I'm sure you'd rather read my stunningly witty opinions and drop dead funny observations, and you can indeed find those throughout this blog, but please take a few minutes to read the following article by an American concerning the United States chastising Canada for our forest fires and threatening to all but invade us if we don't go rake our hundred trillion acres ... and control our wind.
I tried to write an opinion piece but I end up just saying fuck every third word and it really got me nowhere but angry. I think we've been damn good neighbors to the Americans and I'm not the only one getting just a little tired of the in the ingratitude. Canada has no obligation to help the USA in any way whatsoever. Maybe once we stop lending a helping hand, they might remember how much they once appreciated it.
But this piece is a strong reminder that not every American is MAGA. A fact that is sometimes very difficult to remember.
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FROM THE FB PAGE 'THE OTHER 98%' :
Canada sent firefighting planes to drop water on burning homes in Los Angeles, and never sent us a bill for it. Trump just announced he's charging them for the wind.
He accused Canada of "willful negligence" over wildfire smoke, said America is being "invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air," and told Truth Social the economic cost of that smoke should be added to the tariffs already hitting Canadian imports.
Four Republican congressmen sent Prime Minister Mark Carney a letter demanding action.
Now rewind to eighteen months ago. Two CL-415 skimmers out of Quebec, crews and all, scooping and dropping on the fires that flattened Altadena. Alberta sent 40 Type 1 wildland firefighters. Ottawa lined up 250 personnel and put the Canadian Armed Forces on standby.
In 2020, 594 Canadian firefighters and specialists deployed to the United States. In 2000, when nearly seven million acres burned from Texas to Montana, more than 1,300 Canadians came south.
After Katrina, Canada sent three warships and a coast guard icebreaker, roughly 1,000 personnel hauling water, tents, cots and lumber into Pensacola and Biloxi.
On September 11, when American airspace slammed shut, Canada took in more than 33,000 stranded passengers off over 200 planes. One Newfoundland town of 10,000 absorbed 6,500 of them and fed them in school gyms for days.
No invoice. No tariff. No lecture about American negligence.
Trump's theory is that Canada refuses "basic Forest Management and Debris Removal." Fire scientists say Canada's approach mirrors America's, and that most of what's burning is remote boreal forest that has never been logged, never been thinned, and has no brush pile waiting for a rake.
The US averages roughly 70,000 wildfires a year. Canada averages about 8,000.
This month, two fires burning in Minnesota's Superior National Forest crossed the border in the other direction, into Canada.
Nobody in Ottawa demanded compensation.
Four Republican congressmen wrote Prime Minister Mark Carney that Americans are paying for Canadian inaction with their lungs.
They left out that the US ambassador to Canada had just praised four decades of shared wildfire emergencies, and that American and Canadian crews have swapped places every season under an agreement signed in 1982.
Doug Ford, no one's idea of a leftist, put it plainly: politicians chirping from the sidelines could send help instead, because Canada has done exactly that for its American friends. That, he added, is what you're supposed to do.
That is the entire argument. You do not take the planes, the warships and the gym cots, then bill the people who sent them for the weather.
The word Trump will not say is climate. Longer droughts, hotter summers, longer fire seasons on both sides of a line that smoke has never once respected.
Blaming Canadian rakes is cheaper than admitting the atmosphere doesn't check passports.
Twenty-five years of Canadians walking into our fires, our floods, and our worst day.
Canada has never once charged us for showing up. We're now charging them for the weather.
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CLICK THIS YOUTUBE LINK: How Canadian water bombers are battling US fires
