Minister of Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson speaks during press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, June 15, 2023. Canada and the United States are expanding an agreement to share people and equipment to fight wildfires. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
OTTAWA – Canada and the United States are expanding an agreement to share people and equipment to fight wildfires.
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and U.S. Ambassador David Cohen are signing the memorandum of understanding in Ottawa today.
The two countries have repeatedly relied on each other to help when the wildfire situation grows beyond what they can handle on their own.
The new agreement replaces a number of separate deals between the two countries in a bid to make the sharing of firefighters, incident managers and equipment more efficient.
It comes as Canada continues to battle its worst wildfire season in history, with more than 61,000 square kilometres of land burned so far this year, which is about the same size as Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island combined.
The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre says nearly 2,000 international firefighting personnel are in Canada right now, including several hundred from the U.S.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2023.
