For years, Ontario, a province that has become one of the centers of the wildfires now raging in Canada, has found itself spending beyond its budget to fight chronic blazes.
In 2025, the province planned to spend 135 million Canadian dollars on emergency firefighting, or about $96 million, but spent more than double that, 271 million Canadian dollars, by the end of the year, according to the budget. The year before, Ontario again budgeted 135 million Canadian dollars initially, but had to spend an additional 40 million Canadian dollars.
This year, the government increased the budget to 150 million Canadian dollars — a number that critics note is short of what Ontario ended up spending in past years.
Premier Doug Ford, the conservative leader of the province, defended his government’s fire funding on Thursday. “Our government will not spare an expense, not one single penny” when it comes to fighting fires, he told reporters at an event in Windsor.
“We will never underfund our firefighters — never, ever, ever,” Mr. Ford said, adding that, since he took office in 2018, the annual base funding for firefighting has more than doubled.
Fire budgets have become a matter of controversy in the province, as firefighting associations and political opponents of Mr. Ford accuse his government of leaving the area underprepared when the blazes arrive.
“This is the result of choices,” Marit Stiles, the leader of the opposition New Democratic Party, said in a video posted to social media.
“Doug Ford chose to ignore Ontario’s climate commitments,” Ms. Stiles said. “He chose to let Ontario’s wildland firefighting force shrink year after year, while his own firefighters begged him to fix it.”
The fires in Ontario have been concentrated around Thunder Bay, a city on Lake Superior about an hour’s drive from Minnesota, with flames also igniting around Fort Frances, Dryden, Nipigon and Sioux Lookout.
The fires have prompted air quality warnings, road closures and, in some communities, evacuations. Jill Dunlop, Ontario’s minister for emergency preparedness, said Thursday morning that she had formally requested that Canada’s federal government prepare to assist in the region, including by potentially deploying Canadian soldiers.