As wildfires continue to rage across much of Canada prompting calls for international assistance, an Indigenous firefighting agency in the Yukon says they’re being shunted despite having teams of firefighters ready and willing to join the fight.
The 2026 Canadian Wildfire season has been a challenging one in many parts of the country, with blazes destroying homes across multiple provinces and territories.
In June and July, fires levelled forests and destroyed homes in the N.W.T and Ontario. In recent weeks the interior of B.C. has become a wildfire battleground with multiple communities in the province’s Okanagan region having experienced fires which have levelled hundreds of homes and killed one person prompting the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) to request international assistance.
Several countries have answered the call, with roughly 200 Mexican firefighters and 40 Australian and New Zealand personnel currently deployed or on their way to assist in British Columbia. This is in addition to another group of over 100 Mexican firefighters who deployed to Ontario in late July.
Meanwhile in the Yukon, several teams of trained firefighters have been sitting idle, according to the Yukon First Nations Wildfire agency (YFNW).
“Right now there are hundreds of international firefighters helping fight fires across the country and we are grateful but we have trained and ready Yukon First Nation crews sitting on the sidelines and they could be doing that job a lot closer to home,” said YFNW CEO Nick Mauro.
According to Mauro, the root cause for YFNW crews sitting idle while fires rage seems to reside in the layers of government bureaucracy that govern the training and certification of firefighters at various levels of proficiency.
In Canada, wildland fire firefighting falls under the jurisdiction of provincial and territorial governments. Every government operates wildland firefighting resources a little bit differently. However, there are some broad similarities.
Across the country, wildland firefighting crews typically fall into two classifications, Type 1 and Type 2.
Type 1 firefighters are what most people likely imagine when they think about wildland firefighting. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) sets the standards for all personnel types in Canada. According to the CIFFC, Type 1 firefighters are typically the primary response force on a wildfire incident.
Type 1 personnel receive the highest level of training in wildfire response tactics and techniques. Type 1 personnel are able to be tasked to respond to high intensity fires and are often utilized for “direct attack” operations when fire crews engage a fire head on. Type 1 crews are the most common type employed by government firefighting agencies.
Type 2 firefighters make up the next classification. Typically receiving a lower level of training, Type 2 personnel are more often used on low to moderate intensity fires or in “indirect attack” operations when personnel engage a fire from the flanks or well ahead of the fire front.
A Type 3 classification also exists though is somewhat less common. Type 3 personnel receive training in the basics of firefighting tactics and techniques and are typically tasked with “mop up” operations after a fire has been mostly suppressed.
In addition to the major type classifications, fire crews can be organized to undertake either initial attack or expanded attack roles.
An initial attack crew typically consists of a smaller team between three and eight firefighters tasked with responding to and suppressing newly detected wildfires quickly to prevent them from becoming large fires.
An expanded attack crew is usually larger, typically consisting of around 20 personnel. Expanded attack crews, sometimes referred to as a Sustained Action crews, are the firefighters tasked with undertaking longer term fire suppression work when fires become larger than an initial attack crew can handle. On very large wildfires, expanded attack crews may work on the same fire in the same area for several weeks or even months, spanning multiple work shifts.
In the Yukon, the territory’s Wildland Fire Management agency (WFM) operates 26 Initial Attack crews consisting of 3 firefighters per crew. These crews are staffed by both government employees and personnel contracted by the government from other parties, such as YFNW and several independent Yukon First Nation’s development corporations. All initial attack personnel in the Yukon are trained and certified to the Type 1 standard by WFM.
This season, Wildland Fire Management also contracted one 20-person expanded attack crew from YFNW. Since this crew was not trained or certified by the Yukon government, these personnel are classed as a Type 2 crew.
It is this difference in classification that Mauro said keeps some YFNW personnel on the sidelines during wildfire emergencies.
When a jurisdiction is overwhelmed by more wildfire incidents than its own resources can manage, as was recently the case in B.C., it can request assistance from other jurisdictions in Canada and from international partners through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre under the Mutual Aid Resource Sharing Agreement. The centre then coordinates the movement and deployment of the requested resources when and where they are available.
However, the type of resource being requested is decided by the requesting agency and neither CIFFC nor partner agencies can send other types of resources without a specific request.
“It’s a brokered process, and that process is such because it lets agencies make requests about what they need,” said Yukon Wildfire Information Officer Mike Fancie in an interview.
“So we don’t shop crews around, we don’t, we don’t offer things that aren’t asked for.”
According to Fancie, YFNW’s Type 2 Expanded Attack crews did not meet the criteria to fill in B.C.’s request for personnel during recent wildfires.
“To the best of my knowledge, the service that the YFNW [Expanded Attack] crew is qualified to provide wasn’t something that was being asked of us to provide,” said Fancie.
Situations like this are a continued source of frustration for Mauro. He said YFNW’s crews all train to a level that exceeds the Type 1 firefighter standard but are unable to obtain Type 1 classification unless they have been trained and certified by a government agency.
“The system that we operate in was not built with Indigenous crews in mind,” said Mauro.
“So right now a non-government organization can train to the exact same standard or like in our case, exceed it and still can’t achieve the same certification that a government resource gets automatically.”
According to Fancie, the issue is more nuanced than whether a crew is employed by the government or a private contractor.
“I think that there are more layers to it than that. The interagency exchange standards are quite specific, and it really is a complex standard,” said Fancie.
“There’s training, and then there’s on the job experiential feedback. Let’s say you’re a new firefighter and you go through all the training, and you’ve done like the 10 day [course] and all the associated stuff, you’re not certified yet.”
Fancie said that a Type 2 certification doesn’t make YFNW’s crews any less valuable in the overall fire community.
“We need to be really reluctant to talk about groups as better than or less than,” Fancie said. “They’re different levels of training, and they both have a job to play in the wildfire industry,” he said.
Fancie also highlighted that WFM supported YFNW’s Type 2 expanded attack crews deployment to wildfires in the N.W.T. by agreeing to end a guaranteed work contract with YFNW in order to allow their expanded attack crews to deploy in the east, helping to protect the communities of Fort Simpson and Wrigley earlier this summer.
“They did good work in Fort Simpson to keep a community safe, and we were able to support them in doing that by taking a guaranteed work contract and ending it, so that they could go do so,” Fancie said.
Going forward, YFNW hopes to continue working with territorial and provincial governments to support wildfire operations while working to expand Indigenous firefighters’ access to firelines across Canada.
There is reason to be optimistic according to Mauro, with the groups like the Indigenous Wildfire Operations Circle (IWOC) slowly shifting the conversation around Indigenous-led wildland firefighting.
“The discussions are in their infancy, there’s been some commitment to work,” said Mauro.
“I’m excited to be a part of IWOC and to represent the Yukon in this matter.”
Mauro also said that YFNW hopes to continue working with government partners like the Yukon government to advance Indigenous participation in wildfire operations.
“We really like to work with the Yukon government as well as other provincial governments to identify and remove barriers before the next emergency,” Mauro said.
“YFNW is prepared to engage with territorial, provincial or federal partners to find a path forward. The door is always open on our end and we’re ready to go.”
Contact reporter Noah Korver at noah.korver@yukon-news.com
By Noah Korver, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Aug 28, 2026 at 11:56
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