Why WI Republicans Attacked Canada

U.S. Reps. Glenn Grothman and Tom Tiffany.

Republican congressman Tom Tiffany is “Mr. Northwoods,” according to his fellow Wisconsin congressman Glenn Grothman. Tiffany has “researched” wildfires and “talked to knowledgeable” people about the problem.

Grothman admitted he knew little about the issue and simply relied on Tiffany, “who’s spent his life Up North”— in deciding to sign on to a recent letter written to the Canadian Ambassador by Tiffany and also signed by four other Republican members of Congress from other states.

It’s hard to decide what’s most insulting about the letter. How about its brevity, which in just four short paragraphs offers the easy conclusion that the problem of “suffocating Canadian wildfire smoke” drifting south could simply be “reversed” if Canada chose to take the “proper action.”

Or the letter’s glaring omission: it never mentions climate change, the obvious cause of the wildfires.

Or the letter’s lack of facts: no research or data is cited to back up the claim that Canada should be able to fix the problem.

Or how about its faux-friendly tone to our “neighbor to the United States” while implying that Canada really isn’t trying to fix a problem that has caused billions of dollars of damage to that nation and threatened the health of millions, with impacts such as premature deaths, increased hospital visits, and health emergencies — that’s according to the Canadian Institute for Climate Change.

Tiffany graciously responded to requests for comment, which doesn’t always happen in these days of Republican attacks on the media, and patiently answered my questions. A former Wisconsin state senator for seven years before winning election to the state’s northernmost congressional district in 2020, Tiffany doesn’t believe that man-made climate change has been proven, calling it a “theory that needs to be tested…To me the jury is still out there.”

As for the overwhelming consensus among scientists that global climate change is leading to catastrophic destruction, including wildfires, Tiffany says there are scientists who disagree with this, and he has a favorite he follows. This should be about science, he says, not a “popularity contest” among scientists.

Tiffany pointed to the example of Copernicus, whose theory that the earth revolved around the sun was rejected because of what he termed “a consensus” against this. But it was the consensus of the Catholic Church, not scientists, that placed Copernicus’s work, “On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres,” on the church’s Index of Prohibited Books.

Tiffany talked about testimony before a House subcommittee on federal lands he chairs which pointed to possible techniques to fight wildfires. “We had people address both the detection side and the prevention side of wildfires.”

Tiffany insists the wildfires haven’t been caused by climate change but by a change to more “preservationist approach” to forests in the 1980s in nations like the U.S. But the increase in wildfires has occurred over the last 20 years, with four of the five worst years for global wildfires occurring since 2020. And it’s a problem for nations across the globe.

Where has the approach Tiffany supports actually worked? He pointed to Lake Tahoe, which has changed its approach to preventing wildfires. But the Community Wildfire Protection Plan there affects “roughly 100,000 acres of forest.”

That’s like a grain of sand compared to the vast land covered by Canada’s forests. This is the second largest nation in the world, with the largest intact boreal forest on the globe, covering 60% of Canada. Canada has 894 million acres of forest.  Wisconsin has just 16 million acres of forest, less than 2% of Canada’s total.

Lake Tahoe’s comparatively minuscule experiment is in an area connected by roads, while Canada has massive forests with no roads connected to them. A key part of the Lake Tahoe strategy is pushing “residents to create defensible space, harden homes, and participate in community-driven fire preparedness efforts” — which has no relevance to massive Canadian forest with no community settlements.

There is, moreover, no evidence that the measures pursued in Lake Tahoe have prevented any wildfires. Indeed, a recent story suggested the area is still susceptible to catastrophic fires.

How does Tiffany know that Canada hasn’t done all it can to prevent wildfires? “I don’t pretend to know everything they are doing. What I know is all the smoke that has come down here,” he says. “To me there has been an increase in wildfire smoke coming down from Canada.”

Has he talked to Canadian officials about this? “I have not talked to anyone specifically about this,” he says.

Has he invited any Canadian officials to discuss this before his House subcommittee? “That’s a good suggestion,” he says. “I’ll have to have my staff look into this.”

Yet Tiffany is certain Canada must be doing something wrong. “There have been significant number of arsons” in Canada, he says. But the Canadian Climate Institute pointed to research showing that “Ninety-three per cent of the area burned in Canada in 2023 was from fires ignited by lightning; only 7 per cent by human-ignition.”

Because of climate change, lightning is hitting ideal conditions to start a fire in Canada:  “They’ve had less precipitation, shorter winters, longer warmer seasons — and those have all created these ideal conditions for wildfires to start,” as Craig Czarnecki, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin DNR told Wisconsin Public Radio. “Once they start, everything is so dry, they’re able to spread quickly.”

The sheer scale of the problem facing Canada was explained by Kara Oikarinen, a Washburn Forester Ranger with the Wisconsin DNR, who volunteered to help out in Canada. in Wisconsin, she notes, they can use bulldozers  “So I have a six foot wide scraped fire line very quickly, whereas I’m using an inch and a half hose and water up there, but that’s all I can do, since there’s no road access,” she explained. “I want people to understand the scale and that there are not barriers like roads to work off of. They’re hooking in from remote lake to remote lake,” she told WXPR news in Rhinelander.

“They are giving it an extraordinary effort, and the time that so many of these firefighters stay out away from their families is wild… they camp for 14 days in the absolute middle of nowhere, cooking their own food, with wet boots… In the springtime, they face their hose lines freezing. Later in the afternoon, your clothing gets soaked with water, and can rub your knees raw.”

None of that, needless to say, was included in the blame-Canada letter composed by Tiffany. Perhaps the most insulting thing about the letter is its sheer laziness. These six members of Congress are all paid $174,000 per year. Each has an average of 15 staff members serving them. That’s 96 full time public servants whose job is to learn the facts about wildfires and pursue the best policies to promote the health and welfare of Americans. They didn’t do their job.