Six Republican representatives sent a letter to the Canada Ambassador to the United States to claim actions from the Canadian government in the face of forest fires. According to them, the fires cause scrolls of smoke beyond the border, even in their respective states.
In a letter sent to the Canadian ambassador to the United States on Tuesday, Kirsten Hillman, Republican representatives Tom Tiffany, Brad Finstad, Tom Emmer, Michelle Fischbach, Glenn Grothman and Pete Stauber, Wisconsin and Minnesota, claim that their voters are facing the suffocating smoke of Forest Forest.
The letter evokes the 2023 forest fire season in Canada, the worst never recorded. The fires that ravaged the country that year projected thick smoke to the United States and even beyond the Atlantic Ocean, to Northern Europe.
While we are entering the peak of the fire season, we would like to know how your government plans to attenuate the forest fires and the smoke which spreads south
indicates the letter.
Tom Emmer, Whip of the majority in the House of Representatives, walks near the House of Representatives at the Capitol of the United States, on July 2, 2025, in Washington.
Photo : Getty Images / Andrew Harnik
Legislators say that successive years of forest fires in Canada have degraded air quality in their respective and private states, the Americans of the possibility of taking advantage of summer. They show the finger at forest management and criminal fires as a possible factors for triggering fires. However, they do not mention climate change.
The signatories of the letter urged Ms. Hillman to transmit their concerns to Ottawa, in particular to Natural Resources Canada and to the Canadian Forest Service.
Thanks to all the technologies we have, both to prevent and to fight forest fires, this disturbing trend can be reversed if appropriate measures are taken.
Canada takes the prevention and attenuation of forest fires very seriously as well as the response to them
The Canada Embassy said in the United States in response to the letter. The letter has been sent to the Canadian agencies concerned and we will respond to it in due time.
“Difficult to master” lights
According to the national database on Canada forest fires (BNDFFC), lightning is at the origin of about half of forest fires. It is also the lights caused by lightning that burn the largest forest area.
The fires caused by lightning occur often in remote areas, difficult to access and [sont] very difficult to master
explains Lori Daniels, specialist in forest fires in the Department of Forest Sciences and Conservation of the University of British Columbia.
Due to global warming, it is so hot and dry in the north that these fires burn underground during the winter, continues Ms. Daniels. Then, in spring and summer, they rise to the surface in these very remote areas and in ecosystems where it is incredibly difficult to stop fires.
It is therefore not for lack of effort, but we face extreme situations in very remote areas.
Climate change
This letter comes at a tense time in Canada-American relations, due to the attempts of the American president, Donald Trump, to reorganize world trade through customs duties and his repeated calls to make Canada the American “51st state”. In addition, the two countries are looking to negotiate a new trade agreement by July 21.
Trump has already qualified climate change as prank
And his administration has dismissed all scientists working on a flagship climate report.
A helicopter releases water on a forest fire threatening a house on the hillside in the Pacific Palisades, California district in January 2025.
Photo : Getty Images / Mario Tama
Its administration has also deleted any mention of climate change in websites and government reports, and has frozen climate research.
In June, the American president signed a decree on prevention and the fight against forest fires, which did not mention climate change either.
In addition, Donald Trump attributed to the authorities of California the recent wave of devastating forest fires in the state, saying that they had poorly managed the attenuation of fires and their response to the braziers.
The president said that communities could prevent fires by clearing the combustible materials, such as the fallen branches and the brush.
Ottawa warned that Canada’s climate continues to warm up faster than the world average and that extreme weather conditions will become more frequent and more serious, contributing to an increase in droughts and forest fires.
With information from the Canadian press and Jenna Benchetrit, CBC
