OTTAWA — The Canadian government this week responded to US President Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 20% tariff on softwood lumber imports by implementing a 30% tax on America’s chief export, white nationalism.

“We’re simply levelling the playing field,” insisted Ministry of Foreign Trade spokesperson Janet Umberto. “Canadian supremacists have long been forced to spew intolerance, misinformation and divisive, scapegoating rhetoric through privately-funded the groups like Rebel Media and Sun News. Meanwhile, NAFTA allows American racists to spread the exact same brand of vitriolic racial hatred for pennies on the dollar through government-owned programs like the Senate, Congress, and White House.”

The newly levied fines will make it prohibitively expensive for Canada’s alt-right to employ American-made, racially loaded code words like ‘globalist,’ ‘rule of law,’ ‘states’ rights,’ and ‘white genocide’ to scare up support for their dream of a racially pure white ethno-state. The aim is to incentive racists north of the border to destroy Canada’s social fabric using locally-manufactured expressions like ‘barbaric practices,’ ‘Old-Stock Canadians,’ and ‘Canadian values.’

Similar tolls are expected to be placed on sales of the Confederate Flag, in the hopes of replacing it with the Canadian Red Ensign, a staple of the residential school system, and a nod to the country’s own rich history of cultural whitewashing.

But while American nationalists have predictably slammed the tariffs as “garden-variety snowflake cuckery,” Canada’s white extremist community applauded the Liberal government’s show of solidarity.

“Frankly, I think it sends two important messages,” explained Kelly MacInnes, VP of Marketing & Eugenics for Canadian white nationalist group Heritage Front. “One, you go after a cornerstone of our economy, we’ll go after a cornerstone of yours. And two, Canada is every bit as adept as the US when it comes the systemic and institutionalized marginalization of non-whites.”

“Besides, it’ll be hard for Americans to burn crosses if they can’t afford the wood to build them, eh?”