Question Period Note: Wildfire Preparedness

Parks Canada is the only federal organization that manages and responds to wildfires on the ground, with a national cadre of fully trained and equipped wildland fire management personnel. Parks Canada takes direct action, in collaboration with communities, to prevent and reduce the risk of wildfires to communities and infrastructures.

• To ensure wildfire preparedness, Parks Canada uses a variety of tools and strategies, including prescribed fires, forest thinning, and the creation of community fire guards, in communities within and near national parks, to reduce the impacts of wildfire and protect the public, communities and infrastructure.
• Parks Canada prepares for the wildfire season by ensuring its national cadre of 300 wildland fire management personnel, including 22, 4-person fire crews and 5 National Incident Management Teams, are fully trained and equipped.
• Parks Canada strategically positions fire crews in national parks with the highest fire risk, across the country, ready to respond in case of wildfire. The fire crews can be deployed across the Parks Canada network to respond to wildfires in other national parks, and to support partner agencies when required.

• Budget 2021 provided $52.5 million over five years (sunsetting in 2025-26) in net new resources to reduce wildfire risk by enhancing wildfire preparedness, prevention and mitigation. There were no new resources allocated for increasing suppression costs.
• Parks Canada estimates that the cost of wildfire suppression and response was approximately $163.2M for the 2024 season.
• Parks Canada is responsible for wildfire preparedness and response across 350,195km2 of federal lands, including a number of iconic townsites such as Banff, Jasper and Waterton (Alberta), and critical infrastructure such as the Trans-Canada Highway, pipelines and railways.
• Climate change is driving more intense, faster moving and longer-lasting wildfires and extreme weather events, which poses a risk to the safety of Canadians, economic activity, and critical infrastructure. This increases the number of emergency events managed on Parks Canada administered lands, such as hurricanes in 2022, an unprecedented wildfire season in terms of hectares burned in 2023, and wildfires in Jasper National Park in 2024.
• Parks Canada identifies fire prone parks and historic sites and develops associated fire management plans. The plans provide strategic direction on fire management activities, including those related to readiness to respond, such as monitoring fire danger and ensuring a sustainable wildfire response capacity is available.
• The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) is responsible for coordinating resource sharing among provinces, territories, federal government, and international partners to ensure that firefighters and other resources can be deployed to where they are needed most. In addition, Parks Canada has bilateral border zone agreements in place at local, provincial and territorial level.
• To support wildfire suppression efforts across the country, Parks Canada has long-term helicopter contracts, mobile wildland fire equipment trailers, a national fire cache, and a mobile incident command post available for deployment. Additional capacity also comes from contracted resources such as aircraft, community protection units, and contract fire crews.
• In 2024-25, Parks Canada conducted 37 wildfire risk reduction vegetation management initiatives at 20 parks. These initiatives included the creation of fire guards around communities in fire prone areas and maintenance of previously treated areas for a total of 412 hectares.
o This work included 89 hectares in Jasper, 70 hectares in Banff, and the completion of a 70-hectare fire guard providing protection to the community of Lake Louise.
• Since 2020-21, Parks Canada has invested more than $13M on wildfire risk reduction projects, treating an area of 1,500 hectares.

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