By Jim Hagarty
2018
I often wondered how long Canadians could hide our shame but the awful secret is out, thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump, who has an amazing ability to ferret out crime by foreigners.
The president has rightly nailed Mexicans for smuggling drugs into his country. He doesn’t say quite so much about Americans smuggling guns into Canada but I am sure it is just because he hasn’t gotten around to it yet.
But this week, the strongman from south of our border finally said what no politician has ever had the guts to acknowledge: The inhabitants of the Great White North are brazen bands of shoe smugglers. You read that right. For decades, we so-called meek and mild Canadians have been secretly disgracing ourselves by crossing the border into the U.S., buying shoes in American stores, but then illegally putting them on our feet and wearing them back home across the border. In fact, the wave of Canadian footwear smugglers gave rise to the term “bootleggers.”
However, we have not simply been pulling a fast one on border agents. It is the way we have been doing it that almost defies belief. But the president has pulled back the hideous cover on all of us who live north of the border.
“They buy shoes and they wear ’em,” said Trump in an important speech. “They scuff ’em up to make ’em sound old, or look old.”
And why do we Canadians participate in this shameful crime? To avoid “tariffs” on the shoes, the leader of the free world revealed to an audience of American businessmen, substituting the word tariff for the more commonly used “duty”.
Consequently, a new policy was put into place as of midnight last night. Henceforth, all Canadians visiting the United States will not be allowed to wear shoes when we enter the country. That way, when we leave the U.S., if any of us are wearing shoes, border agents will easily be able to tell that they are American shoes and will ensure the Canadians pay the relevant tariffs. Anyone trying to skirt these rules will be detained in special “bootlegger holding cells” and their children will be separated from them and kept in cages at local shelters run by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Further, administration of the new policy will be overseen by Attorney General Jeff Sessions who spoke on the matter this morning.
“Faw too lawwwng, Canyehdicuns have bun tehkin’ advantuge of ahr frendluhnez,” said Sessions. “No maw! This infammee ends naw!”
Customs officials have also been instructed to check the underwear of Canadians seeking to cross the border back into Canada, with special care taken to see what steps the panty smugglers might have taken to make the new American underwear look used.
More on this story as it develops.
