The Smoke
The sky turned orange. Your weather app said the air quality was 'hazardous.' You kept the windows shut and told your kids to stay inside. It's wildfire season again. It used to be a week. Now it's a month.
The System
Why Canada's Wildfire Seasons Keep Getting Worse
Canada is burning at a scale with no historical precedent. 2023 was the worst fire season ever recorded — 18.5 million hectares on the fire agencies' reported tally, closer to 15 million once satellites mapped what actually burned. 2025 was the second worst at 9.0 million. The smoke from the 2023 fires gave New York City an AQI of 413. Chicago had the worst air quality of any city in the world. 350 million people in North America and Europe breathed Canadian wildfire smoke. This is the new normal.
Hectares burned (2023, agency-reported)
Hectares burned (2025, agency-reported)
Estimated smoke deaths (2023)
18.5 million hectares burned in 2023 on the fire agencies' own reported tally — about 9 times Natural Resources Canada's long-term average of roughly 2.1 million hectares a year, and over 5% of Canada's forested area in a single season.
9.0 million hectares burned in 2025 — precisely 9,005,647 across 6,148 fires. The second-worst season on record, behind only 2023.
The 2024 Jasper wildfire destroyed 358 of the town's 1,113 buildings and forced the evacuation of roughly 25,000 people. Insured losses reached $1.23 billion — the second-costliest fire event in Canadian history, behind only Fort McMurray in 2016.
The Promise
What Governments Promised on Wildfire Prevention and Response
After the 2023 catastrophe, the federal government spread a series of wildfire commitments across several budgets — First Nations emergency management, a doubled volunteer firefighter tax credit, equipment and training funds, and later a leased air fleet. Provinces promised better evacuation plans and FireSmart compliance. BC committed to scaling prescribed burns. No single '$600 million package' was ever announced, though that number circulates widely. The real question is whether any of it matches the scale of what's coming.
Canada spent 39 days at national preparedness Level 5 in 2024, all of them falling within July and August. Level 5 is the top of the scale: it means wildfire activity is significant in one or more jurisdictions, every jurisdiction's firefighters and equipment are committed, and international help has been requested. For scale, the record 2023 season held Level 5 for 120 days.
Budget 2024's wildfire measures were smaller and narrower than often reported. It committed $145.2 million over five years for First Nations emergency management, doubled the volunteer firefighter tax credit from $3,000 to $6,000, and gave Natural Resources Canada just $800,000 for firefighting capacity. The federal government's larger wildfire envelopes — a $256 million equipment fund and a $28 million training fund in Budget 2022, and $316.7 million for aerial capacity in 2026 — are separate programs spread across four years.
The Reality
How Bad Was Canada's Record 2023 Wildfire Season, Really?
The health costs alone are staggering. A 2025 Nature study estimated the 2023 fires caused approximately 1,300 acute deaths in Canada and 4,100 in the US from smoke exposure. The annual health burden of wildfire smoke in Canada is now comparable to all traffic-related air pollution — $6.4 to $52 billion per year in chronic exposure costs.
Annual health cost of wildfire smoke in Canada
A 2025 study in Nature estimated the 2023 Canadian wildfire smoke caused about 1,300 acute deaths in Canada and 4,100 in the United States. Counting chronic long-range exposure, the same study attributed roughly 8,300 premature deaths in Canada, 33,000 in the United States, and 82,100 worldwide.
Fire suppression around Canadian communities has left less recently burned forest nearby than the natural fire cycle would produce, raising local risk — a 'fire paradox' that Canadian Forest Service researchers documented across 160 boreal communities in 2020. But across the remote boreal, where most of Canada's area burns, more than half sits outside active fire management, and researchers attribute today's larger fires primarily to hotter, drier fire weather rather than a century of fuel buildup.
What Works
Wildfire Prevention Strategies That Actually Protect Communities
Australia learned from the Black Summer fires of 2019-2020 and invested in Indigenous fire management practices — cultural burning that reduces fuel loads while maintaining ecosystem health. BC has the most advanced prescribed burn program in Canada but operates at a fraction of the needed scale. Parks Canada does prescribed burns in national parks. The rest of the country watches and burns.
Australia committed more than $2 billion AUD to its National Bushfire Recovery Fund after Black Summer. Separately, and through the carbon market rather than that fund, Indigenous savanna fire management has scaled to 86 projects covering 34.9 million hectares — about 70% Indigenous-held — generating roughly $59 million a year. These projects burn at low intensity in the early dry season to head off hotter late-season wildfires.
What You Can Do
How to Protect Yourself During Wildfire Smoke Season
Fire is not going away. The question is whether we manage it or it manages us. Prescribed burning, Indigenous fire stewardship, and FireSmart community design are proven tools. We're barely using them.
Check whether your neighbourhood is FireSmart Recognized (firesmartcanada.ca, or intellifeucanada.ca in French). Harden the first 1.5 metres around your home first — the Immediate Zone matters most. Push your municipality to fund prescribed burning. Support Indigenous-led land management. And get a HEPA air purifier: wildfire smoke seasons are now measured in weeks, not days.