Complaints about smoke from Canadian wildfires wafting into the United States are drawing criticism from the Premier of Manitoba.

Members of Congress from Minnesota and Wisconsin signed a joint letter to Canada’s Ambassador to the U.S. asking how Canada is mitigating the wildfires and the smoke created.

They attribute many of the fires to the country’s forest management practices and arson.
Much of the smoke is coming from fires in northwestern Ontario and western Canada.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew feels the members of Congress are trivializing the situation people are facing.

“This is what turns people off from politics, is 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. There’s no place for that in politics,” says Kinew.

He says the U.S. politicians should be offering their thanks to U.S. firefighters who have travelled to Canada to assist with the fire suppression efforts.

“I’ve shaken the hands of American firefighters in northern Manitoba who are helping us out. And 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 loved our province.”

The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre reports 245 active fires in Canada.

Smoke advisories were issued on Friday in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, northwestern Ontario, Minnesota and North Dakota.