--- title: BC's Structural Fires Rose 26% While Ontario's Fell 45% description: Ontario cut structural fires 45% between 2005 and 2021. BC's rose 26%. StatsCan's 17-year data, and the enforcement gap that tracks it. source: Duty Room source_url: https://dutyroom.com published_on: '2026-09-03' updated_on: '2026-07-03' market: ca submarket: bc sectors: - all canonical_url: https://dutyroom.com/ca/bc/reports/fire-rate-vs-ontario data_vintage: 2005-2021 --- # BC's Structural Fires Rose 26% While Ontario's Fell 45% Ontario cut structural fires 45% between 2005 and 2021. BC's rose 26%. StatsCan's 17-year data, and the enforcement gap that tracks it. Between 2005 and 2021, Ontario cut its structural fire count from 15,490 to 8,450, a 45% reduction. BC went the other way: 3,124 structural fires in 2005, 3,928 in 2021, a 26% increase. Ontario started the period with four times BC's fires and ended it with under three times, not because Ontario grew complacent but because Ontario shrank its problem while BC held roughly steady. The numbers come from Statistics Canada's National Fire Information Database, Table 35-10-0192-01, covering every reported fire incident in both provinces from 2005 through 2021. What follows is a 17-year comparison of how two provinces produced radically different outcomes. ## How the gap opened Ontario's fall came fastest before 2010, then flattened into a slower drift with occasional upticks. The five-year averages strip out that year-to-year noise: the ON/BC ratio narrowed from 4.0 in 2005-2009 to 2.7 in 2015-2019. ![Ontario's annual structural fires fell from 15,490 in 2005 to 8,450 in 2021 while BC's rose from 3,124 to 3,928, with BC's 2021 spike the highest point in its series.](https://dutyroom.com/figures/ca/bc/on-bc-fire-gap.png) | Year | BC | Ontario | | --- | --- | --- | | 2,005 | 3,124 | 15,490 | | 2,006 | 3,413 | 14,841 | | 2,007 | 3,545 | 15,338 | | 2,008 | 3,668 | 13,318 | | 2,009 | 3,609 | 11,108 | | 2,010 | 3,212 | 10,546 | | 2,011 | 3,151 | 9,583 | | 2,012 | 3,258 | 9,834 | | 2,013 | 3,303 | 9,266 | | 2,014 | 3,215 | 9,220 | | 2,015 | 3,260 | 8,870 | | 2,016 | 3,167 | 8,796 | | 2,017 | 3,220 | 8,187 | | 2,018 | 3,069 | 8,544 | | 2,019 | 3,180 | 8,145 | | 2,020 | 3,120 | 8,267 | | 2,021 | 3,928 | 8,450 | Structural fires per year, BC and Ontario, 2005 to 2021. Ontario's count fell 45% while BC's rose 26%; BC's 2021 spike is the highest point in its series. Source: Statistics Canada, National Fire Information Database, Table 35-10-0192-01. BC's five-year averages drifted down only slightly through the middle years before the 2021 spike pulled the annual count to its highest level in the series. ## What happened in Ontario Ontario's reduction happened alongside an active enforcement system. Municipal fire departments inspect premises, issue orders, and prosecute violations through the provincial courts, with the Ontario Fire Marshal setting standards, investigating serious fires, and overseeing the system. Toronto alone inspected 9,268 properties and charged 915 property owners or occupants in 2024. Across the province, court records and municipal press releases document roughly 75 to 80 convictions under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act since 2009. Enforcement is municipal, and Ontario keeps no central public register of fire code convictions, but the prosecutions are visible where they happen. The correlation is a signal rather than proof. The data can't rule out other differences between the provinces, from reporting completeness in the two fire databases to urbanization and the age of building stock, and the piece of the gap each factor explains isn't something these numbers can settle. ## The enforcement gap BC's model is different. The Office of the Fire Commissioner publishes fire incident statistics but, as of July 2026, publishes no enforcement data: no inspection counts, no orders issued, no penalties levied. Municipal fire departments conduct inspections independently. Vancouver Fire Rescue Services reported 20,481 life safety inspections in 2024 with a 12.3% violation rate. Surrey reported 8,034 inspections with initial compliance declining from 79% to 74% over five years. Beyond those two cities, enforcement data is sparse. There is no provincial register of fire safety enforcement actions. The new [Fire Safety Act](https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/document/id/complete/statreg/16019), in force since August 1, 2024, brought in administrative monetary penalties BC fire enforcement never had before, with maximums of $25,000 for an individual and $50,000 for a corporation. As of July 2026, nearly two years after the Act came into force, no penalties have been published under this regime. The rules have changed. The consequences haven't materialised. That creates a window where compliance investment feels optional, which is exactly the environment that lets structural fire rates drift upward while Ontario's come down. Surrey's five-year compliance trend captures it in microcosm: initial fire code compliance among inspected premises dropped from 79% to 74% between 2020 and 2024, so more businesses are failing their first inspection. Whether the new AMP powers reverse that trend depends entirely on whether they get used. ## Inside BC's structural fire numbers Seventeen years of StatsCan data, 56,442 structural fires total, averaging 3,320 per year. The breakdown by property type reveals where the risk concentrates and where it's growing. Residential fires dominate: 70.4% of all structural fires over the full period. The share never drops below two-thirds in any year of the series. But within the commercial categories, the shifts are stark. ![Structural fires in BC by property type, 2005 against 2021. Business use and personal service premises rose 81% while assembly venues — restaurants, bars and hotels — fell 20%.](https://dutyroom.com/figures/ca/bc/fire-property-type-shift.png) | Property type | 2,005 | 2,021 | Change | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Business use/personal service | 59 | 107 | +81% | | Residential | 2,132 | 2,817 | +32% | | Institutional | 25 | 33 | +32% | | Storage property | 158 | 188 | +19% | | Mercantile | 103 | 120 | +17% | | Assembly | 213 | 171 | -20% | | Industrial | 139 | 99 | -29% | Change in BC structural fires by property type, 2005 to 2021. Assembly venues fell while the broader commercial base rose. Source: Statistics Canada, National Fire Information Database, Table 35-10-0192-01. Business use and personal service fires, the category that captures offices, salons, spas, and many service-oriented hospitality premises, grew from 59 fires in 2005 to 107 in 2021: small absolute numbers, but an 81% rise. Assembly fires, the category that includes restaurants, bars, hotels, theatres, and community venues, declined 20%. That is genuinely good news for traditional hospitality venues. But the combined picture across all commercial categories tells a different story. ## One commercial fire per day Add up the three categories most relevant to commercial premises: assembly, mercantile, and business use. Over 17 years, StatsCan recorded 6,384 fires in these categories. That is 376 per year, roughly one per day across BC. The daily average held stable through the period. What changed was the composition. Assembly fires fell. Business fires surged. The total stayed about the same, but the risk shifted from traditional hospitality venues toward the broader commercial property base. For a restaurant or hotel operator, the relevant question is whether the decline in assembly fires reflects better fire safety practices in those specific venues or simply reclassification and reporting changes over time. The StatsCan data can't answer that definitively. What it does show: across the full range of commercial properties where hospitality businesses operate, the fire rate has not improved. ## The 2021 spike and what came after 2021 was an outlier. BC recorded 9,292 total fires that year, a 29% jump from 7,194 in 2020. The BC heat dome in late June and the catastrophic wildfire season drove much of the increase. Outdoor fires surged by 1,178, accounting for 56% of the year-over-year increase. Structural fires rose by 808, a significant but secondary effect. That outlier year is also the only one in the series where the per-capita comparison looks dramatic. In 2021, BC's rate works out to 785 structural fires per million residents (3,928 fires across 5,000,879 people, per the 2021 Census) against Ontario's 594 (8,450 fires across 14,223,942 people). The 32% gap is real, but it is measured at the peak of BC's series. The more concerning signal comes from what happened after. The Office of the Fire Commissioner's 2024 annual report recorded 12,072 total fires and 4,063 structural fires. That structural figure, 4,063, is modestly above the 2021 StatsCan count of 3,928. The two data sources use different methodologies, so direct comparison requires caution. What the 2024 figure does show: BC's structural fire count stayed above the elevated 2021 mark. ## The dollar cost The OFC's 2024 report puts total fire losses at more than $663 million across 12,072 incidents. Structure fires specifically: 4,063 fires, 49 deaths, 266 injuries. The leading ignition sources, each at 25%, were cooking and smokers' materials. For a single commercial premises, the direct cost of a fire is catastrophic. But the indirect costs compound it: business interruption, insurance premium increases, potential regulatory action, and reputational damage. A restaurant that suffers a kitchen fire doesn't just rebuild the kitchen. It loses weeks or months of revenue, faces heightened scrutiny from insurers and fire inspectors on reopening, and enters its next insurance renewal with a claim on the record. BC's new Fire Safety Act AMPs add a regulatory cost that didn't exist before August 2024. A corporate penalty of up to $50,000 on top of fire damage, insurance consequences, and lost revenue. For a worst-case compliance scenario across all five regulatory domains a BC hospitality operator faces, see [The $186,000 Year](https://dutyroom.com/ca/bc/reports/the-186k-year). ## What this means for premises operators Ontario cut structural fires 45% over seventeen years. BC's rose 26%, business-use fires nearly doubled off a small base, and roughly one commercial premises catches fire every day in this province. The new Fire Safety Act gives the OFC administrative monetary penalties for the first time, but no published enforcement record yet exists to show those tools in action. The fire inspection that matters most is the one that happens before a fire. Vancouver and Surrey publish their inspection data. The province doesn't. If you operate outside those two cities, you may have no visibility into local fire enforcement intensity until an inspector arrives. The data in this report covers 2005 through 2021 from Statistics Canada's National Fire Information Database, supplemented by the OFC's 2024 Annual Statistical Report. Per-capita rates, five-year averages, and category totals are Duty Room analysis of that data. Population figures use the 2021 Census of Population (Statistics Canada table 12-581-x). Municipal enforcement statistics come from the Vancouver Fire Rescue Services and Surrey Fire Service 2024 annual reports. Ontario inspection and prosecution figures come from municipal reporting and a Duty Room compilation of court records and municipal press releases. The Fire Safety Act provisions reference the statute as enacted August 1, 2024. WorkSafeBC penalties and cross-domain cost modelling are covered separately in [Penalties Doubled in 2025](https://dutyroom.com/ca/bc/reports/worksafebc-penalties-2025) and [The $186,000 Year](https://dutyroom.com/ca/bc/reports/the-186k-year). --- Published by [Duty Room](https://dutyroom.com/ca/bc/), software for organizing, tracking, and evidencing operational compliance.