Fires in Canada have prompted an alert from the US Embassy in Ottawa that Americans should be aware of wildfire conditions when traveling in Canada.
U.S. Travel Alert Focuses On Fires In Canada
In recent years, Canada has struggled with wildfires. Only yesterday, several provinces issued air quality alerts, including Ottawa, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. The Ottawa fire is particularly fierce and poor air quality from this fire and others has permeated the U.S.-Canadian border. Chicago, for example, also issued an air quality alert urging precautions for vulnerable residents.
This has prompted a warning from the US embassy, advising U.S. citizens to exercise caution:
“We urge U.S. citizens visiting or living in Canada to be aware of wildfire conditions in their area and follow guidance from local authorities.”
To be clear, the U.S. Department of State still lists Canada under a Level 1: Exercise Normal Precautions travel advisory—the lowest level, indicating no increased risk for U.S. citizens.
But the warning is not without context. Relations between Canada and the USA have significantly deteriorated since Donald Trump took office in January. Trump has repeatedly called for Canada to be annexed as the 51st state and launched a trade war against America’s northern neighbor, accusing it of unfair practices that undermine American producers and workers.
President Trump recently upended trade negotiations between the two nations, announcing a higher 35% tariff on Canadian goods starting next month, blaming the increase in part on the flow of fentanyl.
“If Canada works with me to stop the flow of fentanyl, we will, perhaps, consider an adjustment to this letter…These tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your country.”
The rhetoric has prompted a nosedive in both tourism and business between the two nations, with air travel pared back and flight loads reduced.
Furthermore, the warning comes as GOP members of Congress have complained to the Canadian Ambassador in the USA:
“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with the family, and creating new memories, but this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things.”
The letter further blames Canada for a lack of active forest management.
But Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew fired back during a press conference this week:
“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 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 love our province.”
Kinew was referring to firefighters from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources who are assisting Manitoba in controlling the wildfires in that province.
CONCLUSION
Wildfires appear to be a new reality of spring and summer life in Canada. The U.S. has warned citizens to be mindful of this smoke, though it comes in the context of heated relations between the two countries.
Will you be traveling to Canada this summer?
I mean, all countries have travel warnings for other countries, so a bit of a non-story. That said, how about we chastise our northerly neighbors after we put out our own wildfires. But who wanted to go to the Grand Canyon’s North Rim anyway.
Meanwhile, the Canadian travel warning for the US seems about right-
Gun violence
The rate of firearm possession in the U.S. is high. It’s legal in many states for U.S. citizens to openly carry firearms in public.
Incidences of mass shootings occur, resulting most often in casualties. Although tourists are rarely involved, there is a risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Familiarize yourself on how to respond to an active shooter situation.
You sound like the 3 idiots I saw on my flight yesterday wearing masks.
Imagine being your kids. My first thought was the kid in South Park whose parents made him wear a life jacket all the time. Do they also duck under the desk in case of a nuclear attack? Maybe someone should call CPS and save them from YOU.
As for “responding to an active shooter” you either have a gun and shoot back or you run. You come across as why America was considered weak pu##ies by the world under Senile Joe. Thankfully they are starting to respect us again, in spite of people afraid of their shadow like you.
Sigh.
I do imagine being my kids. I would love for them to live in a country where they don’t have to have active shooter drills at school. What an unreasonable parent I must be. I’m sure the better solution is to make sure every teacher is armed. Or maybe we should arm the kids!
Anyway, while it is particularly distasteful to immediately attack someone’s children, even in an internet comment section, for what it is worth my kids have been excellent swimmers from a young age – no life jackets here.
Nobody respects a country led by a guy that buried the Epstein files. What does trump have to hide? Is he named in them? How could we have a president that is in the epstein files? What have YOU, as a trump voter, done to this country?
As I told you before, Trump and Bondi are WRONG on this. There is no legitimate national security reason to not release the entire file with zero redactions.
As for what I did for (and to) this country? Paid a LOT of taxes over the years that were wasted and voted for the President who is getting the illegals out of this country. Unfortunately not fast enough, need to move the self deportation amount up to $2500 immediately.
And for Peter, the answer is easy…..move if you are so concerned about the kids not being safe here. Makes you a bad parent if you believe that and keep them here. I heard kids are safe from shootings in SE Asia and many of the posters here swear by it. And they probably won’t be bullied as much as they are here.
Dave, do you think Trump is not releasing the files because he is implicated in them? If he is on the list, would that change your support for him?
My gut tells me yes…not that he would be alone. I bet Clinton is too. And a lot of rich and well-connected folks.
I’m certainly suspicious that he’s named in them and that is part of the problem. The issue is will we ever know if he, or anyone on the list, knew the girls were underage? They were definitely perverts but were they knowingly Peds?
To me there is a line, as bad as it sounds, in knowingly having sex with a girl 17 and 364 days old and one on her 18th birthday. Sure it’s creepy when you are old enough to be her dad but one is legal and one isn’t.
And yes, I’ll certainly think less of him IF he did and knew the age of the girl. And IF the statute is still valid and he can be charged, I’m all in favor of it. But I also know it’s not happening and sadly the total truth will never be known.
In spite of that, I’m a firm believer in the job he’s doing for the most part, even with his bluster at times. And without proof that he knowingly engaged with underage girls, I’m still in his corner.
My point was that these travel warnings, while technically true, are mostly just cheap government political speech. Most people are not avoiding travel to Canada because there are wildfires. Most people are not avoiding travel to the US because there might be occasional mass shootings, or because the US has its own wildfires. As has been reported, some Canadians are avoiding travel to the US because of current US policy towards Canada (data suggests that air travel is down 20% YoY), but many are not. There is a dip in international tourists coming to the US, but that’s not because of these types of travel warnings.
Governments can waste their breath criticizing the actions of their neighbors by way of travel warning, but I would rather our government deal with our own problems instead, perhaps by not letting the entire North Rim of the Grand Canyon burn causing needless destruction next to one of this country’s national treasures.
Anyway, in response to your vitriolic and unprompted attack on my family when simply pointing out that other countries have travel warnings for us also and including the Canadian government’s statement as an example (and by the way, which part exactly is inaccurate – all they said was lots of people in the US own guns and sometimes mass shootings occur, even though incidents involving tourists are rare – even if you don’t believe in any gun restrictions, isn’t that true?), I simply said that I would love to not live in a country where kids participate in active shooter drills. How is that possibly controversial? Has nothing to do with whether or not one believes that their kids are still relatively safe. Safety is not an absolute.
It is hard to imagine a rational reaction to that being “you are a bad parent and you should move”. In general, when there are safety issues that impact a community, a society makes rules to try to promote safety. Should we not do that at all? Let’s all yell fire in a crowded theater for fun? How about we eliminate all building codes? Yes, when those rules go too far, as (to use your other line of unprovoked attack) I would agree they did with mask mandates (especially mask mandates for young children), we should challenge them. Moving, however, accomplishes nothing.
Ah, we are seeing that Dave Edwards is quite trained in the pedophile playbook. Hmmm. The old, “It’s only pedo if you know it’s pedo.” I’m sure this will be the defense of Trump once exposed. And others as well.
Like California, Canada needs to be more pro-active managing forests and other areas subject to wildfires- they seem to only be reactive.
Too busy ruining their fries with gravy.
Educate yourself. The federal government manages a very, very high percentage forests in CA (and most Western states), which is on Trumps Dept of Agriculture/Nat Forest Svc. If you want to scapegoat someone for something you shouldn’t, at least point your finger at the right administration.
Talk about a clickbait headline!
I LOVE it.
The unreported story is that Canada started the war against the US, not Trump. I have no love for Trump but he didn’t start it. 2 years ago, Justin Trudeau banned Americans from buying a house in Canada. He then escalated it when he started taxing Americans who have a second home in Canada but don’t rent it out to Canadians.
In Canada, they have a modified dictatorship where the party in power passes all kinds of legislation with no recourse except an election 5 years later, which they can secretly plan for then suddenly spring it on the other party with about a month’s notice. In contrast, the Democrats have power to stop legislation in the Senate except reconciliation spending bills.
The Canadians have long been snarky and unfair with Americans, smiling at you as they mock you behind your back. They constantly criticize every aspect of American life and strive to not be us. Which, ironically, they are hard to distinguish from. They’re like a middle child, outclassed by the older and younger kids. And this has been the case for a good 40-50 years. It’s just worse now. If they don’t want to come here, fine. We have enough whiny, testosterone-deprived snowflakes right here already.
One of the things Trump has touted which I vehemently disagree with is the idea of annexing Canada. This is the very last thing we need. Alberta is welcome if they want to join us and build a wall around the rest of that mess. Free crap healthcare, outrageously priced housing on 60% of an American salary. And a military that couldn’t defeat El Salvador. No wonder they hate us.
Canada has for years paid more attention to fires in the Amazon in Brazil while not taking care of its own backyard. Here in MN we suffer the consequences of Canadian wildfires. In the last few summers, we had several days where we could not see the sun at all, outdoor activities were cancelled and our air quality was worse than cities in Bangladesh and China. Just this past weekend, I woke up in the morning and the sky was hazy. It was still in the mid 90F outside so we wanted to spend time by the pool but it was impossible. A few minutes outside and your eyes and throat started to tickle and the smoke smell was unbearable.
Wildfires are not a new phenomenon. From yearly weather conditions we will suffer them. Wind will move smoke across the country. ( @ Santasico I have photos from a couple years ago when smoke from Canada obscured daylight here. ). I do take issue with the GOP letter complaining they can’t embrace the summer outdoors ). These are the same lawmakers that got funding cut to the Forestry Service to manage our wilderness areas.
So while Canada is blowing literal smoke we are blowing figurative smoke.
Borders are arbitrary lines drawn by humans, but wildfires are natural occuring events that are imperative for the health of your ecosystem. It’s funny to me that these are “blamed” on Canada when fire mitigation is undoubtedly handled in sync by authorities on both sides of the border.
It’s a real drag they people’s summer plans are being dampened, but when you live in a heavily forested area I suppose that just going to happen sometimes.
Why did you change from full to partial RSS feed?
I haven’t changed anything in eight years.
I noticed this too. Something is different, even if you did not mean to change it. I only RSS, and clicked here to find out if this was intentional (sometimes it’s my reader). I only click links if I have a comment, but the feeder gets all of the articles for me. Yours are suddenly showing as partial.
Something definitely changed on the reader end. We can no longer read full posts of yours via apps like Feedly, etc and can only do so by voicing through to your website. Perhaps you could investigate? Seems like I’m not the only one.
America: Travel Advisory Level 4 – Do Not Travel
The United States is currently governed by a witless ape who rode an escalator to power—going down, naturally—alongside his venture capitalist sidekick who discovered authentic hillbilly wisdom at Yale Law School before transforming into the Tucker Carlson of Senate candidates.
This bankruptcy virtuoso, whose qualifications include four trips to financial ruin and a talent for stiffing lawyers, has turned the world’s former intellectual superpower into a kleptocratic reality show where constitutional governance is treated as a pay-per-view event. His administration features officials who believe the Epstein files are too spicy for public consumption and a Justice Department that operates like a Mar-a-Lago membership committee.
Travelers should expect aggressive stupidity, weaponized ignorance, and a political class so incompetent they couldn’t flush a toilet in fewer than fifteen tries—which, coincidentally, remains the president’s chief policy expertise. The country that once attracted Newton and Einstein now features leaders who think “deep state” refers to their preferred septic tank depth.