A Senate committee is urging Ottawa to establish a national wildfire agency modeled on the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, arguing Canada's current patchwork approach to fighting wildfires leaves the country ill-prepared for increasingly costly disasters.In a report, the Senate agriculture and forestry committee said responsibility for wildfire management is spread across multiple levels of government, creating gaps in coordination and accountability."No single entity is responsible for the vast array of wildfire issues in Canada," said the report, Canada On Fire.Blacklock's Reporter said senators noted wildfires are typically handled first by municipalities and local fire departments. Provinces and territories become involved when local resources are overwhelmed, while the federal government is called upon only when provincial capabilities have been exhausted."As such, emergency management is a shared jurisdiction," the report stated.To address what it described as an inadequate system, the committee recommended Parliament create and fund a federal office dedicated to coordinating wildfire response and emergency management across the country.The proposal would represent a significant expansion of Ottawa's role in disaster response. Provinces and territories currently cooperate through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, a mutual aid organization established in 1982.The Senate recommendation echoes calls from Canada's insurance industry, which has also pushed for a centralized federal emergency management agency."The trend is clear," the Insurance Bureau of Canada told the Commons environment committee in a March 17 submission. "Canada has already entered an era of record-breaking natural disasters with no signs of slowing.".The bureau urged the federal government to establish a national emergency management agency to coordinate disaster preparedness and recovery efforts."The federal government needs to show leadership in coordinating and providing expertise to provinces and municipalities to help Canadians prepare for and recover from natural disasters," it said.Insurers warned that the financial toll of wildfires and other natural disasters has increased dramatically over the past several decades.Annual insured losses from natural catastrophes averaged $478 million between 1983 and 2000, according to the bureau. Between 2011 and 2023, that figure climbed to an average of $2.7 billion per year.The organization also reported that weather-related disasters and catastrophic losses now cost the equivalent of 5% to 6% of Canada's gross domestic product annually.Public frustration with Ottawa's wildfire response was also highlighted in federal focus groups commissioned by the Privy Council in 2025.Participants told researchers they viewed the federal government's handling of recent wildfire emergencies negatively and believed more effective assistance could have been provided to affected communities.While respondents generally supported the deployment of the Canadian Armed Forces during wildfire emergencies, many described federal action as largely reactive rather than proactive.Focus group participants suggested Ottawa create a national wildfire prevention task force, recruit and train more firefighters, and develop a rapid-response strategy capable of deploying personnel wherever major wildfires break out across Canada."These included establishing a national wildfire prevention task force, hiring and training more firefighters and having a strategy in place to rapidly deploy firefighting personnel to combat these wildfires wherever they may occur throughout the country," the report said.
