{"id":807727,"date":"2026-07-17T11:31:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T11:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/807727\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T11:31:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T11:31:18","slug":"michigan-lawmakers-press-carney-on-poor-air-quality-from-wildfire-smoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/807727\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan lawmakers press Carney on poor air quality from wildfire smoke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A woman bikes along the waterfront in Toronto as wildfire smoke fills the city on Wednesday.Laura Proctor\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Some U.S. lawmakers on Thursday threatened to sanction Canada \u2013 or even possibly annex it entirely \u2013 as they raged about wildfire smoke blanketing many parts of Canada and swaths of the United States.<\/p>\n

Dozens of fires burning in northern Ontario have forced people from their communities and destroyed homes in Namaygoosisagagun First Nation north of Thunder Bay. Smoke from those fires is causing air quality warnings including across Ontario, and in multiple states including Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, New York and Indiana.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey Canada, \u2018just let it burn\u2019 is not a solution. Unless you want to become the 51st state, learn to manage your forests,\u201d Aric Nesbitt, a Republican state senator in Michigan, said in an online post.<\/p>\n

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno said in a post he will introduce a bill next week \u201cto sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Four Republican members of Congress in Michigan called on Canada to act on the smoke Wednesday, saying their patience has run out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are done accepting apologies in place of action. 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,\u201d they said in an open letter to Carney.<\/p>\n

Wildfire smoke from Ontario, northern Minnesota turns air hazardous in the U.S. Midwest<\/a><\/p>\n

Asked about the U.S. criticism during a Thursday news conference in London, Ont., Carney brushed it off. He said Canada is pursuing investments in clean energy, while the U.S. is actively working against clean energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cFighting climate change is the responsibility of all countries, including the United States,\u201d Carney said in French.<\/p>\n

U.S. environmental group BlueGreen Alliance this week said President Donald Trump\u2019s policies have cancelled or delayed 139 clean energy and industrial projects worth almost US$31 billion.<\/p>\n

Carney was forced to defend his own government\u2019s record on the environment Thursday.<\/p>\n

In a video posted in late June, the prime minister acknowledged that his policies will lead to higher greenhouse gas emissions than had been forecast under his predecessor. He insisted Canada needs to balance resource projects \u2013 including a new pipeline \u2013 with environmental investments.<\/p>\n

Responding to reporters\u2019 questions Thursday, Carney said the government is taking an investment-driven approach, which includes plans to double the size of Canada\u2019s electricity grid. He told reporters his government is building preconditions to reduce climate-altering carbon emissions into investments like the new pipeline agreement with Alberta.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you see is the investments or the major projects that we\u2019re helping to catalyze are low-carbon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Carney said Canada has \u201crelied too much on targets, laws, that weren\u2019t driving the actual investment that\u2019s necessary to reduce emissions. So we\u2019ve shifted our focus.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his government\u2019s climate strategy is focused on affordability in the short term. \u201cWe have amongst the lowest electricity costs in the world. We want to keep those,\u201d Carney said.<\/p>\n

Fires across northwestern Ontario force evacuations, trigger air quality warnings<\/a><\/p>\n

In their letter, the four members of Congress said their constituents in Michigan were living under air quality alerts.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur hospitals are once again treating children, dialysis patients, and older residents for the effects of smoke that did not originate anywhere near them,\u201d the letter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the third consecutive year we have had to write to Canadian officials about a crisis that Canada has the tools to prevent and has chosen not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those members of Congress, John James, wrote in a post Thursday: \u201cFINAL WARNING TO CANADA: Manage your forests to prevent these fires. American lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction, year after year.\u201d<\/p>\n

He followed that up with another post later in the day saying that it \u201csmells like Baghdad outside.\u201d<\/p>\n

The United States is grappling with its own fires this season. The National Interagency Fire Center says 39,764 fires have burned more than 3.67 million acres.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirefighters continue responding to incidents from Minnesota to the Pacific Northwest, Great Basin and Rocky Mountain areas,\u201d the centre said Thursday.<\/p>\n

A 56-year-old Canadian helicopter pilot from British Columbia died on July 12 when the aircraft he was piloting crashed while he was helping to fight fires in Colorado.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A woman bikes along the waterfront in Toronto as wildfire smoke fills the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,43,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,41,39,42,40,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-807727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}