Petition: Their Community Burned in Under an Hour. Nobody Warned Them It Was Coming.

On July 13, 2026, fire jumped the natural breaks around Namaygoosisagagun First Nation in northwestern Ontario, also known as Collins First Nation. Within less than an hour, much of the community was gone. Families crossed the lake at night in small boats carrying what they could hold. Everyone got out alive. The homes, the buildings and the infrastructure did not. Days earlier, the chief had asked the federal government whether the fire posed a threat and been told it did not. No emergency alert ever reached the community. Chief Helen Paavola later told the Assembly of First Nations that her community was destroyed without warning from any ministry and without assistance from anyone. That same week, roughly 180 wildfires were burning across Ontario and the province was formally asking Ottawa for air Support because it did not have the resources to cope. Please sign the petition demanding Ontario restore full wildfire emergency funding and put mandatory evacuation alerts in place for every at-risk community.

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The funding numbers are the part that is hardest to explain. Ontario spent $271 million on emergency firefighting in 2025-26. Its 2026-27 budget plans for $150 million, a reduction of roughly 44 percent, announced as one of the worst fire seasons in provincial history was already underway. More than 884,000 acres have burned in Ontario this year and thirteen communities have been evacuated, most of them First Nations. Premier Doug Ford has defended the budget, saying the province will spend beyond the $150 million base if it is needed and that it will not spare a penny, and four federally funded water-bombing helicopters have been sent to assist. Critics counter that budgeting for less than half of what you spent last year is not a plan, and that the province exceeded its wildfire budget in almost every recent year. There is also a structural problem underneath it: Ontario expects municipalities to part-fund emergency management through property taxes, but almost no First Nation in Ontario has a property tax regime, so the model simply does not reach them. Nishnawbe Aski Nation handed the province a wildfire plan with 20 recommendations five years ago and says it received no response. One Green Planet has covered the wider pattern in how climate change is affecting annual heatwaves, and reporting on the funding cut is available via CBC News.

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