The Canadian province of Manitoba declared a state of emergency on Thursday for the second time this year due to sprawling forest fires, which Canada has struggled to appropriately contain in the past half-decade.
Canada has experienced a significant increase in disruptions due to forest fires, particularly in the past three years. Currently, according to Natural Resources Canada, the Canadian government has documented 2,672 fires in 2025, with 354 of them still active as of Thursday and 105 of them designated “uncontrolled.”
Some of the fires, reports in Canadian media noted, have been burning since 2023, the worst years for forest fires in recorded Canadian history. That year, 100 million Americans were affected in some way by the fires, with states coast-to-coast ordering people to stay indoors and wear protective respiratory gear to avoid the detrimental health effects of the fires. Dramatic images of major American cities as far south as New York engulfed in suffocating brown and orange smoke made headlines as then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shrugged off the crisis as inevitable due to “climate change.”
Many Canadian officials continue to blame an alleged climate crisis for the situation, though researchers indicate that poor management of the nation’s forests and some occasional instances of arson have exacerbated the problem.
In anticipation of the fires to the north affecting their constituents, a group of six Republican Congressmen, led by Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), sent a letter on Monday to Canadian Ambassador to Washington Kirsten Hillman requesting information on how the Canadian government is planning to contain the fires, emphasizing that millions of Americans are hurt by Ottawa’s failure to remedy the situation on an annual basis.
In addition to Rep. Tiffany, Reps. Brad Finstad (R-MN), Glenn Grothman (R-WI), Michelle Fischbach (R-MN), Pete Stauber (R-MN), and Tom Emmer (R-MN) signed the letter. Sharing a border with Canada, Wisconsin and Minnesota are among the most affected U.S. states when Canada’s government fails to properly prevent and control forest fires.
The Upper Midwest has suffered from repeated waves of smoke due to Canadian wildfires.
— Rep. Tom Tiffany (@RepTiffany) July 7, 2025
Today I joined my colleagues from WI & MN to demand better forest management in Canada.
Our communities shouldn’t suffer because of poor decisions made across the border. pic.twitter.com/MxRhdtfT3g
“As we are entering the height of the fire season, we would like to know how your government plans on mitigating wildfire and the smoke that makes its way south,” the lawmakers requested.
“While we know a key driver of this issue has been a lack of active forest management, we’ve also seen things like arson as another way multiple large wildfires have ignited in Canada,” the Congressmen observed. “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.”
The lawmakers emphasized their responsibility to Americans to address the matter even as it takes place abroad because “our constituents have been limited in their ability to go outside and safely breathe due to the dangerous air quality the wildfire smoke has created.”
“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things,” they observed.
Addressing the Canadian news network Global News, Natural Resources Canada said that Canada and America have a “long history” of cooperation on fires. Natural Resources is the agency responsible for managing forests; Canada, despite its ample history with devastating wildfires, does not have a federal-level firefighting agency or an agency dedicated to emergencies analogous to America’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“Our two nations regularly exchange resources and personnel in response to escalating wildfire events, a collaboration that is increasingly vital as the impacts of wildfires cross national borders,” Natural Resources told Global News.
While the letter was not addressed to him, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew disparaged the American Congressmen as “ambulance chasers” for questioning the Canadian government’s history of lackluster responses to out-of-control fires. In remarks to journalists on Thursday — the day he declared a state of emergency over the fires — Kinew accused the lawmakers of “trying to trivialize” the destruction of the fires and undermining the suffering of the Canadian people.
“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,” Kinew asserted.
The premier distinguished between the politicians and the many American firefighters who have contributed to emergency efforts in Canada, encouraging the lawmakers to meet with those U.S. firefighters as he had.
“I would challenge these ambulance chasers in the U.S. Congress to go and do the same, and to hear how much the American firefighting heroes who are here — how much they love our province,” he added.
Update: In response to Premier Kinew’s comments, Rep. Tiffany told Breitbart News: “American firefighters are always ready to help our neighbors in crisis, but the growing threat of wildfires—whether in Canada or the Western U.S.—requires proactive forest management.”
“Premier Kinew may call me an ‘ambulance chaser,’ but I’m working to make sure my constituents with respiratory concerns don’t end up in one because of his wildfire smoke,” he concluded.
Manitoba is not alone in facing the annual threat of forest fires. Saskatchewan had also declared a state of emergency earlier this summer, the Global and Mail reported, the western provinces of Alberta and British Columbia have documented high numbers of fires, and Ontario has also struggled to contain its fires.
