{"id":547891,"date":"2026-07-18T17:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T17:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/547891\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T17:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T17:22:10","slug":"republicans-threaten-canada-with-sanctions-over-drifting-wildfire-smoke-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/547891\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans threaten Canada with sanctions over drifting wildfire smoke | Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"

US Republicans<\/a> are threatening to sanction Canada and Canadian government officials after smoke from devastating wildfires has drifted across huge swathes of the US, creating hazy conditions and dangerous air quality for tens of millions of Americans.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump on \u2060Friday blamed \u2060his country\u2019s northern neighbor for \u200bthe smoke spreading from \u2060wildfires and said he planned to call \u200bMark Carney, the Canadian prime \u200cminister, \u200c to \u200cask about Ottawa\u2019s plans for dealing with the blazes.<\/p>\n

In a post on Truth Social, the US president said the US had been \u201cinvaded\u201d by dirty air. \u201c[The] \u200ccost of this pollution \u200bmust of necessity be added \u2060to the TARIFFS Canada<\/a> \u200bis currently \u200bpaying,\u201d \u200bhe wrote.<\/p>\n

It comes a day after Bernie Moreno, a GOP senator of Ohio, said<\/a> he would introduce a bill next week \u201cto sanction Canada and the responsible Canadian government officials for this atrocity\u201d. In a statement<\/a> he said Canada\u2019s government had \u201cfailed to invest in wildfire prevention methods including forest thinning, fuel reduction, prescribed burns, and stronger enforcement against arson\u201d. Ohio shares a maritime border with the Canadian province of Ontario.<\/p>\n

Four Republican members of the House who represent Michigan, another state along the northern border, also wrote<\/a> to Carney to say: \u201cIf 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<\/p>\n

Asked about the American accusations, Carney told reporters on Thursday: \u201cFighting climate change is the responsibility of all countries, including the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

The premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, said on Friday that the US could offer more aid to fight the fires, as Canada has done for its neighbor in the past. \u201cMaybe what you should do rather than complain is send support, send help,\u201d Ford said. \u201cBecause we have done the exact same thing for our American friends, and that\u2019s what you\u2019re supposed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fires are also blazing across the US, in what the National Interagency Fire Center deems an above-average year<\/a>. So far this year, more than 5,740 sq miles<\/a> of the US has burned from wildfires, which is 31% more than the average of the previous 10 years to this date. The amount of US land burned each year in the 2020s \u2013 averaged out over a decade \u2013 is now more than twice what it was 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

In northern Minnesota<\/a>, more than 63,000 acres have burned, while wildfires in Oregon<\/a>, Washington, and Idaho, have also been reported, contributing to the smoke that Canadians must also contend with, as smoke from US wildfires drifts north and affects air quality.<\/p>\n

The sun rises over Toronto\u2019s waterfront through dense wildfire smoke as poor air quality persists across the city on Thursday. Photograph: NurPhoto\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s largest fire, near Ontario\u2019s remote Wabakimi provincial park, is reportedly spread across 787,802 acres (318,812 hectares). It is among 191 out-of-control and large fires that were burning as of Friday morning.<\/p>\n

Thousands of people in the province have been evacuated and at least one First Nations community has been erased in the fires<\/a>. On Wednesday, Toronto, also in the midst of a record-breaking heatwave, had the worst air quality in the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nearly 6m acres are estimated to have burned, less than a quarter of land consumed by blazes when Canadian wildfire smoke last blanketed the US in 2023.<\/p>\n

The planet\u2019s heating climate \u2013 driven by human activities \u2013 is causing warmer, drier conditions in the summer, which is amplifying wildfire activity, making extreme wildfires more intense, frequent and large. There is also a growing trend of the wildfire season \u2013 which is part of the natural cycle \u2013 becoming longer.<\/p>\n

The US is, by far, the world\u2019s largest oil-and-gas-producing nation<\/a>, and has historically emitted more greenhouse gases than any other country, making it a key driver of the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

And in the last year and a half, Trump has taken a sledgehammer to US climate policy, bolstering the domestic fossil fuel industry while aggressively rolling back environmental protections and regulations in order to expand oil and gas exploration, and reviving the coal sector. He has also targeted renewable energy industries, blocking millions of dollars in funding earmarked for clean energy projects, and targeted state laws addressing pollution.<\/p>\n

The actions come as the administration has suppressed climate research and dismantled key agencies through mass firings of federal workers in fields such as climate and conservation work, weather forecasting and wildlife monitoring.<\/p>\n

In another instance, the administration has moved to shutter several government labs<\/a> that studied how wildfires affect human health, air quality, wildlife habitat and forest ecosystems, which some scientists warned in May could hinder efforts to protect people and the environment from wildfires as soon as this summer.<\/p>\n

On Friday, about 109 million people remained affected by poor air quality across the US midwest, mid-Atlantic and north-east.<\/p>\n

The pungent wildfire smoke blanketed cities such as Chicago<\/a> and Detroit<\/a>, where residents on Friday were warned to stay indoors and reduce activity levels after the air quality index reached a \u201chazardous\u201d 361, according to the government website AirNow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The smoke also drifted into Baltimore<\/a> and Washington DC<\/a> overnight, creating very unhealthy air quality with index values of 281 and 247, respectively, as of 6am eastern time. In New York City<\/a>, where smoke has blanketed the city since Tuesday, air quality stood at an \u201cunhealthy\u201d 184 early on Friday. It later improved to 124, a reading considered \u201cUnhealthy for Sensitive Groups\u201d.<\/p>\n

Philadelphia and Cleveland had readings considered \u201cvery unhealthy\u201d at about 260. Other parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, also recorded readings in the \u201chazardous\u201d range.<\/p>\n

Organizers of the World Cup final in East Rutherford, New Jersey<\/a>, will be watching the smoke patterns carefully: smoke currently over the mid-Atlantic is expected to blow back up into the north-east.<\/p>\n

Wildfire smoke kills tens of thousands of people each year<\/a>, attacking nearly every system in the human body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US Republicans are threatening to sanction Canada and Canadian government officials after smoke from devastating wildfires has drifted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-547891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}