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Some Americans contending with smoke from Canadian wildfires, including a group of Republican lawmakers, have been critical of their northern neighbor for what they say is a failure to control blazes that have consistently caused poor air quality in the United States.
But fires are simultaneously also blazing in the U.S., one of which led to the recent death of a Canadian firefighter — and Canada has contended with smoke that is not necessarily homegrown either, billowing up into the country from the U.S.
“If Canada will not manage its forests to prevent these fires, the United States will look elsewhere, and act on our own, to protect our people,” four Republican members of Congress from Michigan wrote in a letter to Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, on Wednesday.
On Thursday, a Michigan state lawmaker, Aric Nesbitt, joined the fray, echoing an annexation threat at times made by President Trump and telling Canada on social media, “Unless you want to become the 51st state, learn to manage your forests.”
The American accusations prompted Mr. Carney to point fingers as well when asked about them on Thursday. “Fighting climate change is the responsibility of all countries, including the United States,” he told reporters in French.
What Mr. Carney, who is under pressure domestically for “investment-driven” policies that environmentalists say could exacerbate climate change and the increasing wildfires that have come with it, did not point out is that Canada has, on multiple occasions, dealt with smoke from U.S. wildfires that has eroded its air quality.
In September 2020, fires in California, Oregon and Washington State burned more than five million acres and left millions of Americans under thick clouds of smoke and ash for weeks. Fires in Washington State and Oregon sent smoke billowing northward into Canada, eroding air quality and visibility.
“This has been primarily a U.S.-dominated wildfire season,” Armel Castellan, a warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation at the time.
The United States ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, who is from Michigan, took a more diplomatic approach to the two nations’ shared woes. In a post on social media on Wednesday, he said, “This challenge knows no borders. The United States will continue to coordinate closely with Canada, just as we have for more than four decades of shared wildfire emergencies.”
Indeed, there are fires burning in the U.S. as well, and they have touched Canadians, too.
The U.S. National Interagency Fire Center, which has touted its cooperation with Canadian firefighters, noted on Thursday that more than 150 new fires were reported nationwide the previous day, including six new large fires, and said firefighters were on Thursday working to contain more than four dozen “large fires across the country.”
On Sunday, Nicholas Dale, a Canadian helicopter pilot, died in a crash while “engaged in wildfire suppression efforts” in Colorado, according to the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office. Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado called the 56-year-old Canadian “a heroic firefighting pilot.”
