Open this photo in gallery:
An evacuee from Neskantaga First Nation prepares to board a flight at Lansdowne House on Monday.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
As wildfires continued to move rapidly across northern Ontario, Premier Doug Ford said he plans to discuss the need for a national fire strategy with his fellow premiers and Prime Minister Mark Carney when they meet in Prince Edward Island later this week.
Canada does not have a national wildland firefighting strategy, despite long-standing calls to create one. It’s also one of the few G7 countries that does not have a stand-alone federal emergency management agency.
In June, a key recommendation of a Senate committee report called Canada On Fire urged the creation of a federal co-ordinating office for wildfires and emergency response, modelled after existing organizations in the United States, Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom.
In a statement, a spokesperson for federal Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski said Ottawa has been mulling the creation of a federal emergency management agency, “including but not limited to wildfire,” since March, when a public feedback period on the idea closed.
“It has been an active discussion during the spring and summer,” spokesperson Mathis Denis wrote in an e-mail to The Globe and Mail.
At an update Monday morning at the Provincial Emergency Operations Centre in Toronto, Mr. Ford said the fires burning in Ontario have grown from 650,000 hectares to 735,000 hectares since the weekend.
He said there are currently 190 wildland fires in the province and 56 are out of control.
There are roughly 700 people on 155 fire crews battling the blazes, and approximately 80 water bombers and helicopters currently deployed, as well as 40 aircraft ready to assist. Mr. Ford said 13 communities have been evacuated, with 1,800 evacuees sent to cities including Thunder Bay, Sudbury, Niagara Falls and Toronto.
Hydro crews were working on Sunday to restore power to the Lac des Mille Lacs area where a wildfire remained active, destroying camps and homes, Ministry of Natural Resources sergeant conservation officer Davis Viehbeck told The Globe at a roadblock into the evacuated area.
“It’s unprecedented,” he said, about the wildfire activity in the region and subsequent damage.
The ministry has put up roadblocks, including at Lac des Mille Lacs Road off of the Trans-Canada Highway just west of Upsala, where residents have been on evacuation alert since last week.
The Upsala Fire Department told residents in a social media post Monday morning that while the wildfire threat has started to subside with recent rain and changing fire behaviour, the fires are not yet contained.
That’s not likely to happen “until either we get deluged with rain or MNR finally frees up enough manpower and equipment to come put this fire out,” said local fire chief Doug Kiezebrink in the post, referring to Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources.
Over the past week, Mr. Ford’s government has faced sharp criticism over its handling of the blazes, which threatened and destroyed northern First Nations communities, and sent a thick haze of smoke through many North American centres.
Ontario NDP MPP Lise Vaugeois, who represents the riding of Thunder Bay-Superior North, called the situation “madness” and a “colossal disaster.” She said the government did not do enough to prepare for wildfire season, such as hiring larger crews with experienced firefighters, establishing more year-round positions and increasing permanent resources on the ground.
“Climate change is changing everything. So, the fires are more intense, the wind is higher, the ground is drier and the capacity is not where it needs to be,” she said.
“They have ignored what they’ve been told needs to be done for years,” she added.
Tanya Talaga: Why did members of a northwest Ontario First Nation have to be ‘their own heroes’ amid wildfire?
Indigenous leaders, including the chief of Namaygoosisagagun, or Collins First Nation, which was almost entirely destroyed by a wildfire earlier this month, have raised questions about why they didn’t receive more warning to evacuate.
Many fires across northwestern Ontario are believed to have been started by lightning on July 12, before exploding in size on July 13 and catching many communities off guard. Wildfire risks on the landscape, including a measure called the Fire Weather Index, had been climbing for days, according to mapping produced by Natural Resources Canada. It was listed as high or extreme in parts of northwestern Ontario as early as July 10, three days before people from Namaygoosisagagun were forced to flee in boats across a nearby lake.
The resulting fire behaviour was so intense it made fighting the fires directly impossible. According to Ontario’s Forest Fire and Emergency Services agency, it was unsafe to put firefighters on the ground, and aircraft attempting to drop water or retardant would have likely been ineffective.
Much of Whitewater Lake First Nation, also located in northwestern Ontario, was destroyed by fire, Chief Pauline Drake said in a statement Sunday.
Ontario’s Forest Fire and Emergency Services agency did not immediately respond to a question from The Globe about whether there are any policies to warn communities about rising landscape fire hazard before a fire ignites.
Evacuees have fanned out to host cities across the province, including Thunder Bay, Toronto, Sudbury and Niagara Falls, said Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
The Canadian Press
Fire conditions in northern Ontario improved over the weekend, as cooler weather and some rain arrived, giving firefighters a chance to make progress containing the blazes.
According to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, there are 918 fires across the country, with the majority in the Northwest Territories, Ontario, Manitoba, Quebec and B.C., where a lightning storm over the weekend nearly tripled the number of fires, and sparked a handful of evacuation orders across the province.
On Sunday, the entire city of Kimberley, B.C., was placed on evacuation alert because of two fires threatening it from the west.
The premiers are gathering for their annual summer meeting this week in Charlottetown, with Mr. Carney expected to join at the tail end.
Mr. Ford said one of the topics to be discussed at the meeting is a national fire strategy.
“We need the support from the federal government. They’ve been very good,” Mr. Ford said, adding that Ottawa has given the province two Dash 8 planes to spray fire retardant.
“But we need a large national fire strategy. We seem to be going through this every single year.”
Open this photo in gallery:
Ontario Premier Doug Ford was in Thunder Bay on Saturday, where he held a news conference to address the government’s wildfire response, which has been under criticism.Sharif Hassan/The Canadian Press
Ken McMullen, the president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, said his organization has been pushing for an office like this for almost a decade, and is glad to see the issue finally gaining some traction.
“I think we’ve got the attention of government,” McMullen said.
While Canada does have a national centre to co-ordinate the sharing of wildfire resources like crews and aircraft across the country, McMullen said true wildfire preparedness requires a co-ordinated effort not just from provinces and municipalities, but also from more than 14 different federal agencies.
Smoke from Ontario’s wildfires has stoked tensions between Canada and the United States.
After U.S. President Donald Trump and Mr. Carney sat together during the World Cup final on Sunday, Mr. Trump said he again told the Prime Minister that smoke from Canada is poisoning U.S. air, and that maybe Canada should pay damages, or the U.S. should impose tariffs.
Wildfire expert offers reality check for U.S. lawmakers who castigated Canada for smoke
On Monday, Mr. Ford called Mr. Trump’s threats “disappointing to say the least.”
He added that Mr. Trump is “sitting there complaining.”
“Why don’t you send up some water bombers? Why don’t you start helping us, like we would help you in a heartbeat?”
Later Monday, Mr. Trump signed executive orders announcing new 50-per-cent tariffs on wine, hockey sticks, cement and a wide variety of other Canadian goods. The orders do not mention Mr. Trump’s concerns over wildfire smoke.
The Premier also addressed criticisms that his government is understaffing firefighters, saying it has filled nearly 170 permanent positions over the past two years. He said the province plans to train and deploy municipal firefighters from the Greater Toronto Area and Ottawa.
But union representatives have said the province could be deploying more wildland firefighting crews to fight the current fires, calling the current allocation a “substantial operational gap.”
“It means fewer crews are available to respond quickly to new fires, less capacity to deal with several new fires at once, less ability to rotate and relieve exhausted personnel, and greater reliance on moving resources from one part of the province to another,” said Jeremy Rouse, chair of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union ministry employee relations committee for the Ministry of Natural Resources, in an e-mail statement last week.
With a report from Patrick White in Toronto