by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News July 17, 2026
As of Friday, there were more than 890 fires actively burning in Canada, according to the Canadian Wildland Fire Information System. The majority are burning out of control.
A massive blanket of black smoke from these fires is spreading across U.S. states, from Minnesota and Michigan to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York.
Dangerous smoke from Canadian wildfires has blanketed 19 U.S. states. / Video Image
“Hazardous” air quality alerts have been issued across much of the region, leading to the cancellation of many outdoor events.
A group of Michigan Republican lawmakers — Reps. Jack Bergman, John James, Lisa McClain, and John Moolenaar — published a letter to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Wednesday slamming the Canadian government for ignoring pleas from American officials to properly address forest management.
“We were told last year that this would be treated with urgency. It was not,” they wrote. “We were told the causes, chronic under-investment in forest thinning, fuel reduction, and prescribed burns, along with inadequate enforcement against arson, were being addressed. They were not, or not adequately enough to matter to the people we represent.”
“What funded, measurable steps has your government taken since last summer to reduce fuel loads and wildfire risk in the provinces responsible for the smoke reaching the American Midwest?” they asked. “What accountability exists for provincial leaders who treat this as someone else’s problem? And what will genuinely be different by this time next year, rather than another season of statements followed by the same result?”
As of Friday, air quality in Detroit was rated as the worst in the world, Swiss air quality tracker IQAir said, followed by Chicago, DC, and New York in seventh place.
While blowing off concerns over his government’s failures in forest management, critics say Carney went to the go-to response from leftists in such situations — climate change.
“Now we’re focusing on investing in clean energy. In the United States there’s prohibitions now against clean energy — for example, wind energy is one example,” Carney said. “Secondly, Canada is maintaining our efforts on the world’s scale and the U.S. is reducing their efforts globally [on climate change], so, yes, climate change is the responsibility of everyone… including the United States.”
Breitbart’s Frances Martel noted that Carney “did not elaborate on how the use of wind energy — requiring massive turbines that pose their own maritime environmental threat — would address the Canadian wildfire situation. He also did not specify exactly what he would want the American government to do to address the ‘responsibility’ of alleged ‘climate change,’ ”
The wildfires have destroyed entire communities in Canada’s remote areas largely populated by indigenous communities.
Leaders of those communities have slammed Carney’s government for its lack of support to evacuate residents or offer temporary housing.
Speaking to the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, Helen Paavola, the chief of the Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, lamented, “We lost everything.” The entire Namaygoosisagagun community burned down on Monday, the newspaper noted, and the chief lamented that the government did little to aid with evacuation, leaving residents to use small boats to paddle away from the flames.
Paavola added that “her request for evacuation assistance to the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources went unheeded before flames overtook the settlement.”
Paavola was not the only official lamenting the lack of support. Speaking to the Toronto Star, lawmaker Lise Vaugeois of the leftist New Democrat party expressed frustration.
“Basically I got blown off by the Ministry of Emergency Preparedness, saying somebody in each municipality is in charge and go talk to them,” Vaugeois said.
