In July, Republican candidates in Michigan were lining up to excoriate Canada for the wildfire smoke wafting across the international border. “They MUST PAY and PUT OUT the fires!” wrote gubernatorial candidate John James on X, after declaring he would introduce legislation to impose sanctions on the neighbors to the north. Other politicians made similar claims about how they would deal with Canada. Meanwhile, Donald Trump moved to impose new tariffs on Canada in response.
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Such political posturing shows little understanding of the actual situation. For example, it overlooks the fact that the scale and magnitude of these fires is surely linked to climate change, which the United States is arguably doing less to combat under the Trump administration than any other industrial nation in the world.
This is not the first time the two countries have dealt with cross-border air pollution. However, in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region historically, it was more often American emissions that were afflicting Canada.
By the mid-20th century, air pollution across the Michigan-Ontario border in the St. Clair-Detroit River corridor was raising significant concerns. At the request of both nations, the International Joint Commission (IJC), which had been created by the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, formed a joint St. Clair-Detroit Air Pollution Board in the 1960s to investigate the precise sources of air pollution in this region.
In a 1971 report, this board found that sulphur dioxide and particulate matter from Detroit’s auto and steel industries were crossing over to Windsor, Ontario. Along the St. Clair River, the joint board reported that Sarnia’s Chemical Valley south of the city, which had already developed into an enormous petrochemical complex that befouled both air and water, was the main pollution culprit. Certainly some of the poisons drifted into Michigan, though the board determined that the primary victims were in Ontario. The IJC duly recommended that the two federal governments create pollution boards and establish national air quality standards.
A similar dynamic played out in other transboundary air disputes between Ontario and adjoining U.S. states, with both sides (though more often the United States) found to be the culprit. Ontario Hydro built a large coal-fired power station at Atikokan in the northwest part of the province that threatened cherished recreational areas across the border, such as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. In another instance, the Reynolds aluminum smelter in Massena, N.Y., was accused of contaminating the nearby binational Mohawk community, including the parts in Canadian territory.
Over time, the air quality issues stemming from these specific sources mostly either fell off the public’s radar or became subsumed within wider debates about acid rain and national air quality agreements (such as the 1970 U.S. Clean Air Act). Indeed, by the 1980s acid rain dominated not only the Canada-U.S. environmental relationship, but general bilateral relations.
Acidified precipitation is created when sulphur and nitrogen oxides (SO2 and NOx) emissions, often from coal plants, are transported through the atmosphere and transformed into sulphuric and nitric acids. This acid rain fell onto terrestrial and aquatic environments where it had a range of short- and long-term negative consequences. Melting acidic winter snows produce an ‘acid shock’ in streams during the spring run-off, for example, which is predictably bad for aquatic species.
While both countries generated pollution that fell in the other’s territory, acid rain originating in the United States and descending to earth in Ontario was the biggest problem. Ongoing bilateral studies established that 70-80% of it came from the United States. That acid rain affected cottage country north of Toronto—where many of the country’s elite have vacation homes—helps explain why this problem gained so much public traction.
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But the two countries could not agree on solutions, such as the need for emission limitations and controls. As the primary contributor, the United States would have had to bear the brunt of any necessary changes and the Reagan administration was ideologically opposed to any environmentally motivated regulations on economic activity. Washington stalled the talks, calling for more research.
The United States proved more amenable to addressing the problem after George H.W. Bush entered the White House in 1989. Negotiations began on what would emerge as the 1991 Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement (AQA), which permanently capped emissions at approximately 13.3 million tons by 2010 in the United States and 3.2 million tons in Canada. While the United States would not make any legal commitments to reduce disposition in Canadian territory, it did pledge to follow the requirements of its recently updated Clean Air Act, which reduced the emissions that created acid rain.
Ultimately, the results of the 1991 Air Quality Agreement were mixed. SO2 emissions did go down by almost 70%. Granted, this decrease probably had more to do with domestic regulations and technological changes on both sides of the border. In the long run, neither country has fully followed through on its commitments.
The AQA also created a framework that could incorporate other air pollution issues, such as particulate matter and ozone. In that vein, Canada and the United States signed an “Ozone Annex” to the Air Quality Agreement in 2000. There was also a different type of ozone problem—the hole in the ozone layer—involving Canada and the United States; both were adherents to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, considered by many to be the most successful global environmental treaty ever.
To be sure, the United States and Canada have had the world’s most consequential environmental and energy relationship over at least the last century. No two nations have exchanged resources and collectively modified ecosystems on the same scale—which, by extension, has created harmony in wider U.S.-Canada relations and established many important precedents for international environmental law and governance. Yet, both countries are also petro states and climate villains, with their societies and economies organized around deeply unsustainable industrial practices and consumption patterns.
The amity that has long characterized U.S.-Canada relations has been eroding with Trump at the helm. And this recent strife about transborder smoke is representative of the ways that breakdowns in U.S.-Canada environmental and energy relations can undermine the rest of the relationship.
Daniel Macfarlane is Professor in the School of Environment, Geography, and Sustainability at Western Michigan University and the author or co-editor of six book including Natural Allies: Environment, Energy, and the History of US-Canada Relations.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.
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