Canada Must Pay: Environmental Reparations Now

The United States and Canada have long enjoyed a harmonious relationship, with the minor exception of the Canadians acting as a staging ground for British troops to invade and raze the capital after the U.S. cuffed the Canucks upside the head at York.

Besides those unpleasantries instigated by our mutual progenitor, England, the North American domestic arrangement had been downright neighborly.

For instance, on trade, the U.S. underwrites Canada’s defense. Canada reciprocates by supplying the U.S. with an annual quota of comedians — Norm Macdonald and John Candy for clear sea lanes and secure borders. Via the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel, we send the Northmen our University of Michigan undergrads looking to let loose. Canada enjoys the proceeds of drinking-age arbitrage sustaining its socialized medicine while Midwesterners are spared drunken monologues about Harbaugh’s genius.

It was a sound system . . . until Canada ruined it.

With these wildfires’ broad frontal assault on American sovereignty — smoke from Quebec in the east and British Columbia in the west pouring into American airspace — Canada has broken the trust and initiated environmental warfare on the United States.

Trespassing the 49th Parallel is an act of environmental injustice so egregious that it can only be remitted with reparative justice (cold hard cash and U.S.-favored dairy trade policies).

The famously curling-sympathetic think tank Brookings offers a helpful summary of the concept:

Reparations means rectifying past and ongoing harms. As a policy mechanism, it has mostly involved compensatory measures such as one-off wealth or land transfers to individuals impacted by state-sanctioned violence or systematic injustices. Calls for “climate reparations” apply this logic to international disparities in climate change impacts and risks, which are the result of substantial differences in the responsibilities for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, stemming from colonial histories of resource extraction.

What seemed like a one-off — Canada, while still only a territory, merrily providing aid to the burning of U.S. territory and buildings — is this day exposed as that very same colonial attitude rearing its head. Our northern neighbor is brazenly venting its waste gases into our lungs and HVAC systems. Honeywell doesn’t make an “in case of Canadian environmental invasion” model of box filter. Our nation’s health is threatened.

Even the dovish Bernie Sanders appeared to condemn Canada in a recent tweet:

It is time to act, Senator Sanders. Thank you for the implicit support of extracting concessions from Ursalia.

Blessedly, progressive Canada has already built a system to address environmental justice, with its “Climate finance for developing countries” page reading:

Climate change and biodiversity loss do not respect borders. Not only do they represent existential threats in their own right, but they are also catalysts for instability, conflict, starvation, and pandemics. . . .

Climate change threatens the essential ingredients of good health – clean air, safe drinking water, nutritious food supply, and safe shelter.

Seeing as international progressives thrill at referring to the U.S. as a “developing nation,” I reckon we qualify for aid.

Even a heartfelt folksy “sorry” won’t cut through the smoke this time. Pay up, Canada.