TORONTO — Smoke from Canadian wildfires is casting a shadow for many Americans this summer, a group of six Republican lawmakers say, and they want Canada to answer for it.

“In our neck of the woods, summer months are the best time of the year to spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories,” the U.S. representatives from Wisconsin and Minnesota wrote in a letter this week. “But this wildfire smoke makes it difficult to do all those things.”

Their letter, addressed to Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, demanded to know her government’s plan for tackling the wildfires and accused it of lax forest management that has contributed to “suffocating” smoke.

“Our communities shouldn’t suffer because of poor decisions made across the border,” Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., one of the letter’s authors, said in a post on social platform X. Canada’s government said it was reviewing the letter and planned to offer a response. The letter was also signed by Reps. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin and Brad Finstad, Pete Stauber, Tom Emmer and Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota.

The premier of Manitoba province , where wildfires have been particularly bad and killed two people in May, blasted the letter by the U.S. lawmakers. The official, Wab Kinew, told reporters Thursday that the lawmakers were “trying to trivialize and make hay out of a wildfire season where we’ve lost lives in our province.” The U.S. lawmakers also partly blamed arson for the wildfires, but the vast majority of the blazes are actually caused by lightning.