Canada can’t support influx of migrants fleeing Trump, must prevent border crossings, says former top aide

Clearly the case, for domestic as well as USA reasons:

Canada needs to significantly strengthen its border, says a former chief of staff to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, because it can’t absorb large numbers of migrants who could flee here to evade U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s pledge of mass deportations.

Peter Wilkinson, who recently spent 21 months as Ms. Joly’s top lieutenant and previously served as chief of staff to former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, said Canadians should be deeply concerned about Mr. Trump’s plan to deport up to 11 million undocumented migrants after he takes office in January.

While Mr. Trump has vowed to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on Canada and Mexico in a bid to stop illegal crossings and the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., Mr. Wilkinson worries about the threat of mass deportations.

“We just can’t take 11 million people. We can’t even take one million people or 500,000 people,” he said in an interview. “We have to stop people from coming in. We will be faced with something that as Canadians, that we never really faced before.”

Mr. Wilkinson said the country’s health care and social-welfare systems can’t handle potentially huge numbers of people crossing into Canada. While many groups will argue that this country should accept these migrants, he warned that this issue could fracture the Canadian consensus on immigration.

“Lots of groups in society will be saying ‘no, we can’t do that, it is inhumane,’ and I understand that,” he said. “We are straining a bit now on the consensus in the country in regard to immigration and refugees. This will blow it up.”…

Source: Canada can’t support influx of migrants fleeing Trump, must prevent border crossings, says former top aide