A silly request from silly people

Six Republican members of the United States Congress have written a letter to Kristen Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, complaining about the “suffocating Canadian wildfire smoke filling the air.” They are demanding to know “how your government plans on mitigating wildfire and the smoke that makes its way south.”

The legislators allege that “a key driver of this issue has been a lack of active forest management,” and claim that “we’ve also seen things like arson as another way multiple large wildfires have ignited in Canada.”

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

In response, the Canadian embassy in Washington said that “Canada takes the prevention, response and mitigation of wildfires very seriously.” That’s a more polite response than the letter deserved.

We agree with Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, who on Thursday said that “This is what turns people off politics … When you’ve got a group of congresspeople trying to trivialize and make hay out of a wildfire season where we’ve lost lives in our province.”

He added that “If you can’t get likes on Instagram from your own skills as a politician, don’t bother trying to throw other people under the bus during a state of emergency.”

That’s a tough response, but Kinew could have gone much further. He could have pointed out, for example, that forest fire smoke crosses the Canada-U.S. border in both directions and that parts of Canada have often been blanketed with smoke from U.S. forest fires over the past number of years, causing discomfort and inconvenience for Canadians.

When that happens, we don’t demand that the U.S. government explain how it plans to mitigate the fire and the smoke that makes its way north. We don’t do that because it would be insensitive and scientifically silly.

Kinew could have also mentioned that Canadians are always among the first to respond to severe wildfires in the U.S. with water bombers and crews on the ground. They continually put their lives at risk in order to protect Americans’ lives and property, and this is the thanks they get?

He could have also made clear that the majority of wildfires in Canada are ignited by lightning, with only a small fraction caused by arson.

Kinew could have also discussed the fact that the extreme heat we often endure in Canada almost always originates in the U.S., as do many of the severe storms we regularly experience. Many of our worst snowstorms originate as “Colorado lows.”

Should the premier be writing to the U.S. government, demanding that they do more to stop rain, wind and snow at the U.S border? Of course not, because it would be an absurd request.

Then again, we recall that U.S. President Donald Trump made the ridiculous argument during his first term that forest fires in California could have been prevented if the state was more diligent in raking its forest floors. Perhaps the six U.S. congress members believe that Canadian forest fires can be prevented if we regularly rake our forests.

If so, it exposes how tragically uninformed they are about the cataclysmic role that climate change is playing in the wildfire crisis that is unfolding across the globe — a crisis so serious that it was a key issue at the recent G7 conference.

The United States continues to be a major emitter of greenhouse gases and those fumes, which are carried over Canada by the wind, are causing higher temperatures in both our nations. That, in turn, is resulting in increasingly intense wildfires that pose an escalating danger to lives and property on both sides on the border.

If the six Congress members are genuinely concerned about the impact of wildfire smoke on their constituents, they should direct their efforts toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions in America. What they should not be doing, however, is stigmatizing Canadians who are victims of the harm caused by America’s reckless refusal to acknowledge the threat posed by climate change.

If those members are genuinely interested in knowing how Canada plans to mitigate wildfire and the smoke that makes its way south, that effort begins with urging Americans to start taking climate change seriously so that their greenhouse gas emissions stop causing wildfires in our nation.

Until then, they should keep their clickbait concerns to themselves.