Canadian Conundrum

The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming! 

  "A disgrace," says the president about Canada's alleged mistreatment of U.S. daily farmers.
   Ho hum.

   Excess use of insults and superlatives drains the words of whatever power they once had, and people soon stop listening, especially when the issue has relatively little importance to begin with.
   The price of milk is important, of course, to dairy farmers in Wisconsin, where the president visited last week. But milk has a short shelf life and is primarily dependent on local and regional markets. It's not a major player in international trade.
   Unless you're a cheese eater.

   But given the emphasis put on the allegation that the Canadian government is treating U.S. dairy farmers in a disgraceful manner, since the president mentioned it in the same speech in which he attacked steel imports from China, one would think he equates the two.
   What, then, should Parliament in Toronto do to combat this colossal threat to international relations, since it comes directly and publicly from the president?
   One reaction would be to close the border to protect Canadian dairy farmers from unfair trade practices by Americans. Or worse, the intermingling of the herds as refugee American bulls wander among Canadian cows. On a human level, imagine the horrors perpetrated by illegal migrants from Detroit as they flood across the border into Windsor, Ontario.
   Or the terror inflicted on the righteous citizens of Niagara Falls on the northern side of the river as they fend off the abusive habits and practices of those honeymooners trying to escape to Canada from New York State.

   Judging from the tone of the president's attack, the danger to Wisconsin daily farmers must be at least as serious as that faced by Texas ranchers.
   There seems to be only one answer. Canada must build a wall to protect its dairy farmers and, indeed, all its other citizens from the desperate predations of the milk men from the disreputable southern side of the longest undefended international border in the world.
   Either that, or the Canadian government can ignore the loudmouth rantings of a president with a questionable amount of common sense who regularly shows he doesn't know international trade from shoe polish.