BC's New Fire Safety AMPs: Up to $50,000 — But No One Has Been Fined Yet

The Office of the Fire Commissioner now has the power to impose administrative monetary penalties of up to $50,000 on a corporation for failing to comply with fire safety orders or specific obligations under the Fire Safety Act. As of March 2026, no public record shows these penalties being used.

The new Fire Safety Act came into force on August 1, 2024, the first substantial overhaul of BC's fire safety legislation since 1979. The change that matters for operators is administrative monetary penalties: up to $25,000 for an individual and $50,000 for a corporation. Each day of continuing non-compliance after an order is ignored can be treated as a separate contravention. Two weeks of accumulated daily contraventions at the corporate rate reaches seven figures.

Before August 2024, that kind of penalty didn't exist at the provincial level. Fire code violations went through the courts, which meant slow timelines and uncertain outcomes, with municipalities carrying most of the enforcement load. The AMP system changes that. It gives the OFC a tool that works more like a parking ticket than a criminal prosecution: issued directly, no courtroom required.

The first penalties haven't landed yet

The regime has been in force for nearly 20 months. Based on public sources available as of March 2026, no AMP register has appeared. The OFC's 2024 annual report does not publish enforcement metrics such as orders issued or penalties levied at the provincial level. Whether that means no AMPs have been issued or they simply haven't been disclosed isn't clear. Either way, the first wave of penalties under this system is either very small or still coming.

That won't last. The legislation exists precisely because the old tools weren't working. The OFC didn't get this power to leave it on the shelf.

Why BC, and why now

The context matters for BC operators: the province has 30% more structural fires per capita than Ontario. In 2021, BC recorded 775 structural fires per million residents; Ontario recorded 594.¹ Ontario's structural fire count dropped 45% between 2005 and 2021 (from 15,490 to 8,450). BC's rose 26% over the same period (from 3,124 to 3,928).

Part of the explanation is enforcement intensity. Ontario's Fire Marshal has long run an aggressive inspection regime. The new Fire Safety Act gives BC a tool to move in the same direction.

The scale of the problem is real. In 2024, BC recorded 12,072 fires with total losses exceeding $663 million, and structure fires accounted for 4,063 of them. For residential structure fires, cooking equipment accounts for roughly 25% of ignition sources, and smokers' materials account for a similar share, both squarely within what a functioning fire safety plan addresses.

What fire inspectors actually write orders for

The penalty doesn't follow a fire. It follows non-compliance with an inspector's order or a failure to provide requested records. That's an important distinction. The first operators to receive an AMP probably won't be the ones who had a kitchen fire. They'll be the ones who got a routine inspection, received an order to fix something, and didn't move on it.

The things that trigger orders are ordinary: fire alarm test certificates not current, hood suppression systems with no maintenance record, exit routes partially blocked, a fire safety plan that doesn't match the current layout. None of these are expensive to fix. All of them are expensive to ignore under the new per-day penalty clock.

The fire safety plan question

Fire safety plans are consistently among the most out-of-date documents inspectors encounter. Evacuation routes that no longer match the floor layout, extinguisher service dates that have passed, and responsibility assignments naming former staff are all recurring findings.

Under the BC Fire Code, certain occupancies including assembly uses (restaurants and bars) are required to have a fire safety plan on site and kept current, available to the fire department on request. Hotels may have similar obligations under residential occupancy provisions. None of that is new. What's new is the consequence for having it out of date or missing entirely.

The fire plan sitting unreviewed in the back office and the expired extinguisher behind the bar were always violations. After an inspector writes an order to fix them, they become potential AMP violations carrying penalties of up to $50,000 for a corporation, with each day of continued non-compliance counted separately.

Based on available public sources as of March 2026, the OFC does not appear to have issued an AMP yet. Comparable regimes in other provinces have typically produced the first published penalties within 12 to 24 months of the statutory powers coming into force.