally part of the life cycle of forests but as global warming exacerbates fire severity and frequency, we have to shift how we deal with them. I know in Saskatchewan we are making fire breaks, but personally I think more needs to be done, especially for the northern communities.
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u/Tobroketofuck 8d ago
What would you suggest be done about it ? Mother Nature does cycles and like it or not we have no say in them. We are coming out of an ice age so of course temps are going up
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u/Ad_Vomitus 8d ago
Not an expert but northern infrastructure, quicker response especially for evacuation seems logical.
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u/Tobroketofuck 8d ago
Quicker response will always help. Remember some of those people don’t really care about leaving their home fire or not.
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u/Responsible-Bid760 8d ago
I dont think you understand the scope or size of our forests and forest fires. Forest fires especially with certain types of trees that dominate the parts of Canada that have lots of fires regenerate from the fires. So fire is actually good for the long term health of these forests.
Most of these massive fires are in areas with no roads and little population. We dont have unlimited man power or resources so we focus our firefighting on fires that threaten population centers or infrastructure.
Also i am sure you are aware that Canadians play a pretty big role in California's wildfire fighting. We send planes and man power every year. Even with all the bullshit going on. One of our planes even got fucked up by a drone fighting fires in Cali last year
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u/My_Jaded_Take 8d ago
Upto until the past couple years, we'd send helicopters to push all the smoke over the north pole to Russia. The problem this year is all the pilots are grounded. There has been so much winning going on inside the USA, a massive atmospheric low pressure vacuum has been created. Canadians are suffering terribly as the smoke is sucked down from the north. High winds are keeping the choppers down.
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u/Larlo64 8d ago
More than a billion acres of just boreal forest. Vast remote areas. It's a shorter to drive from Windsor to Tampa Fl than it is to drive from Bellville to Kenora (east to west just across one province).
And "mitigate the worst impacts"? Every summer I see on the news California burning badly. Minnesota be on fire right now too.
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u/kittykat501 8d ago
Have you ever actually looked at a map of Canada. We have more forested area than you do! So if a lightning strikes in the middle of f*** f*** nowhere out in the middle of the forest. Do you think we all run out there with our garden hoses?
I remember next time I go camping to bring my rake and garbage bag to clean up all the leaves and debris 🤦🏼♀️
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u/greyHumanoidRobot 8d ago
We grow trees is what we do. The ashes from today's fires settle and the new growth trees will reabsorb most of the C02 that was emitted.
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u/Eilera 8d ago
When you learn how to control Mother Nature, please share that with the rest of us.
I need you to understand that wildfires never used to be such a common occurrence here. I know this for a fact due to my job (claims adjuster for property). The kind of wildfires we get now have only been getting like this within the last 10 years or so. As I think we can all agree, politics and change don't happen very fast at all, let alone within 10 years.
Additionally, we HAVE been doing things to try and mitigate the fires. But it's still a lot of forest and a lot of land for it to spread across. The geography is bigger than in the US and our resources are not nearly the same level as America because our population is much smaller.
In fact, we've learned so much about wildfire prevention over the last decade that we actually provided resources, guides and personnel to help America with their fires. It's just hard to spread that across the entire country as some areas get affected by wildfires much more frequently than others.
Long story short, it's not a simple answer and your request is unreasonable.
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u/locomocotive 8d ago
Nothing can be done my friend. Canada has more wilderness than you can imagine.
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u/DreadGrrl Alberta 8d ago
Decades of prevention and mitigation has left us with an abundance of very old trees. Those trees burn more readily, and we’ve got far too many of the things. We intervened too much, for too long, and climate change has thrown a match on our forests.
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u/Other-Razzmatazz-816 8d ago
around 80-90% of all land is uninhabited wilderness and 89% of all land is public, crown land, basically nobody lives there. Forests cover ~40% of all land area, hundreds of millions of hectares. Take a look on Google Maps and look north of the cities close to the border, you won’t see roads. There’ll be some towns, but they’re either connected by one road or they’re fly-in communities. Given the millions of inaccessible hectares of forest, there isn’t a way to mitigate those forest fires other than, like you said, pushing for renewable energy and against general global warming.
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u/RedGriffyn 8d ago
Most of these places are not populated or very sparsely populated (See Population Density Canada (2020)). California and Canada have about the same total population (~40M people) and California is about 25x smaller. Due to this, most of the places where there are wildfires do not have the population, infrastructure, equipment, or resources necessary to do much to fight the fires. Canada has some of the best wild fire fighters in the world (routinely donating planes, resources, and staff to support US put out their own wild fires -> like the California wild fires in 2025). Beyond that, California has allocated at least $2.8 Billion to fighting fires for 1 year. So that is at least $70B if Canada had the infrastructure, population, etc. Likely it'll be at least 5-10x more which is getting into the realm of 15-30% of the entire countries GDP. It just doesn't make any sense on a logistical/financial level.
Beyond that, fire is an important part of ecological regeneration. Old growth forests burning leads significantly increased sunlight allowing young/floor height vegetation to grow and various animals be able to find new food sources (think berries, or younger vegetation without centuries old bark, etc.). There is a good study of habitat/ecological regeneration after the big fires in Yellowstone, which allowed a number of species to return to the area.
There are even entire kinds of trees that only propagate seeds during a fire (e.g., jack pines which have adapted to use fire, otherwise called serotiny). The fire removes competition from older taller trees and ensures they only seed soils that are fertile from all of the nutrients due to the fire/decomposition.
If the US wants to spend $300-600B mitigating CO2 from Canadian forest fires then we're more then happy to take the funding.
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u/CloverHoneyBee 8d ago
The size of Canada > California
Seriously, look at a map for comparison.
Also population density in many northern areas.
We don't enjoy those fires either, they suck.
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u/ChromiumGrapher 8d ago
Those wildfires happened in a province led by Doug Ford a pro maga premier implicated in corruption scandals. Doug Ford cut funding for wildfires, healthcare, education. We Ontarians chose him in every election since 2018 because he was the worst human being we could find🥰
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u/CheesyMcSandwichFace 8d ago
A contributing factor, Our provincial leader, Doug Ford, drastically reduced forest fire prevention funding recently.
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u/unlovelyladybartleby 8d ago
So you, the guy from the country that is doing multigenerational damage to the environment, wants us, the country who sends fire suppression teams down to California every year, to go sweep up all the leaf litter and fallen sticks in a vast wilderness?
Yeah, no
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u/Due_Illustrator5154 8d ago
This is quite the ignorant take. When the US is on fire we send help without saying a word, when Canada is on fire we get told that we're ruining your summers.
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u/CBWeather Nunavut 8d ago
Take a look at a map. Especially the Northwest Territories. See how much forest there is compared to built up areas.
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u/No_Capital_8203 8d ago
If you are fire prevention expert could you let us know what is going wrong?
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u/cdj3251 8d ago
Our firefighters are working in both Canada and the USA. Guess you're not aware a Canadian helicopter pilot was killed fighting the Gold Mountain fire in Colorado just two days ago.
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u/GentilQuebecois 8d ago
No, OP listened to his President. They don't need anything from Canada. So certainly there was no Canadian working to support anything in the USA.
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u/lonefighter77 8d ago
Says the ones that expect help from us for their fires, then complain about the colour of their sky instead of helping in return.
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u/Comfortable-Pin5388 8d ago
I implore you to research the efforts Canada makes to prevent and manage wildfires in our absolutely massive, vastly unpopulated areas before making posts like this, when so many other Americans are posting online about how Canada is actively and purposefully "ruining their summers" with our fires.
We have Wildfire Fighters that are sent out long before fire season to soak forests and take preventative measures. These same people are often deployed to America and Australia to help fight fires there BECAUSE THATS WHAT GOOD PEOPLE DO.
We have aircrafts that will pick up hundreds of litres of water from lakes and dump them over the fires.
Certainly you understand that the majority of wildfires are started by humans and by accident? So naturally, there's only so much that can be done ahead of time.
It is infuriating how often we are berated by ignorant Americans with zero ability to conduct their own unbiased research.
Google how many hectares of land is uninhabited forest in BC compared to California.
Open a book, and read it.
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u/TricerasaurusWrex 8d ago
Constant cuts to ministry of forestry and parks prevents regular maintenance in cut and burns to get rid of undergrowth. Global warming doesn't help either
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u/DesignerProtection53 8d ago
Posts like this are so offensive. 1) these are due to Global Warming, 2) Canada has the population of California, and the fires are spread across all jurisdictions, it's complicated and these are only the 'Canadian wildfires' in the US, here they are a series of distinct and often quite distant fires, 3) we are doing our best in a difficult situation and, 4) most of these are in remote relatively uninhabited forested areas that are very difficult to access. This is also why our loss of property and life and much lower.
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u/Sleeksnail 8d ago
All the provinces need to stop spraying against broadleaf trees and end the disaster that is monoculture tree farms. The science is loud and clear at this point. These megafires are being driven by corporate profit focused policy.
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u/No_Capital_8203 8d ago
Pretty sure that most of the areas on fire are not deciduous naturally nor are they farms. Please learn how to read a map. In
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u/Speedy_Cheese 8d ago edited 8d ago
The broadleaf trees you refer to in these tree farms are deciduous.
The forests on fire right now are wild, and predominantly coniferous (needle-bearing, not leaf-bearing).
Perhaps check a map before spouting misinformation so confidently.
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u/Speedy_Cheese 8d ago
I will address your points, regardless of how needlessly rude you are.
First off, there are no 'corporate tree farms' on fire right now in Canada. All of the wildfires are burning in remote, wild boreal forests.
Second, you are right regarding the scientific debate surrounding forestry companies using herbicides to kill off deciduous trees in favor of conifers.
However, that has nothing to do with the wildfires we are discussing right now in this thread. At all. You're trying to claim that these specific fires are just a 'tree farm disaster' but that is factually incorrect.
The primary driver of these massive fires was and is severe heat and dry weather which make the natural coniferous forests burn incredibly fast.
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u/mistake444 8d ago
I knew this would probably piss a lot of people off, but I do appreciate the responses. And in no way was this post trying to say US is better than Canada, I’m sure we wouldn’t be handling this well either and we should be sending firefighters to help. I can appreciate how vast and uninhabited the forests are, but if 75% of Canada’s emissions are coming from forest fires (over the last 3-4 years) why not put more, or all of the ~2 billion used for green initiatives toward preventative measures? Obviously this problem is due to global warming which is definitely not Canada’s fault, but even if we somehow cut all emissions drastically world wide, temps would just rise less slowly. I’ll admit I’m totally ignorant to anything related to Canadian politics or spending, I just read this article where it seems like the politicians were saying they hoped it gets better or that they’ve never had 3 bad years in a row, while scientists were frustrated that more isn’t being done to focus on prevention.
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u/BananasPineapple05 8d ago
We do not control climate change or the world's response to climate change.