US Travel Advisory Required
It's time for the government to issue a travel advisory warning Canadians to avoid the United States for their own safety, not only as a means of economic protest.
Monday’s news that the Trump administration has taken control of the DC police and deployed 800 National Guard soldiers into Washington, DC has taken us another step closer to the comprehensive martial law called for by Project 2025. It also means the United States is no longer safe, and it is time for our government to making a point of saying so.
To deploy soldiers in the streets of the nation’s capital, Trump is “declaring a crime emergency,” in spite of all types of crime being on the decline in the city. He is also telling homeless people to leave the city or he will give them housing “FAR from the capital.” He won’t say where, of course, but Alligator Alcatraz comes to mind. As well as the National Guard, he is retasking every federal law enforcement agency with getting involved including the FBI, DEA, and ATF, all of which will have to divert manpower from their own core tasks to comply.
The only significant rise in crime in DC is the enormous cover-up taking place around Jeffrey Epstein and his involvement with Donald Trump, the president who refused to deploy the National Guard in DC when there was an actual crime emergency on January 6, 2021, for which he ordered the National Guard to instead protect the demonstrators.
If Americans want to preserve their arcane county-by-county electoral system, allow states to gerrymander electoral districts with the specific intention of stealing seats, and retain a president who thinks the constitution is little more than a ballroom napkin, that’s their choice. Their tepid response, seeming to believe everything will be magically restored by a favourable 2026 mid-term result, would suggest that the country is largely oblivious to its own far longer-term peril.
The international community as a whole needs to step up to oppose the systematic and rapid destruction of American democracy where that failure endangers the rest of us. Anschluss, as I have warned for a while, is in the cards with the Trump administration, and if Pierre Poilievre wins Monday’s by-election in Alberta, his Trumpian vision of Canada will be back in the House of Commons this fall to lay the groundwork to welcome that American takeover of our country.
There are actions Canada can take that we have so far been shy to, even under the calculating and surgical leadership of Mark Carney, and we can do so immediately.
Trump is not someone who makes deals, in spite of his rhetoric. He is a bully with a very thin skin whose ego matters to him more than any other trait. Stroking that ego only makes him want more; giving in simply moves his goal posts. It is time to send a more direct message, one directed at him and unmissable by the entire rest of his country.
With Trump rapidly bringing the United States toward his long-sought martial law, putting specific classes of people (for now) in concentration camps, rounding up the homeless, and threatening their allies and neighbours, travel to the United States is not exactly something that should be recommended. It is too easy for Canadians traveling in the United States to get caught up in the escalating curtailing of rights or find themselves disappeared into one of the American Gestapo’s concentration camps.
Yet the government of Canada’s official advice for those considering travel to the United States reads: “take normal security precautions” — as if everything really is normal.
The assessment is generic, saying in essence that there is crime in the United States as there is anywhere else and to behave accordingly. That there are repercussions for political opinion, the possibility of arrest and detention for merely looking foreign, and that the government is laying the groundwork for martial law is not even gently alluded to.
If we want to send a clear — and more honest — message about the United States, the travel advice should read how most Canadians are already taking visiting the US: “avoid all travel” just as our government website says about Russia.
Canadians are already avoiding the United States as a dangerous adversary. Even the Girl Guides will be cancelling all travel to the United States effective September 1st. It is not only a matter of an economic boycott of tourism to the United States, but it is a question of the security and protection of our people.
Canada should be very publicly offering consular assistance in getting Canadians out of the United States and recommending that any Canadians traveling to the United States do so only for the most essential of travel, and register with the Registry of Canadians Abroad to ensure they can be found and brought home safely. If Canada has the courage to do this, allies will follow. The message, even for the most hard-core MAGAs, will be clear: nobody else in the world thinks America is on track for improved greatness.
The Canadian government has a duty to protect its citizens. Encouraging them to travel to the United States at this time is against this principle and will put Canadians in jeopardy. Considering travel conditions to the United States as perfectly normal does a disservice to Canadians and lends legitimacy to the actions of the American régime.
Trump is bringing in martial law, as spelled out in Project 2025, and the United States is no longer safe. Let’s all stop pretending any of this is normal.