Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford says Canada has no plans to invade the United States – and that Americans can rest assured the threat from the north is receding.

There is no need, the ailing mayor and most cackling Canadians seem to agree, for the 5,000-mile wall along the Canadian border that presidential candidate Scott Walker suggested this week is “a legitimate issue” on the campaign trail to the White House.

“It sounds to me a little off the wall,” Ford said of Walker’s comments about a potential US-Canada border wall. “I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere. I don’t think Walker has a chance down there.

“I don’t have a problem with the States,” the outspoken former mayor declared in a brief interview with the Guardian on Monday evening, as he limped toward Toronto’s Rogers Centre to watch the city’s surging Blue Jays baseball team play the Cleveland Indians, a rival visiting from the far side of unfortified Lake Erie.

Most Canadians, the former magistrate known for smoking crack added, are similarly well-disposed toward their southern neighbours – and understand full well that such an endeavour would be nearly impossible anyway.

Other Blue Jays fans agreed with their former leader, many cackling with laughter at the mention of Walker’s comments, which the Wisconsin governor mooted when challenged to out-Trump his rival immigration hawk Donald Trump on Sunday’s Meet the Press.

Walker may have since disavowed the concept – “I’ve never talked about a wall for the north; I’m certainly not now,” he said on Tuesday – but Canadians are loving it.

“It’s ludicrous and hilarious,” a Blue Jays fan named Neil from Toronto said of Walker’s fleeting flirtation with a norther border wall. “But that’s the Republicans.”

Bonnie, from nearby Milton, could not stop laughing at the mention of Walker’s name. “He’s a nutcase,” she exclaimed. “They can’t afford healthcare, but they can afford walls.”

With Walker’s wall serving as a temporary distraction from their own prolonged election coverage, Canadian media are now brimming with investigations into the logistics of barricading what they once called “the world’s longest undefended border”.

Defending the US-Canadian border would – hypothetically, of course – require a wall 8,891 kilometres (5,525 miles) long, with 2,475 kilometres (1,538 miles) devoted to protecting Alaskan wilderness and even more wall running down the middle of the Great Lakes.

Citing preliminary estimates made by the US Department of Homeland Security for the cost of a southern wall with Mexico, the Toronto Star estimated the cost of a Walker-style wall at “north of $18 billion (US)”.

Only 822 people were arrested for crossing illegally into the US from Canada in 2013, the Star noted.



Others suggested even higher potential costs due to the extra Yankee knowhow required to construct a wall down the middle of the Great Lakes and the rivers that connect them, which in themselves account for almost as much border space as the one Trump has proposed to force the Mexican government to build.

Cheerfully channeling Sarah Palin, Mike Bradley boasted that he can see America from his window in the Canadian border town of Sarnia, where he is mayor. But to him and others who have watched the increasing militarisation of the formerly undefended border over the past decade, Walker’s comments were no joke.



“This is just ongoing,” Bradley said, citing examples of unexpected hostility on the northern border since 9/11 including plans to launch observation balloons, proposals to charge fees for crossing the border, and live-fire exercises by US coast guard patrol vessels armed with machine guns.

“There’s this constant parade of suggestions and ideas,” Bradley said. “And as we’ve seen with the Trump candidacy, you should never dismiss anything in its beginning. These things can just take on a life of their own.”

The Canadian defence minister, Jason Kenney, likewise failed to get in on the joke, promising to “vigorously oppose any thickening of the border” in response to Walker’s proposal.

More goods and services cross the Canada-US border than any other international dividing line, and successive Canadian governments have struggled since their southern border’s inception to keep it as open as possible.

“If you look at how the border works today, with helicopters going up and down and security boats patrolling on a constant daily basis, it’s clear that border is heavily secured,” Kenney said. “You can’t cross this river without being observed by the Americans.”

“It’s so old-fashioned to think about putting up a wall,” he said.