Donald Trump can spare Canada the lecture on climate disasters

The US president and members of congress lashed out at Canada over the smoke pouring across the border this week. They should look in the mirror.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not wild about being lectured by Donald Trump on the etiquette of neighbourliness. Let’s leave aside our, shall we say, “troubled” trade relationship, which is “troubled” in the sense that the dishes smashed on the ground beneath an upturned table are “troubled.” I’m focusing instead on the manner in which Trump attacked Canada this week over the wildfire smoke that’s blanketing the East Coast of Canada and the northeastern US.

The smoke is bad. Just as in Toronto, people from Chicago to Boston to Washington, DC are being advised to avoid exposure to the air pollution — it’s dangerous out there, and everyone deserves clean air. But the response from the US right has ranged from unhelpful to insane.

Let’s start with the unhelpful. Conservative radio host Eric Metaxas raged against health alerts that urged residents to avoid breathing too much smoke by limiting their time outside. “I’m an adult man,” he helpfully clarified.

“This is Big Brother, with your tax dollars, telling you how to live. How dare they say that? Who has the right to tell me or you or anyone anything?

It's a free country. I can do whatever I want.” It doesn’t need to be said, but providing advice that can help protect your lungs is not exactly what Orwell had in mind.

Next, a letter from four Republican Michigan members of the US Congress arrived on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s desk, in a remarkably literal display of smoke and mirrors. “American lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction, year after year,” they wrote, ignoring the fact that many of the fires this year (and every year) are burning through American forests. Canadian firefighters travel every year to help quell them, including helicopter pilot Nicholas Dale, who died fighting a fire in Colorado last weekend.

“Sovereignty comes with responsibility, and the responsibility to prevent a foreseeable disaster from crossing into another country’s airspace has not been met.” The implied threat to Canadian sovereignty isn’t lost on us, but even more infuriating is the notion of responsibility. And then the big one: Trump, in a screed posted on Truth Social, said “filthy, polluted and unhealthy air” had “invaded” the United States, that Canada “has refused to engage in basic Forest Management and Debris Removal” and that he would charge Canada for the cost via tariffs.

No explanation was forthcoming on how he would calculate the cost, nor how he would charge it — but the point was made: it’s Canada’s fault. Let’s make something clear: the United States is the nation most responsible for the cumulative emissions driving the ongoing climate crisis that is worsening wildfires, and even more to the point, American politicians’ decisions are actively hostile toward the actions that need to be taken to mitigate the disasters. The Trump administration’s ceaseless and brutal crusade against the foundations of climate science is well documented, as is its rampage against any policy that carries a whiff of hope for a lower-carbon future.

That’s not to let Canada off the hook in the same summer that the Carney government doubled down on oil and gas exports, but American conservatives can spare us the lecture on the consequences of climate change — particularly when Canadians are still reeling from the worst of those decisions. Freelance photojournalist Arlyn Mcadorey reported this week from Thunder Bay, alongside CNO’s Natasha Bukowski, on the evacuees who escaped their First Nations communities ahead of towering, apocalyptic wildfires. It’s their experience we should be listening to right now, not the whingeing of Don’t Tread on Me radio hosts nor the idle threats of a Big Oil-funded president nor a group of congressional profiteers who, collectively, have taken in hundreds of thousands of dollars or more from oil and gas-affiliated political funds.

But floating in all that polluted, hot air is a kernel of truth: while worsening wildfires are a fact of life now thanks to climate change, Ontario does appear to have failed to recognize that and prepare adequately for this year’s fire season. Not through “debris removal,” as Trump put it, but through adequately funding and staffing fire services. As CNO’s Cloe Logan reported in June (a story Emmerson Jull pushed forward on Friday), the Ford government budgeted less for this year’s fire season than it spent last year — a pattern that has repeated several times now.

With the Ministry of Natural Resources saying it was caught off guard by the number and ferocity of fires this week, perhaps it’s time for Canadians to demand some accountability with the same level of vigour as our belligerent neighbours to the south.