US President Donald Trump said that he told Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that Canada must do better at controlling Ontario wildfires whose smoke has affected several US states.
The day after threatening to levy additional tariffs on Canadian goods to punish Canada over the wildfire smoke, Trump said he spoke to Carney at the Fifa World Cup final that both of them attended on Sunday.
“I have a good relationship with Mark Carney, but we’ve got to stop the fires up there,” Trump told reporters after he returned from the World Cup game in New Jersey. “Maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs.”
Heavy smoke from hundreds of fires in Ontario enveloped a swathe of the United States from the Midwest to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic starting from Thursday, prompting days of warnings to US residents to stay indoors wherever possible.
At one point on Saturday, the smoke made New York the most polluted city in the world, followed closely by Toronto and Washington, according to air tracker IQAir.