‘Timber tantrum’: Kinew responds to Michigan lawmaker’s letter on wildfire smoke

A Michigan congressman is calling on Canadian leaders to do more about wildfire smoke drifting into his state.

A Michigan congressman is calling on Canadian leaders to do more to address the spread of wildfire smoke in his state.

Representative John James, a Republican who represents Michigan’s 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives, recently wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney, asking for leaders in the country to take action to contain the wildfire crisis in the country, specifically citing the smoke from Manitoba’s wildfires.

“(Our constituents) are paying the price physically, economically, and environmentally for Canada’s failure to prevent disasters that are entirely foreseeable,” James wrote.

Environment and Climate Change Canada has confirmed 2025 is the smokiest year on record for Manitoba due to widespread wildfires.

James specifically took issue with Premier Wab Kinew’s comments last month, claiming he is diminishing the health impact on Americans from the wildfire smoke.

“Even more disturbing are Premier Kinew’s comments dismissing the health impact on their neighbors to the south as ‘trivial,’ adding that Americans ‘enjoying their summers’ is not a priority for Manitoba,” he wrote. “Let us be clear: this is not a seasonal annoyance. It is a public health emergency, and it is actively damaging the U.S.-Canada relationship.”

On July 10, Kinew responded to a letter from several U.S. lawmakers in Minnesota and Wisconsin criticizing the presence of wildfire smoke in their states. Kinew called the congresspeople who wrote the letter “ambulance chasers,” while praising the work of firefighters from the U.S. in helping with wildfire efforts.

“This is what turns people off from politics—when you’ve got a group of Congress people trying to trivialize and make hay out of a wildfire season where we’ve lost lives in our province,” Kinew said at the time. “There’s no place for that in politics.

“If you can’t get likes on Instagram from your own skills as a politician, don’t bother trying to throw other people under the bus during a state of emergency.”

Kinew criticized James for the letter.

“This is just an attention seeker in the American political world who can’t get any attention on his own, so he’s got to go in public and throw a timber tantrum, as we’re calling it around here,” the premier said. “So on the one hand, (we) try not to take it too seriously, but on the other hand, you know, let’s be realistic.

“Tens of thousands of people been forced out of their homes, lives have been lost, huge impacts here. This is not the kind of thing you should be playing around with.”

James is calling on Canada to reform its forest management policies and invest in modern technology to help prevent wildfires.