Now and Canada we fight about who is to blame for the fires

While the deadly fires were raging in the Canadian Province of Manitoba this summer, Republican legislators in nearby US countries wrote written letters asking Canada to be responsible for smoke that was raised south.

“Our sky chokes the smoke of a fire that we have not started and cannot control,” wrote Calvin Callahan, a Republican state representative of Wisconsin, in a letter since the beginning of August.

Callahan, together with the legislators from Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota, filed a formal appeal to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), calling for an investigation into fire management in Canada.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew quickly condemned the move, accusing MPs of throwing a “wooden belly” and playing “political games”.

By August, the fires in Manitoba have hit more than two million hectares, forcing thousands of evacuating and killing two persons-a pair of government, which the authorities were said to have been captured by fast flames around their family home.

As September is nearing its end, the data shows that in 2025, on the way to being in Canada’s second worst fire.

Published study In the journal The Nature in September He found that smoke from Canadian fires also had far -reaching, fatal consequences. It is estimated that the 2023 fires – the worst in the country recorded in the area – caused more than 87,500 acute and premature deaths around the world, including 4,100 acute deaths associated with smoke in the USA over 22,000 premature deaths in Europe.

The smoke of the fire contains pm2.5 – a type of air pollution – which is known to trigger inflammation in the body. It can exacerbate conditions such as asthma and heart disease, and in some causes it can damage neural brain ties.

“These are a big number,” said Michael Brauer, a professor at British Columbia University, who was the author in the study. He added that the findings show that the smoke of the fire should be treated as a serious health issue, similar to breast cancer or prostate cancer.

For some US lawyers, the fault falls in Canada.

“The failure of Canada to contain huge fires,” Callahan wrote in August, “harmed the health and quality of life more than 20 million Americans in the Middle West.”

Their complaints ask the question: can Canada do more to suppress their fires – and extension, their smoke?

Climate and fire experts in both countries said the BBC that the answer was largely not.

“Until we, as a global society, are dealing with climate change in human hours, we will have this problem,” said Mike Flannigan, an emergency management expert and fire science at Thompson Rivers University in British Colombia.

Metrics show that Canadian fires, the natural part of its huge boreal forest, have been in recent years. The fire season now begins earlier, ends later and burns more countries in average. The 2023 fires overthrew 15 million hectares (37 million hectares) – an area larger than England – while 2025 flashes have so far burned 8.7 million hectares (21.5 million hectares).

Since mid -September, more than 500 fires have been burning, mainly in British Columbia and Manitoba, according to the Canadian Intergence Forest Fire Center.

About half of the fires in Canada are rebelled, while the rest stems from human activity, showing data from the national database of forestry. Experts warn that hot temperatures make the drought land and more prone to burning.

The fires not only worse in Canada. The United States recently saw some of their most important flames, including Hawaiian fires in 2023 in which at least 102 people were killed, and Palisades Fire in January, the most devastating in Los Angeles history.

Both countries struggled to take a step, often dividing fire resources. The Canadian water bombers were deployed in California this year, while more than 600 US firefighters traveled north to help Canada, according to the US forest service.

In Canada, tense resources – and worse fires – encouraged calls for the National Fire Department. Emergency response to wild fires is currently being trusted separately by each of the provinces and territories.

“The system we currently worked 40 years ago. Today? Not so much,” claimed Mr. Flannigan.

Others suggest controlled burns, a practice used in Australia and indigenous communities, as a solution, although these fires would continue to create smoke. Some are committed to better cleaning the flammable material in the forests and in the vicinity of cities or investment in a new technology that can help faster detection of fire.

Some of that job are already ongoing. Canada promised more than $ 47 million in August for research projects to help the communities be better prepared and mitigated by fires.

However, experts like Jen Beverly, a firefighting professor at the University of Alberti, warn that a little Canada can do to prevent the fire completely.

“These are high -intensity ecosystems in Canada, she said, who are different from the fire in Australia or the USA. “We have very severe fire control fires in extreme conditions and see more for climate change.”

With warmer climate, prof. Beverly said he should pay attention to pollution. She noted that the US is the second worst carbon output in the world behind China. “I mean, we should blame them for the problem,” she claimed.

In recent months, Trump’s administration has also responded to environmental policies intended to reduce emissions and withdraw the US from Paris climatic agreements.

Sheila Olmssestead, a professor of environmental policy at Cornell University, noted that Canada and the US have a history of cooperation on pollution and climate, including the air quality agreement they signed in 1991 to resolve acidic rain.

“It was a very clear framework for solving the problem, which is what is missing here,” Olmstead told the BBC. Both countries, she said, would benefit from working on fires together instead of trading guilt.

As for EPA’s complaints, it’s unclear what the agency could do to deal with the concerns of American legislators. In a BBC statement, EPA said she was examining it “and she would answer through the appropriate channels.”

Professor Brauer said that the data in his study shows that although fires burn in Canada – often in remote areas – their influence can reach far more.

The findings, he told the BBC, demand the framing of the way they understand the consequences of climate change.

“The effects of warmer climate are localized, and there are winners and losers,” said prof. Brauer. “But this is an illustration that some of these influences become global.”

He claimed that the complaints of US lawsens were “unhappy distraction”, and that the focus should be in cooperation and learning how to “live with smoke”.

“These things don’t disappear,” said prof. Brauer adding that there are ways to prevent future deaths if there is a will to adjust.