Some Americans Are Trapped Inside Thanks to Canada’s Air Pollution: US Lawmakers Demand Action

What’s clear to Republican legislators is that hazy American skies due to Canadian wildfires are not a fluke of nature.

Instead, as Americans suffer their third year in a row of seeing haze thanks to Canada, the forest practices of America’s northern neighbor need to change, GOP lawmakers say, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin said technologies exist that “can detect fire very early on” and then aid in suppressing them.

“I would urge Canada to do that — it’s time,” Tiffany said. “We’re seeing events across Wisconsin being canceled. People are not able to go outside in what’s the most wonderful time of the year.”

Tiffany and Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman sent a letter to Canadian Ambassador Kirsten Hillman last month, writing that a key cause of the fires Canadian wildfires has been “a lack of active forest management.”

“With all the technology that we have at our disposal, both in preventing and fighting wildfires, this worrisome trend can be reversed if proper action is taken,” they wrote.

This air quality map should anger every American.

Canadian wildfires are wreaking havoc on the environment, wildlife, precious resources, and our air quality.

It’s getting worse every summer.

Canada needs to figure it out…& pursue strong forest management/restoration efforts pic.twitter.com/LJQ6VzT08R

— Benji Backer (@BenjiBacker) August 1, 2025

Republican state Rep. Calvin Callahan said in a statement that enough is enough.

“People in northern Wisconsin are fed up with waking up to hazy skies and hazardous air because Canada refuses to get its forest fires under control,” he said. “This is a public-health crisis, an economic burden, and an affront to our way of life. Canada’s mismanagement is hurting Wisconsinites.”

“Canada’s mismanagement and inadequate prevention of its forest wildfires are becoming our problem, and that’s not acceptable,” he said. “Our farmers, loggers, and small business owners don’t get to shrug off their responsibilities and neither should Canada.”

Callahan said Americans can solve the problem if Canadians can’t.

“We’ve got some of the most skilled foresters in the country right here in northern Wisconsin, if Canada needs a crash course in wildfire prevention, I’m sure we can teach them a thing or two,” he wrote.

Two years ago, Kenneth P. Green, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, pondered why, if climate change is global, it became the hobgoblin for the fires in Canada.

“Is it clear that Canada’s fire issues are climate-driven? Unless one believes that inverse correlations suggest causality, the answer is no,” he wrote.

He noted that although the temperature in the atmosphere has risen from 1970 to 2017, Canada’s forest fires dropped in number during that time.

He noted that a 2020 study from the journal “Progress in Disaster Science” wrote that, “A major barrier in Canada… is the inadequate funding to support the vision of an innovative and integrated approach to wildfire management.

“Mitigation funding has followed wildfire disasters but not at the same level to mitigate flood and earthquake disasters. Despite the increasing occurrence of wildfire disasters in Canada, funding to support wildfire prevention, mitigation and preparedness have not kept pace with the increasing need to mitigate the impacts from wildfires, and be better prepared when they do arrive,” the study wrote.

Michigan has had three straight summers of smoke and pollution from Canadian wildfires.

That’s not right.

I sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister urging action. It’s time to work together to protect our people, our d border, and our air.👇🏾 pic.twitter.com/Jgezj2nF7x

— Rep. John James (@RepJames) August 1, 2025

In words that resonate two years after they were written, Green noted, “Canada is having a hell of a fire season, there’s no disputing that. And it’s producing hellish landscapes across Canada and North America. What it is not, however, is a call to more of the same old ‘climate action.’ But rather, a call for more sane real-world real-time management of fire risk in Canada’s forests, a practice that Canadian governments have failed at for decades.”

“One can only hope that this fire season will light a fire under Canada’s fire-foolish policymakers, and finally motivate them to take the rational course—fighting fire risk with fire use, rather than pointing to the climate sky gods and calling for appeasement measures that will not affect Canada’s risk of forest fires,” he wrote.

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