Kiersten Enemark: To protect communities sooner, B.C. needs a Wildfire Innovation Fund not just more waterbombers. It would help reduce ignition risk, speed containment and improve emergency response
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B.C. is under a provincial state of emergency. As of today, 105 wildfires are burning across the province, most fiercely in the Okanagan, the majority ignited only in the past week. Entire communities have fled with almost no warning. Approximately 20,000 people have been displaced provincewide, and homes and livelihoods have already been lost.
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Ottawa has convened the federal Incident Response Group twice this summer and, this weekend, approved B.C.’s request for federal assistance to shelter displaced residents — a welcome initiative, but still short of the national wildfire strategy premiers have asked for. And like most of what’s mobilized this week, we see more money spent the same way it has for decades: more firefighters, more waterbombers, more helicopters, funded the same way, year after year.
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But none of it funds innovation that would reduce ignition risk, speed containment, improve emergency response and, ultimately, protect communities sooner.
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That omission is expensive. In 2023-24, B.C. spent a record $1.1 billion fighting wildfires, $401 million over budget. Direct suppression costs over the last five seasons total $3.19 billion. Ottawa puts the national annual cost of fighting wildland fires at over $1 billion, plus another $500 million a year in indirect losses. In the record 2023 season, federal suppression costs alone topped $1.4 billion. Because this spending is so unpredictable, B.C. relies on contingency funds year after year, which makes fiscal planning difficult and keeps innovation off the budget line entirely. Budget 2025’s $40 million for the B.C. Wildfire Service helps with FireSmart and prescribed burns, but that’s mitigation funding, not technology adoption — a fraction of what gets spent once fires are already burning.
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The technology tools to change this equation exist, and many are made in B.C. On prevention: SenseNet detects fires in their smouldering phase using AI sensors and satellite data; Metaspectral’s hyperspectral imaging maps fuel loads before a spark catches; crown.ai’s sensors flag failing power-line equipment before it ignites a fire. In response: Voxelis equips firefighting helicopters with AI-powered thermal imaging, while Circular Industries and FireSwarm Solutions have built autonomous drones that can reach remote fires faster than crewed aircraft.
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B.C.’s Integrated Marketplace initiative already runs a Forestry Innovation and Emergency Management Testbed to trial technologies like these. That’s a good start, but testing isn’t procurement. Companies validate their technology in a pilot without a commitment to move forward with a bona fide contract. This commercialization gap stalls scaling right when these firms need their first real contracts.
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That’s why B.C. and the federal government should jointly establish a $100 million Wildfire Innovation Fund, accessible to local governments and First Nations, dedicated to procuring proven wildfire technologies. It should sit alongside existing suppression and FireSmart funding, sized so a municipality, regional district or Indigenous government can apply and move from testbed-to-contract, a gap that Innovate B.C.’s testing programs can’t close on their own.
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The timing lines up with where B.C.’s emergency management policy is already heading. Under the Emergency and Disaster Management Act, new regulations are underway where local authorities will soon be required to complete hazard-risk assessments, emergency management plans and business continuity plans, and the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness is already building guidance to help them do it. A Wildfire Innovation Fund belongs inside that same framework, so adopting new technology becomes part of how a community meets its planning obligations, not a separate ask competing for attention.
