A Canadian Indigenous flag flies on a property on Okanagan Indian Band land that was destroyed by a wildfire.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
This summer is shaping up to be one of the worst wildfire seasons in Canadian history – and it is only the beginning of August.
Thousands have been displaced across the country. Namaygoosisagagun (Collins) and Whitesand First Nations, in northern Ontario, have burned to the ground. In B.C., Okanagan Indian Band Chief Dan Wilson estimates that at least 200 homes there have been destroyed by the Bradley Creek wildfire.
We have seen herculean evacuation efforts, with people fleeing fires with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. We’ve heard stories of a railway worker urgently warning a community to get the hell out, of a 13-year-old boy with a small boat and a dog moving the vulnerable to safety. Regular Canadians have donated so many clothes and baby items that some communities have had to ask donations to stop.
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First Nations communities have been affected disproportionately by these fires. We are on the front lines of climate change. Our communities live in the grand boreal forest that stretches across the northern part of much of Canada. It wasn’t until the smoke turned the skies orange in Toronto and it became hard to breathe that the country truly understood that the world they know is burning up.
Lightning causes many of the fires we are seeing now, and extreme weather brought on by man-made climate change have made them explosive. Ishkode – fire – has a spirit. She is talking to us. And she is angry.
People in Lake Country, B.C., watch as the Quilpituk Creek wildfire burns on the mountainside across Okanagan Lake.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Canada knew about her rage, and how it would affect our communities. The 2019 federal budget stated that First Nations were 18 times more likely to be evacuated than the rest of Canada. Indigenous Services Canada (ISC) says that from 2009 to 2013, an average of 28 wildfires per year affected First Nations on reserves – a number that increased by 257 per cent from 2018 to 2023. And every year, we see thousands evacuated from the James Bay coast and sent to live in hotels in the south – part of the more than 248,000 Indigenous peoples across the country forced to flee their homes from 2009 to 2025.
Todd Kuiack is a member of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation and the former national director of ISC’s emergency assistance program. “I kept saying that we were the canaries in the coal mine,” he told me. He pushed to put emergency management co-ordinators on reserves, and $55-million went toward those jobs, he said. Community risk determined who got the funding.
This money was and is needed, but it must be part of a permanent, comprehensive and more robust plan that includes unrecognized reserves such as Collins and Whitesand. And if all levels of government aren’t working together with First Nations, best laid plans are useless.
Structures razed on 120 more Okanagan, B.C. properties as wildfire destruction mounts
A public inquiry is needed now on how Canada has responded – or failed to respond – to the wildfires. That’s particularly true for Ontario, which is in the middle of what’s projected to be the province’s worst wildfire season ever.
In 2021, Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler hand-delivered Premier Doug Ford a plan called “Emergency Management for First Nations in Ontario,” which pointed out the gaps in the emergency systems and made recommendations on how to address them. The report also noted that Ontario’s Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act doesn’t even clearly delineate between the definitions of “emergency” and “disaster,” which has contributed to delays in creating a comprehensive plan, as has a lack of “meaningful partnerships” between First Nations and the federal and provincial governments. But Mr. Fiddler hasn’t heard a word about it since – which is in keeping with Mr. Ford, who did not meet with First Nation leaders when he visited Northern Ontario in July.
Ottawa gives millions to the provinces to manage emergencies. But Mr. Fiddler wants to know if they are holding the provinces accountable, to ensure they are doing what they are supposed to with that money.
Ontario’s Auditor-General is undertaking a wildland fire management performance audit, an area the AG’s office frequently monitors. As of November, 2024, the Ministry of Mines, Emergency Management Ontario and the Ministry of Natural Resources have only collectively fully implemented 13 per cent of the AG’s recommendations, and 50 per cent of them have seen little or no progress.
“Growing up as a kid, we’d have rain for a day or two,” said Mr. Fiddler. “Now, a system moves through quickly, there is rain for an hour and that is it. Or when there is a storm it usually comes with a storm and lightning causes fires. It is so dry the muskeg is burning now.”
There are too many problems to count in how we are responding to climate emergencies that are happening more frequently than ever. The transparency of an inquiry can help us figure out a path forward.