MAGA Demands Canada Quits Ruining Summer

Where there's smoke, there's ire!

Six congressional lawmakers from two Midwestern states sent a sternly worded letter to the Canadian ambassador last week demanding the country do something to stop spoiling summer.

They weren’t expressing concern for border state constituents potentially losing their homes or businesses due to Canadian tourists suddenly unwilling to risk lining the pockets of anyone who voted for this Nazi bullshit.

Instead, they’re pissed the smoke from raging wildfires exacerbated by the climate crisis they don’t believe in is ruining red-blooded Muricans’ plans for barbecue season and want to speak to the manager.

A letter signed by Republican House representatives Tom Tiffany and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, and Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, Pete Stauber, and Tom Emmer of Minnesota was sent to Kirsten Hillman that’s worth posting in its entirety for full comedic effect:

We write to you today on behalf of our constituents who have had to deal with suffocating Canadian wildfire smoke filling the air to begin the summer. 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.

As I’m sure you know, this is not the first year Canadian wildfire smoke has been an issue. In 2023, Canada had its worst year for wildfires on record, last year’s fire season was considered one of the worst, and this year seems to be a continuation of these previous years. 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. 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. 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.

Canada has been a friendly neighbor of the United States and the states we represent, so given the significance of this issue we urge you to relay this message to your government, in particular Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Forest Service.

Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to your response.

Leaving aside the sheer chutzpah of making the complaint at a time when B.C. residents are sucking on smoke from Washington wildfires, there’s a lot to unpack in this distraction made while we’re all being asked to pretend Jeffrey Epstein’s client list never existed and neither does the missing minute from security footage of his death, so let’s dive right in!

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• If they really wanted to know more about government plans for mitigating future fiery disasters, they could try reading the Kananaskis Wildfire Charter signed last month at the G7 meeting in Alberta their boss bailed early from. The agreement — which was also endorsed by Australia, India, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, and South Africa — outlines aims to “achieve a stronger and more coordinated global approach to wildfire resilience” though data-sharing and intergovernmental coordination of resources that is sure to be a hot topic at the upcoming G20 meeting in Johannesburg next November. Dear Leader may even make an appearance despite a sleepover at Elon’s maybe not having the appeal it once did.

• The lawmakers appear to expect Hillman to rustle up experts to explain the existential crisis in simple terms GOP legislators might understand, although there’s no shortage of newly unemployed climate scientists thanks to DOGE chainsaw cuts who might not be busy. But it seems a fool’s errand after they’ve already blamed the fires on “a lack of active forest management” — meaning Canada’s vast boreal forests are being insufficiently raked by DEI or something — and the occasional arson instead of being mostly caused by lightning strikes or human error in increasingly tinderbox conditions caused by global warming. Which didn’t get a mention. Presumably “the technology at our disposal” means Donald Trump’s imaginary Very Large Faucet in the Rockies we dickishly didn’t turn on to save California from it’s own recent hellfires. Or maybe the Canadarm could Marvel team-up with Jewish Space Lasers to somehow turn this ship around.

• It’s a pet peeve but it drives me nuts when people use “recreating” as a verb for outdoor recreational pursuits such as hiking, fishing, burning gas rippin’ around on ATVs, or setting wildfires through drunken fireworks parties when the Oxford dictionary definition is: “to make something that existed in the past exist or seem to exist again.” Like when God reportedly recreated life on Earth after drowning everyone who didn’t make it onto Noah’s Ark without even the courtesy of an advance cellphone blast.

• “Thank you for your time and consideration.” It’s dereliction of duty to not know MAGA proclamations now end with: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Although the correct spelling and capitalization were refreshing, and at least it didn’t appear on Truthy Social first.

One person who doesn’t have time for this Blame Canada fuckery is Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew, a man who currently has his hands full with a provincewide state of emergency and thousands of people fleeing their homes.

“I've shaken the hands of American firefighters in northern Manitoba who are helping us out,” Kinew told reporters on Thursday. “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. 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.”

I was surprised to learn American firefighters were deployed in the prairies but there’s 125 in total at last count being good neighbors in an emergency like the olden days. It’s a dangerous gig but at least none of them will have to worry about ICE showing up in their workplace and are much less likely to get shot at by an arsonist.

[CBC / CTV / Wonkette Bluesky Starter Pack]