Michigan Republican Representatives Jack Bergman, John James, Lisa McClain, and John Moolenaar are, “demanding immediate action” from the Canadian government due to smoke from the Ontario wildfire covering the state in smoke.
In a joint letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the representatives warned that, “patience has run out,” according to a press release from Michigan House Republicans.
In their letter, the members argued that, “We write today as members of Michigan’s congressional delegation to raise our voices on an issue that has already drawn letters from our colleagues in past years: wildfire smoke drifting across the border from Canada into our communities. Additionally, last year, Reps. James and Bergman each wrote letters to your government to raise the alarm about wildfire smoke pouring across our border from Canada into our communities. We write jointly this time because a year has passed, the season has come around again, and nothing has changed except that our patience has run out.”
As of July 16, over 850 wildfires are raging across different Canadian provinces. This season, there have been over 3,000 fires and 1.4 million hectares burned. Michigan Republicans say that Canadian leaders have had, “years to address the underlying causes of worsening wildfires,” and that there’s been an under-investment in forest thinning, fuel reduction, and prescribed burns. However, Environment and Climate Change Canada points to higher-than-average temperatures and dry weather as the major culprit.
Resources from the Canadian government also shows that much of their forests are diverse because of wildfires that happen in their forests. However, due to the increased temperatures in the region, many fires are raging out of control. Research from NASA shows that, over a 21-year span, extreme wildfires have become more frequent, more in tense, and larger. Not only that, but fire season is getting longer, with Canada’s 2023 wildfire season lasting five months.
The organization says that, while some variation in the weather is natural, human-caused climate change was found to be the main cause for increasing fire weather.
Due to the increase in warm weather, a 2022 program allowed Natural Resources Canada and Indigenous Services Canada to receive $346.1 million over 5 years to help develop tools to fight and prevent wildfires. According to the Canadian government, this is part of their commitment to make their communities safe and to increase forest resilience to wildland fire.
According ot the Western Fire Chiefs Association, eight major wildfires have been burning in Minnesota. Fox 9 KSMP reports that more than 77,000 acres have burned inb northern Minnesota in a dozen wildfires started by lightning, saying this could last all summer.
Michigan, and many other states in the U.S., has wildfires each year, and studies from NASA say they’re getting larger and happening at an increased rate. According to Michigan.gov, firefighters respond to 10,000 to 12,000 wildfires each year, with 47% of wildfires starting from burning yard debris. However, wildfires within the state don’t usually grow to the size of the wildfires currently raging in Ontario. The most recent major wildfire in Michigan, occurring near Houghton Lake in 2025, only burned about 101 acres of forest. In 2022, a lighting-ignited fire in Cheboygan and Montmorency counties burned more than 2,500 acres of land.
Many of the ways the Michigan and other U.S. states help to prevent wildfires, such as a fire danger meter or prescribed burns, are also in use by the Canadian government and its provinces. However, Michigan Republicans say it’s not enough.
“We are done accepting apologies in place of action,” their letter continued. “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. That means our own agencies exploring direct involvement in cross-border fuel reduction and firefighting capacity. It means reconsidering how much benefit of the doubt this relationship continues to earn on an issue where American lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction, year after year. Sovereignty comes with responsibility, and the responsibility to prevent a foreseeable disaster from crossing into another country’s airspace has not been met.”
To read the full letter from Michigan Republicans, click here.