Ford Government Slashes Wildfire Firefighting Budget Amid Worst Fire Season on Record

Ontario entered its worst wildfire season since 2021 — 482 fires by mid-July 2026, compared with 362 in 2025 and 170 in 2024 — with a base wildland firefighting budget of just $150 million, according to CP24's reporting. That figure is only marginally higher than the $135 million budgeted in each of the two prior years, and it sits far below the $271 million the province actually spent fighting fires in 2025-26. Budgeting well under the previous year's actual spend, in a year already shaping up to be worse, left the province's firefighting capacity mismatched to the danger on the ground before the season even peaked.

The gap wasn't abstract. With roughly 200 active fires burning across the north, 15 communities — including Armstrong, Whitesand First Nation, Collins First Nation, and Gakijiwanong Anishinaabe Nation, several reachable only by air — were evacuating or preparing to evacuate. Emergency Preparedness Minister Jill Dunlop was forced to formally request federal help on July 16, 2026, asking Ottawa to have aircraft and crews ready to deploy within 24 hours, as reported by CP24. Ontario also went into the season without a replacement for its expired eight-year aerial firefighting contract with Wisk Helicopters, which lapsed at the end of 2025.

Opposition figures — NDP MPP Lise Vaugeois, Liberal critic Ted Hsu, and the Green Party — argued the budget numbers themselves showed the government had underfunded the fight. Premier Doug Ford's response was not to address the shortfall in aircraft or contracts but to call the criticism "despicable and disgusting," insisting $150 million was merely a baseline routinely topped up as needed, per CP24. That defense does not explain why the baseline itself was set at roughly half of what the province had just spent the year before, nor why no new aerial contract was in place when the season began.

Staffing tells the same story. A firefighters' union reported crews were about 34 short of approved staffing levels even as the province fought its worst season in five years, according to TorontoToday. A government can always argue it will top up a line item after the fact, but it cannot retroactively staff a fire crew or fly a helicopter that wasn't contracted, and northern communities bore the consequences of that gap in real time.

The most immediate consequence was Ontario relying on outside help to manage a crisis inside its own borders. Ontario's request to Ottawa on July 16, 2026 and the reported involvement of the Canadian military in the response, per Global News, show a provincial firefighting apparatus that had to be backstopped federally in the middle of an active, evacuating emergency — not a hypothetical future risk.

Ford's $650 million purchase of 11 new aircraft (six water bombers and five helicopters), announced days after the "despicable and disgusting" remarks, is being framed as the largest such purchase in provincial history. But officials themselves acknowledged the water bombers take up to four years to build, meaning the announcement — whatever its long-term merit — does nothing for the communities evacuating in July 2026 or for future seasons before the aircraft arrive.

The lapsed aerial contract with Wisk Helicopters and the reported staffing gap of roughly 34 crews, per TorontoToday, point to procurement and staffing decisions made well before this fire season that will need to be resolved before the next one — decisions the government has not detailed a plan to fix beyond the aircraft purchase.

Politically, the episode leaves a budget line — $150 million set against $271 million actually spent the year before — as a standing benchmark against which future fire seasons, and future in-year top-ups, will be measured. If the government again sets a base budget well under the prior year's actual cost while fire activity trends upward, the pattern documented here in 2026 will be difficult to dismiss as a one-off.