Preparing For The Trump Influx

Okay Canada, we've got a problem. Donald Trump is going to be the Republican nominee, and people are getting nervous. A President Trump would be a problem for a lot of people, but it's especially bad for us: see, the election's months away, and already Americans are talking about fleeing to Canada. Yeah, it may seem like idle joking now, but some people are taking it seriously. And just wait until Trump and Vice President-elect Palin are musing about which religions to ban; then the floodgates will open.

We've gone and set the precedent that we'll welcome refugees. That seemed like a good idea when we had an ocean between us and all the countries producing refugees. But if there's a despotic leader right next door, it could be a disaster. What are we going to do with all these people? there are 2.6 million Muslims in the U.S. and 50 million Latinos. Then you have to add in a fair portion of liberals who just want to leave, and then all the people dodging the draft to avoid the new war against France. Face it, we're going to have to use some more radical approaches to fit everyone in. Here are some ideas:

Accelerate Global Warming

The easiest way for us to get more usable space is to use more of the land we already have. For that, all we need are a few more degrees and the extinction of the blackfly. Of course, we've always had the capacity to pump out the greenhouse gases, and now we have the incentive. And when Trump mandates maximum mileage standards, that'll help too.

Once the ice is gone, we start building condos and subdivisions in the Arctic. Hey, we've created real estate bubbles pretty much everywhere else in the country, why not the North? Once developers run out of room on Toronto's waterfront, they'll be glad to have new land to work with.

Annex Everything We Can

I've mentioned the possibility of adding the Turks and Caicos before; well, there are plenty of other ex-colonies of Britain in the Americas that we could adopt. I know, the Falklands aren't that big, but I'm sure they'll be a fine place for Bernie Sanders to spend his exile.

Also, we could probably talk Trump into just giving us Puerto Rico. It's nearly bankrupt, and full of Latinos, so he'll want nothing to do with it.

Fill In Some Places

Saskatchewan, Labrador, Northern Ontario: you're going to have to make room.  Sure, we can hide some more cities deep in the forest and you'll never even know they're there, but you on the prairies are just going to have to live with a New Chicago that you can see for miles around.

New Provinces

Every province has land they're really not using. We could slice-off big parts of them so that refugees could build their own Provinces from scratch. Honestly, we could just redefine Ontario as "everything within a hundred miles of the 401, and most of us wouldn't notice the difference. Why not take everything between Stratford and Tobermory and give it to American ex-pats to establish New Connecticut.

Since a lot of the Trumpugees™ will be fleeing due to their religion or ethnicity, we could create homelands for Muslims, Hispanics, homosexuals etc. I'm sure putting all the people with one culture in the same province couldn't possibly come back to haunt us. But seriously, that's just the decent thing to do, letting people with their own culture govern themselves. What's that, Native Canadians? Well, um, you know...

Expanding Cities

We don't really want Toronto to balloon into a sprawling megalopolis surrounded by American shantytowns. So let's think about how we can fit more people into other cities. For instance, if we in Kitchener-Waterloo want to squeeze in more people without changing the community's character, we'd have to build a few more conjoined communities. There's enough room between KW, Cambridge, and Guelph for another city. We can just make it one big mass of cities that can't agree on a merger.

Making New Cities

There are plenty of parts of Canada that don't have a big urbanized centre, but could probably benefit from one. For instance, the Maritimes. Wouldn't we all like to see what happens when we squeeze a million Nova Scotians into a mega city to create the worlds friendliest metropolis? Bonus: they could finally get their CFL team. And how about a big city for Newfoundland? That would be beautiful with all those wooden, brightly-coloured skyscrapers.

And since some American cities will probably move wholesale to Canada, we might as well just rebuild them in their entirety. So let's start looking for places we can put replicas of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston.

Learn Spanish

All the Spanish speakers are going to mean some big changes. for one thing, we'll have to find a way to put grocery items in three-sided containers so we can print the label in three different languages. But I also figure Quebec would be willing to house them. Sure, they might overwhelm the French-Canadian culture, but at this point, I'm sure they no longer care which language wins, as long as it's not English.

More Hockey Teams

If the blue states start to empty out, they might as well bring their hockey teams with them. But keep in mind that a sudden increase in Canada's population would mean and an explosion in the number of hockey players a generation from now.

Steal Parts Of The U.S.

He may claim otherwise, but Trump isn't really a detail guy. So we could easily sneak in and take a few parts of America without him noticing or caring, as long as we take parts he's not real fond of. For instance, Detroit has no money, cheap real estate, and a big Muslim community. He'd probably be glad if we took it off his hands. Same for Buffalo.

As I've mentioned before, there are plenty of empty states bordering Canada that America wouldn't really miss. Unfortunately, they're mostly places that would support Trump: As soon as he wins the election, you know North Dakota will be out building a fence on the Canadian border, then leaving us a bill. Really, the only state we could annex wholesale without trouble would be Vermont. That doesn't really give us much extra space, but at least then we wouldn't have to send Bernie Sanders to the Falklands.

Nulcear Weapons

At this point, we'll have a small empire, most of America's scientists, control of the world's media, and about a hundred million people, many of which are the people Trump has taught his followers to demonize. The point is, we'll be next in the crosshairs of Trump and his government propagandists at the new PBS (which will actually just be rebranded Fox News.) So no more of that undefended border crap; it's time for a cold war. Oh, and we still have to protect the Falklands from Argentina.

Again, I'm hoping that some of the fleeing Americans can bring some military equipment with them. And maybe Justin Trudeau knows where his dad put those Cruise missiles we tested for the Americans in the eighties. And I'm sure we've still got the plans for the Avro Arrow around here somewhere. Yes, it's obsolete now, but remember, it will just have to beat the new F-35. That shouldn't be too hard.