<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div><span></span></div><div><div>Maybe it's aboot time I started packin' my bags for my long trip north . . . ay?</div><div><br></div><div>Courtesy of the Montreal Gazette (Montreal, Canada) at:</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/josh-freed-time-to-build-the-great-wall-of-canada-before-trumpmania-explodes">http://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/josh-freed-time-to-build-the-great-wall-of-canada-before-trumpmania-explodes</a></div><div><br></div><div>---------------------------------</div><div><br></div><div><h1 itemprop="headline" class="entry-title" style="margin: 0px 0px 30px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: TitlingGothicFBCond-Standard, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 50px; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 56px; vertical-align: baseline; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; letter-spacing: 1.5px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Time to build the Great Wall of Canada before Trumpmania explodes</h1><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Fellow Canadians — it’s time to trump Trump.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As the U.S. election heats up and Trumpmania spreads like fire, we Canadians must start thinking about our future defence strategy.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">With almost 40 per cent of Republican primary voters favouring Trump, there’s a rising possibility the Mouth That Roars could face and defeat Hillary Clinton in next year’s election.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That could send millions of shocked American Democrats and other Trump-dodgers fleeing across our Canadian border, seeking political refugee status here in the land of the free(ze).</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The humanitarian crisis could be unparalleled — and there’s only one solution, Canada, if we think ahead.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Trump himself promises to protect America from illegal Mexican immigrants by building a giant wall along the southern border. Fellow Republican candidate Scott Walker has borrowed the idea and called for a wall against Canada, too.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Some scoff, but watching the growing Trump fervour I think they’re right — only we should do it, not them. Yes Canadians, we must build a wall between the U.S. and us — and the time is now.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Imagine the scenario if we wait another year till polls show “The Donald” poised to become president. Imagine all the people he’s insulted suddenly fleeing our way:</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">— Millions of Mexican immigrants Trump insulted, saying: “They bring drugs they bring crime, they’re rapists.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">— Millions of Other Immigrants he insulted, blaming race problems in Ferguson and Baltimore on “gangs of illegal immigrants.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">— Countless women he’s insulted calling them “pigs,” “dogs” and “disgusting slobs with fat, ugly faces.” This from a man with America’s Silliest Hair.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If Trumpmania spreads, we could see flotillas of American “yacht people” fleeing across Lake Ontario seeking freedom from Trumplandia.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Our border guards may discover families of Democrats hidden in the trunks of Volvos, their socks stuffed with stocks. Teenaged dope-dealers may risk their lives on windsurfers to escape Trump’s tough “eye-for-an-eye” justice plan.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I’m not saying Canada doesn’t need immigrants — but processing millions of U.S. refugees could take years. We can’t even figure out how to let in thousands of Syrians that Canadian families have already sponsored.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I think Canada should take tens of thousand of Syrian refugees. But there’s an ocean between them and us, so we can control the flow — unlike Europe where millions are pouring across borders and overwhelming even the best-intentioned countries.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That could be us if Trump becomes president and Americans flood our land borders. Better to prepare now. Building a wall can’t be done overnight after Trump wins — we must create Fortress Canada now.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I admit it’s daunting. A wall from sea to sea would stretch almost 9,000 kilometers, including Alaska — slightly longer than the visible portion of the Great Wall of China.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But the upside is the Great Wall of Canada would become the World’s Greatest Wall — a huge tourist draw, reducing China’s to a second-rate, not-so-great wall.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There would be other challenges due to our climate. Your average Berlin Wall wall might be easy to cross in winter when Canadian snow banks can be 15 feet high, so we’d have to build higher. Maybe we need a giant ice wall like the one in <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Game of Thrones</em> that protects the Seven Kingdoms — but guarded by legions of Canadian snowmen.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Others have proposed a wall made of one-way glass so only we Canadians can see out — preferably one made of bulletproof glass.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">However we build it, this could be the great national project we’ve yearned for over decades, employing hundreds of thousands with “jobs, jobs, jobs.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It won’t be easy saying “no” to our American neighbours. They would be genuine political refugees, fleeing a better economy than ours — and probably good immigrants. But too much of a good thing is …</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What if they demand Obamacare instead of Medicare, or the basic sacred right to buy guns in supermarkets?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Imagine the massive challenge of integrating them all and teaching them terms like “loonie,” “toonie,” “poutine,” “eh” and “sorry” — let alone the metric system.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Imagine their trauma when forced to “swear loyalty to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth” — and their difficulty getting used to Canadian news, like live three-day coverage of a first-ministers health-care conferen<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">zzzz</em>.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s easier to build a wall and keep them out. There are other advantages to my plan, too. The Great Wall of Canada would work both ways — keeping in snowbirds who drive to Florida every year, spending billions of dollars that would now stay home.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It would keep our best actors from fleeing to Hollywood, while sealing off the brain drain.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is not some off-the-wall idea, it’s a wall idea. We can do it — we built a railway 130 years ago — how hard can it be to build a wall?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; line-height: 1.6; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I say let some Syrians in, but keep America out. Let’s build our wall quickly, before the rush begins to escape Trump’s Ironic Curtain.</span></p></div><div>---------------------------------</div><div><br><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</span></div><div><a href="http://www.moscowcares.com/" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><font color="#000000">http://www.MoscowCares.com</font></a></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> </span></div><div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tom Hansen</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moscow, Idaho</span></div></div><div> </div></div></div></div></body></html>