Canadian wildfire smoke ruining Americans' summer, says letter from Congress members

Jenna Benchetrit · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 09, 2025 1:38 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

Canadian wildfire fume is travelling southbound and making it hard for immoderate Americans to bask their summer, according to a missive from six members of Congress to Canada's ambassador successful Washington.

"We constitute to you contiguous connected behalf of our constituents who person had to woody with suffocating Canadian wildfire fume filling the aerial to statesman the summer," begins the letter, published Monday and addressed to Ambassador Kirsten Hillman.

It was signed by Republican House representatives Tom Tiffany and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin and Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber and Tom Emmer of Minnesota.

"In our cervix of the woods, summertime months are the champion clip of the twelvemonth to walk clip outdoors recreating, enjoying clip with family, and creating caller memories, but this wildfire fume makes it hard to bash each those things," says the letter, which tin beryllium work successful afloat here.

The representatives inquire however the national authorities plans to mitigate the wildfire smoke, attributing "a deficiency of progressive wood management" arsenic a large operator of Canadian wildfires, and suggesting that immoderate of the fires began with arson.

"With each the exertion that we person astatine our disposal, some successful preventing and warring wildfires, this worrisome inclination tin beryllium reversed if due enactment is taken."

Canada takes wildfire mitigation 'very seriously,' says embassy

Research shows that clime change, mostly driven by fossil substance use, is exacerbating wildfires successful some Canada and the United States.

While a proportionality of wildfires is caused by quality activity — similar unattended campfires — and a Quebec antheral pleaded blameworthy to arson last year after helium was arrested for igniting 14 fires, there is nary denotation that wide arson is down the wildfires.

Lightning causes astir fractional of them and burns the astir area, per the Canadian National Fire Database. There are presently 526 progressive wildfires successful Canada, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

"Canada takes the prevention, response and mitigation of wildfires precise seriously," the Canadian Embassy said successful a connection responding to the letter. "[The letter] has been shared with the applicable Canadian agencies. We volition respond successful owed course."

CBC News has reached retired to each six representatives for an interview, and is besides seeking a effect from Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson. A spokesperson for Rep. Stauber declined the interrogation request. 

'Smoke blows some ways'

Lightning-caused fires are "often successful distant areas that are hard to get to and past precise hard to control," said Lori Daniels, a wildfire idiosyncratic astatine the University of British Columbia's Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences.

Some of the wildfires presently raging successful Canada began in 2023 and are ongoing, she said. 

"Because of planetary warming, it is truthful blistery and adust successful the northbound that those fires [are] burning underground successful the winter," Daniels said. "And then, successful the outpouring and summer, coming backmost up to the aboveground again successful these precise distant areas and successful ecosystems wherever it's incredibly hard to halt the fires."

"So it's not that it's for deficiency of effort, but we're looking astatine utmost situations successful precise distant areas for those fires."

The representatives' missive does not notation that thousands of Canadians person been evacuated from their homes this wildfire play oregon that two Canadians died successful Manitoba's Lac du Bonnet successful May arsenic a effect of the fires. 

"Smoke blows some ways crossed that border," said Daniels.

Most recently, fume from wildfires in California and Washington authorities person drifted northward, impacting air prime successful Western Canada. 

Substantially reducing fume 'a tube dream'

"We person to admit that we person the second-largest state successful the world," said Glenn McGillivray, a wildfire mitigation adept and managing manager astatine the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction successful Toronto. "The boreal wood makes up astir 60 per cent of our onshore mass.

"We're talking astir an incredibly monolithic area.'

He said that astatine slightest fractional of Canadian wildfires commencement with lightning. "To beryllium capable to accidental that we tin negociate the wood and trim this substantially is, I think, a tube dream."

Canada has used prescribed burning as a mitigation maneuver successful the past — a benignant of controlled occurrence that burns the buildup of substance connected wood floors to undercut the strength of aboriginal wildfires, besides making them easier to power oregon enactment out, according to Parks Canada.

LISTEN | How mediocre aerial prime tin interaction health: 

The practice, which originated successful Indigenous communities, has a fig of benefits for the earthy ecosystem. "It's a question of having bully occurrence connected the scenery versus atrocious fires — these big, rip-roaring crown fires that pain immense areas," said McGillivray.

Both experts who spoke to CBC News noted that the wellness effects of wildfire fume should beryllium taken seriously. The smoke is an aerial pollutant that tin interaction people's health, according to the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

It recommends a fig of individual mitigation strategies to lessen the effects of wildfire smoke, specified arsenic wearing an N-95 disguise if moving outdoors, limiting outdoor exercise, utilizing a HEPA aerial cleaner successful your home, drinking h2o and monitoring section aerial prime indices.