AT A GLANCE
- Canada’s wildfire crisis is fueled by fossil fuel dependence, creating hotter, drier conditions and longer fire seasons.
- Communities across Canada, especially Indigenous peoples, are facing substantial health, economic and social impacts.
- Corporate oil, gas and coal expansion drives these conditions while profiting from the destruction.
- Systemic change and community-led action, including Indigenous stewardship and renewable energy solutions, are critical to prevent future disasters.
- Canadians can take action through grassroots organizing and events like the September 20th Draw the Line Day of Action.
This year’s wildfire season is testing Canada’s resilience like few others before it.
More than 7.8 million hectares of forest have burned this year — roughly the size of New Brunswick — and fires continue to rage across Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia, Alberta, the Atlantic provinces and the Northwest Territories. The blazes have forced mass evacuations in the tens of thousands (including around 13,000 First Nations people still displaced) and sent smoke plumes across the country and beyond the southern border, triggering air quality warnings and health alerts.
What’s too often left unsaid in media coverage is why this keeps happening. While lightning and human error may ignite individual blazes, the conditions that make them spread so ferociously are not so random. They are the direct result of decades of relentless fossil fuel consumption, which has intensified global warming and fundamentally altered Canada’s climate.
Oil, gas and coal have supercharged our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, trapping heat and creating hotter, drier summers. Consequently, Canada is warming at roughly twice the global average, producing longer fire seasons and more extreme blazes. More than 25 million hectares of Canadian land have already burned between 2023 and 2025 alone.
This is not just a story about climate change. It’s a story about the corporations that profit from fossil fuels while communities pay the price. The continued expansion of oil and gas production is what’s driving the very conditions that worsen Canada’s wildfire crisis each year.
The consequences are devastating. Wildfire smoke contains fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that penetrates deep into the lungs and bloodstream, increasing the risk of heart disease, respiratory illness and neurological impacts such as dementia. Smoke exposure also increases the risk of PTSD, depression and anxiety, disproportionately affecting Indigenous communities who — already representing more than 42 per cent of wildfire evacuations in recent years — face heightened mental and physical health burdens from wildfire-related trauma.
The hazards don’t stop with the fires themselves, with forestry practices (such as the use of the toxic pesticide glyphosate to grow commercially valuable coniferous trees) making forests more flammable. These drive fires to spread faster and burn hotter. Meanwhile, firefighting efforts can also create risks: toxic and health endangering chemicals called PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances), often found in foams and fire retardants and used in wildfire management, never break down and can build up in water, air and even human blood.
In sum, the human and ecological toll is immense. Homes, livelihoods and critical infrastructure are destroyed, while entire ecosystems are altered, leaving forests weakened and slowing carbon sequestration. Repeated fires contribute to “regeneration failure,” where burned landscapes take decades to recover, if at all. The massive amounts of carbon stored in these forests are released back into the atmosphere, further fueling global warming and creating a dangerous feedback loop.
Health Canada estimates that wildfire-related impacts cause around 240 deaths and $1.8 billion in health care costs annually. Simultaneously, insurance costs, firefighting expenditures and disaster recovery strain provincial and federal budgets, driving up the cost of living for everyone — all while fossil fuel companies continue to post record profits.
Climate models indicate that without rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel consumption, Canada will face longer fire seasons, hotter temperatures and unprecedented wildfire destruction. Yet despite these clear warnings, mainstream media outlets and political leaders (deliberately) stop short of naming the real culprit.
As a recent episode of Canadaland’s podcast series Short Cuts notes, while media coverage may mention climate change, rarely does it ever go the extra step to connect the growing severity of climate disasters to the fossil fuel industry. Very few stories explain that Canada, as the fourth-largest oil and gas producer on the planet, is contributing directly to the intensification of the wildfires, droughts and heatwaves we’re seeing year after year. Even among climate coverage, less than 11 per cent of stories in recent years reference fossil fuels at all.
Political actors are no different. While U.S. lawmakers criticize Canada for smoke affecting their states (and our own politicians point fingers at one another over forest management practices), few acknowledge the root of the problem — namely, how decades of fossil fuel dependence on both sides of the border have created the conditions for these disasters. This missing link leaves Canadians with the impression that wildfires are unavoidable ‘natural’ disasters rather than the result of our long-standing dependence on oil and gas and our continued entrenchment in a fossil-fuelled economy.
For climate activists, local organizers and everyday citizens alike, this context matters. Understanding fossil fuel dependence and weak regulatory oversight as the root causes of Canada’s wildfire crisis is key to effective advocacy and climate communications. It’s just as important to respond to fires after they occur as it is to challenge the systems that drive these climate disasters. When we frame the wildfire crisis not just as a natural disaster, but as the result of our dependence on fossil fuels and corporate greed, people can see where their energy and organizing power matter most: in fighting for systemic change that protects communities and the climate.
Just as fossil fuels drove us here, moving beyond them can change our future. We know the solutions: investing in the renewable energy solutions well within our reach, eliminating the burning of oil and gas, banning fossil fuel advertising and funding a just transition that prioritizes communities. Indigenous-led stewardship has long offered proven models for reducing risk and strengthening resilience.
Across the country, people are mobilizing for this shift, with grassroots campaigns inspiring action at local, regional and national levels. Our Community Climate Hubs, for instance, are spotlighting the practices that fuel these disasters, demanding better resources for different communities and pushing for proactive climate policies that address both prevention and adaptation. Coalitions are demanding that governments confront industry power and invest in clean energy. And this September 20, Canadians will join the international Draw the Line Day of Action, of which Climate Reality Canada is a partner, to insist that we stop letting fossil fuel companies set the terms of our future.
This is both a crisis and a call to action. Wildfires are not inevitable; they are the consequence of choices, and we can still choose differently. We have the knowledge, the tools and the people — community organizers, Indigenous stewards, firefighters and everyday Canadians — to confront this challenge.
The path forward is clear. Bold coordinated action to phase out fossil fuels and support sustainable, Indigenous-led land management can turn the tide. The question now is whether we will rise together to meet the moment.
Tell world leaders: Phase out fossil fuels and transition to clean energy.
Learn more about the September 20 Day of Action. If you’re interested in getting directly involved, check out the September 20 Draw the Line Action Toolkit.