Last week we examined the question of whether or not there might be a “Trump Effect” showing up in Canada. But looking at the results of a recent survey taken in the Great White North I’m starting to wonder if it wasn’t there long before Trump came to town. Now that Canadians are being forced to deal with their own issue of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border, people aren’t particularly happy about it. In fact, a very sizable portion of the population would not only like to see these border incursions stop, but they want the unwelcome visitors to be deported. (Reuters)

Nearly half of Canadians want to deport people who are illegally crossing into Canada from the United States, and a similar number disapprove of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is handling the influx, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Monday.

A significant minority, four out of 10 respondents, said the border crossers could make Canada “less safe,” underlining the potential political risk for Trudeau’s Liberal government.

The increasing flow of hundreds of asylum-seekers of African and Middle Eastern origin from the United States in recent months has become a contentious issue in Canada.

Well, isn’t that just fascinating? We are continually assured by our socialist leaning liberal betters that Canada is a far more civilized and desirable country precisely because of their open attitude toward multiculturalism and rejection of nationalist tendencies. But how much of that is fact versus myth?

The reality is that Canada doesn’t deal with many of the problems which we face in the United States precisely because it’s a very different and significantly smaller country. You can talk about their single-payer, socialized healthcare program all you like, but the fact is that it’s much easier to run such a system when you have far fewer potential clients. Canada’s population is only 35 million, which doesn’t even add up to the number we have just in California. Similarly, we constantly hear about how the tolerant and progressive Canadians don’t deal with the same problems of racism as we do in the United States. It’s not that impressive of a trick when you consider that Canada is almost entirely white (over 80% of the population is Caucasian including 4% aboriginal) , with less than 3% of their population being black and barely 1% Latin American. Not exactly a picture of diversity there.

Now, however, they are being forced to deal with some of the same problems we’ve been battling for the last century. Their illegal immigration situation is still minuscule compared to ours because they’re only dealing with a few hundred people over the past few months. But that’s clearly bad enough to get them riled up and in the mood to start kicking out some foreigners. For his part, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came out early and said that he had no intention of deporting the new illegal arrivals. We’ll be waiting to see how strong his resolve is if his poll numbers continue to plummet in advance of the next election.

We should be able to demonstrate some empathy for our Canadian friends, particularly given the fact that we’ve been battling the same intractable issues for so long ourselves. But a less charitable portion of my brain still wants to quote Bruce Willis from one of those Die Hard movies. Welcome to the party, pal.