Canada is tracking toward its fourth-worst wildfire season in recorded history, with more than 40,000 square kilometres burned so far - an area close to the size of Nova Scotia - according to federal officials. Yet property and casualty insurers say the financial impact has remained within manageable bounds. The reason is geography, and it is the most important fact in this year's wildfire picture for any broker advising clients on wildfire-exposed property.
Federal forecasters said at an Ottawa briefing that September fire risk will run well above seasonal averages across northern British Columbia, northern Quebec and most of Labrador. Craig Oldham, director general of public safety and emergency preparedness, said 580 wildfires remain active nationally with 30 out of control. Federal assistance requests, however, have fallen sharply compared with 2025: eleven wildfire-related requests were received last year versus two so far in 2026.
Evacuations have also eased significantly. Natasha Klink of Indigenous Services Canada confirmed that 8,616 people have been displaced this year, down from roughly 49,000 in 2025, though this still represents the fourth-highest annual total on record. The Bald Range wildfire near Summerland and Peachland in British Columbia was the season's most damaging single event in populated areas, destroying or damaging roughly 150 structures and forcing more than 20,000 evacuations in August and prompting a provincial state of emergency. CBC News reported that affected homeowners face a complex insurance rebuilding process.
Morningstar DBRS has stated that wildfire losses are not translating into severe hits for the property and casualty sector, citing strong underwriting profitability, adequate pricing, and capital buffers. Major publicly traded Canadian insurers reported combined ratios below 95% in both their 2025 full-year and Q1 2026 results.
The explanation sits in the provincial distribution of this year's fires. British Columbia has seen approximately 43,000 hectares burned and Alberta approximately 18,000 hectares - both well below their 10-year averages, according to DBRS. Those two provinces are historically the costliest for wildfire insured losses because of their combination of dense forest, proximity to insured property, and the high rebuild values of residential and commercial structures in communities like Kelowna, Fort McMurray and their surrounding regions.
The bulk of this year's most extensive burning has instead occurred across northern Ontario and Quebec, in regions where property density and insured values are comparatively low. Thunder Bay 36 - Ontario's largest wildfire on record, burning more than 300,000 hectares - has produced devastating losses for First Nations communities but limited insured losses precisely because insurance penetration in those remote areas is structurally low, as Insurance Business Canada has previously reported.
The result is a season that looks catastrophic by burned area and does not look catastrophic by insured loss - and that distinction is one the headline figures do not convey.
Scientists caution that elevated September fire risk does not guarantee major fire growth in the forecast regions. Yan Boulanger of Natural Resources Canada said seasonal baseline fire danger in northern BC, northern Quebec and Labrador is typically low in September, meaning significant fire growth in those areas is not considered likely even under above-average risk conditions.
The worst wildfire season on record remains 2023, when more than 170,000 square kilometres burned nationally.
Wildfire is one component of a 2026 catastrophe season that has already recorded 14 declared events through early August, running close to the pace of 2023's record year of 26 events. The Canada Day-area Ontario and Quebec storms in late June and early July produced $439 million in insured damage, with Ottawa recording its highest daily July rainfall since records began. Canada's annual insured weather losses now average more than $3.7 billion over the past decade, up from $1.4 billion the decade before, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction estimates total catastrophe losses - insured and uninsured combined - at approximately $9.2 billion annually, growing at roughly 9.4% per year since the 1980s, outpacing GDP, population and construction spending. The IBC has identified 2024 as the costliest year on record for insured catastrophe losses at approximately $8.5 billion across more than 273,000 claims.
For brokers advising clients in British Columbia and Alberta on property insurance with wildfire exposure, the 2026 season provides specific and usable context for renewal conversations.
BC and Alberta clients facing premium increases on wildfire-exposed property this renewal cycle are doing so against a year in which those two provinces have seen well-below-average fire activity. The premium environment they are experiencing reflects the structural repricing that followed 2023's record season, the ongoing accumulation of catastrophe losses across Canada more broadly, and insurers' forward-looking assessment of climate trajectory rather than 2026's specific provincial fire experience.
That distinction is worth making explicit to clients who are comparing their 2026 premium to their 2026 local fire news and finding the connection hard to follow. The pricing is not responding to what has happened in their region this year. It is responding to what has happened nationally over the past several years, what climate modelling projects will continue to happen, and what reinsurance markets are charging to cover the aggregate exposure. A quiet BC wildfire season in 2026 is not grounds for a premium reduction any more than a quiet Atlantic hurricane season would be grounds for reducing Florida wind premiums.
IBC is renewing its calls for governments to restrict development in high-risk wildfire zones, fund community-level mitigation infrastructure, and strengthen building codes as the longer-term structural response to a loss trend that no single below-average season will reverse.
