TORONTO – The wildfire emergency in northern Ontario continues to worsen: nearly 200 fires are now burning across the province, and the area devastated by flames has reached 735,000 hectares, a sharp increase from the approximately 650,000 hectares reported just last week.
“The situation is moving quickly,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said today while speaking at a news conference in Toronto alongside Jill Dunlop, Minister of Emergency Preparedness and Response, and Mike Harris, Minister of Natural Resources. Most of the fires are concentrated in the northwestern region of the province, where 51 blazes are still considered out of control, according to the latest data released by provincial authorities.
As the fires spread, so does the controversy over the Ontario government’s response. On one side, Indigenous communities forced to leave their homes have accused the Province of responding too slowly to the emergency, including delays in providing assistance and support to affected populations. On the other, the government’s financial planning for wildfire response has also come under scrutiny, after Ontario allocated $150 million for emergency firefighting this fiscal year — roughly half of the nearly $300 million spent during the difficult 2025 wildfire season.
The Ministry of Natural Resources responded that protecting residents and firefighters remains its top priority, assuring that all available resources are being deployed to safeguard communities and critical infrastructure. Premier Ford, meanwhile, said the Province will spend whatever is necessary, regardless of the initial budget allocation, and announced the purchase of 11 new aircraft dedicated to wildfire response.
But according to Noah Freedman, a veteran forest fire crew leader in the province, the issue is structural. With climate change making wildfires more frequent and intense, he argues that greater investment in prevention and long-term planning is needed. “What we should be doing is proactively preparing for these situations, and acquiring these aircraft before we need them. We’ve been aware of these issues for a long time and have been working to get ahead of them, although we haven’t exactly gotten there yet,” Freedman told CBC.
Ford himself acknowledged that the province now seems to be facing similar emergencies “every single year,” suggesting that it may be time to develop a national wildfire strategy.
This is where the federal government comes in. Prime Minister Mark Carney has confirmed that Ottawa is in constant communication with Provinces and Municipalities and will provide additional support, including assistance with evacuations, if required.
On Sunday, before travelling to New York to attend the World Cup final, Carney visited Ottawa to meet with federal employees involved in coordinating wildfire response efforts in northwestern Ontario and across the country – according to data from the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System and the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, more than 900 active wildfires are burning across Canada at the moment we are writing, in the afternoon of July 20, 2026.
Following the visit, Carney described the current situation as “one of the most intense wildfire seasons in Canadian history,” driven by extreme heat waves and record-breaking drought conditions affecting the country.
Carney said Canada has mobilized more than 5,000 firefighters and nearly 300 aircraft, including water bombers, helicopters and evacuation aircraft, to contain, control and mitigate the fires. “This is a colossal and complex effort that ultimately relies on dedicated and courageous people working tirelessly to ensure the safety of Canadians,” the prime minister said.
One more time Trump attacks and Ford fires back:
clash over Canadian wildfire smoke crossing the border
TORONTO – Donald Trump is back on the offensive, and Doug Ford is responding in kind. The war of words between the U.S. president and Ontario’s premier continues over wildfire smoke from Canada that has drifted south across the border, worsening air quality in the United States.
After Trump’s initial threat to impose new tariffs on Canada — a move immediately rejected by Ford — the U.S. president renewed his attack on Sunday, shortly after the World Cup final, which he attended alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
““I told them. I mean, you got to stop these fires from coming in and you know poisoning our air. Our air has been poisoned,” Trump told reporters Sunday evening after the match at Joint Base Andrews, near Washington. “If we can help them, we’ll help them. But maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs,” he added.
Carney had already pushed back against Trump’s criticism, arguing that managing wildfires driven by climate change is a shared responsibility among countries around the world, including the United States.
The latest response came once again from Ford, who this morning, during a news conference, dismissed Trump’s threat to impose new tariffs over wildfire smoke from northern Ontario drifting into the U.S. as “a bunch of rubbish.”
“Rather than sit there and complain, why don’t we see some help from President Trump. Send up some water bombers, send up some wildland firefighters, but then again, they have thousands of fires going in the U.S. right now, but you don’t hear Canada ever complain,” Ford said.
The Ontario premier also echoed a point previously made by Carney: wildfires are a force of nature and a global challenge. ““It happens around the world…No matter if it’s France or Ireland or other places around the world, in Australia…We just believe in supporting our neighbors. And it’s unfortunate that the president doesn’t believe in supporting our neighbors,” Ford said.
The premier went on to remind Trump and other U.S. politicians critical of Canada’s wildfire response that Ontario had offered assistance to California during last year’s devastating wildfire season. He also pointed to other examples of cross-border cooperation, including the Province’s decision to send dozens of Hydro One workers to Georgia to help restore power after Hurricane Helene struck in 2024.
But, according to Ford, those efforts appear to have been forgotten south of the border — a sign, perhaps, of what the Ontario premier has previously described as a ‘very short memory…’
In the pic above, Prime Minister Mark Carney in Ottawa at the federal wildfire operations coordination centre (photo from Twitter X – @MarkJCarney)