Wildfire damage in Collins First Nation in Northwestern Ontario, about 250 km north of Thunder Bay, Ont., on July 22.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Wildfires have become a sadly predictable part of life in Ontario – and so too has the province’s failure to budget for them properly. Last year, Ontario allocated $135-million for its emergency forest firefighting fund, but had spent $271-million by the time fire season was over, a gap of $136-million. The year before that, the budgeted amount was $36-million short of actual costs. The year before that, it was $63-million short.
Since 2018, when Premier Doug Ford was elected, the costs have only once been less than budgeted. The money always comes – no politician is going to say they can’t find the dollars to fight fires that threaten to destroy communities.
“We’d never underfund our firefighters. Never, ever, ever,” Mr. Ford said earlier this month as 150 fire crews battled 180 wildfires in Ontario, forcing many communities to evacuate.
The problem is, coming up with the money after fires are burning is playing catchup, addressing a problem when it has literally become a raging inferno, by which point there is often a scramble for personnel and resources.
There will always be wildfires. The question is, is it better to invest in preparing for them to minimize the damage they cause or scramble to fight them when they are already raging? The answer is obvious.
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Investing more in preparation would help ensure the province has the people and tools needed to fight wildfires.
Part of this is proper staffing. It’s normal that firefighters from other parts of Canada, and even other countries, help battle fires when they break out. But as fires become more frequent, and widespread, relying on slack in the system is no longer the safe assumption it used to be.
The Ontario union that represents wildfire firefighters says the 156 fire crews that have been battling blazes in recent weeks, each made up of four to six people, is well short of the 200 crews the province used to have. Spending money on prevention could help hire and train the firefighters needed when blazes erupt.
Mr. Ford’s announcement last week that the province will spend $650-million to buy five new helicopters and six water bombers to help fight wildfires is welcome news.
Ordering these planes is investing in preparation. But why is this decision being made when smoke fills the sky and communities are fleeing wildfires? It’s not as if these kinds of shortages come as a surprise. Last year, three water bombers had to be temporarily grounded because of a lack of pilots.
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More investment in preparedness and prevention could also be used to run evacuation drills with at-risk communities so the process can be completed much more efficiently than the often haphazard race we have seen in several northern communities this past week.
Eric Kennedy, an expert on forest fire management at York University in Toronto, compares wildfire budgeting approaches across Canada to a car owner that tries to save on oil changes or tire rotation and then has to shell out for a tow truck when the vehicle breaks down.
He suggests provinces look to B.C.’s investments in risk reduction, including controlled burns, and FireSmart, a program to make homes more resilient, as well as the Whitehorse fuel break, a project to remove fuel-like trees from the landscape, as examples of good practices for all to follow.
Investing in prevention and mitigation efforts pays off in the long run. A study conducted by U.S. researchers and published last month in the journal Science found that for every US$1 spent on things such as forest thinning and prescribed burns saved US$3.73 in wildfire damages.
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How much should the province budget?
Ted Hsu, the Ontario Liberal critic for energy, mines, natural resources and forestry, has suggested using the average amount spent through the emergency fund over the last three years. That would produce a budget of $215-million, significantly more than this year’s budget of $150-million.
However significant that number might seem, it will be much less than the current costs wildfires are exacting.
The Canadian Climate Institute estimates that the health care costs of forest fires in Ontario between June 4 and 8 to be $1.28-billion in Ontario. That is only one week, in one province. Wildland fire season is still months from ending, and the total bill is yet to be tallied.
Mr. Ford is right that the money has been found when fires broke out. But pretending it doesn’t matter when it is being spent, and on what, is just blowing smoke.