Years after it was pitched, Canada is still waiting for a national disaster agency

OTTAWA — In 2023, as Canada suffered through its worst-ever wildfire season, the federal government was looking at creating a national disaster response agency.

Two years later, the country is again facing another summer of wildfires. There is still no sign of such an agency, though governments are tapping the private sector to help with evacuations.

Ali Asgary, a York University professor of disaster and emergency management, said the work to establish a national agency is “unfortunately … not going as fast as our crises are going.”

Public Safety Canada indicated in a media statement the government is still working on it.

“We continue to work closely with Canada’s firefighters, as well as municipal, provincial and territorial government officials, to find solutions consistent with our country’s unique character to enhance our ability to keep Canadian communities safe,” the statement said.

“We will continue to explore all proposed options and work in collaboration with our partners to enhance our preparation.”

In 2023, The Canadian Press reported that discussions on a new approach to natural disasters and other emergencies were well underway and included analysis of the merits of creating a Canadian version of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the United States.

Better known as FEMA, the agency is responsible for preparing for, preventing, responding to and recovering from major incidents such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters. It runs a national response co-ordination centre which organizes federal support for major disasters and can deploy teams of doctors and nurses.

The consequences of not having a federal agency are being seen in the stress that communities, provinces and emergency management agencies are feeling now, Asgary said.

“We are still in early June,” he noted, adding we still don’t know what’s going to happen with wildfires through July and August.

He said the fire season has already “overwhelmed us. Imagine when it is getting closer to bigger communities.”

Saskatchewan and Manitoba have declared provincewide states of emergency — a move meant to make it easier for governments to co-ordinate resources and support.

Most of Canada’s current wildfires are burning in those two provinces, where more than 30,000 people have been evacuated. Smoke has drifted as far as Newfoundland and Labrador in the east and Texas in the south.

At a press conference on Parliament Hill earlier this week, Emergency Management Minister Eleanor Olszewski said “this wildfire season has started off more quickly and it’s stronger, more intense than previous years.”

Saskatchewan has seen 243 wildfires so far this fire season; in a typical year the province would see roughly 135. Canadian Armed Forces have been helping with evacuations in Manitoba, where fires have forced more than 17,000 residents out of their homes, mostly in the remote north.

The private company Xpera has been involved in emergency response in Manitoba. The company’s services include private investigations, helping businesses bring in replacement workers during strikes, and managing evacuations during crises.

Robert Garland, the company’s vice-president for emergency security management for Eastern Canada, told The Canadian Press the company helped to evacuate 226 people to Niagara Falls and could evacuate around 3,000 in total.

Garland said the work was done though the company’s contract with Emergency Management Ontario, which extended the contract to Manitoba’s Emergency Management Organization.

He said “the offer came from Xpera, with a contract with the provincial and federal partners.”

When asked who is paying for the evacuees’ accommodations, Garland said that “the funding comes from the provincial and federal partners. That’s a contractual agreement between Indigenous communities and the federal government, Indigenous Services Canada, and in partnerships with obviously Indigenous communities.”

Garland did not answer additional email questions about whether the company has a contract with the federal government.

A spokesperson for Olszewski referred questions about a federal government contract to Indigenous Services Canada, which did not answer by deadline. Xpera has previously received millions of dollars through federal government contracts for services involving asylum seekers.

Daniel Henstra, a professor at the University of Waterloo who researches climate change adaptation and emergency management, said the “wildfires in Western Canada are huge already and developing so rapidly and the numbers of evacuees are just staggering.”

The situation requires a “massive logistical capacity that the government in Canada itself just doesn’t have, and I would doubt that any provincial government would have it either,” he added.

“If in fact there is a contract with Xpera, it means that the scale of the evacuation is such that it’s beyond the capacity of even… a behemoth like the Canadian Red Cross.”

“That’s pretty significant.”

Currently, the federal government only becomes involved in emergency response if a province asks it to step in.

Olszewski told reporters that the government has deployed the Canadian Armed Forces to evacuate people in Manitoba and is ready to “assist Saskatchewan and Alberta should they make formal requests for federal assistance.”

While the military has immediate response units that are activated to respond to disasters, former chief of the defence staff Gen. Wayne Eyre previously called on governments to lean less on the overstretched Armed Forces for disaster response. The military’s main role in a disaster is to help local officials with logistics, planning and manpower.

Asgary said a federal agency could take on various aspects of emergency management, including mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. The agency could exploit economies of scale for expenses like training or buying emergency system software.

Henstra said the federal government should focus on shoring up local response capacity. He noted the government already held a consultation on a pan-Canadian Civilian Response Capacity.

He suggested a “mix of volunteers and professionals who receive money and training from government” who would be “ready within the community to respond to disasters.”

People in those communities have valuable local knowledge and experience and need resources to be able to respond, he said. For instance, they might know that a winter without a lot of snow means a bad fire season is ahead, putting them in a position to take steps like levelling areas to create a fire break.

“But you can’t have even the military fly in with a C-130 full of bulldozers. That’s just ridiculous, right? You need to have this equipment and experienced operators on the ground.”

— With files from Sharif Hassan

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 6, 2025.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press