As a former Canadian, I can tell you that many Canadians have a real complex when it comes to their neighbors south of the border. Canadians have always been a bit cranky about the outsized influence America has on the rest of the world. While Canada was trading in the warriors who helped win WWII for socialized medicine and cradle-to-grave care, America was going to space, defeating communism and basically kicking ass all the time, everywhere.

There’s a pervasive attitude in Canadian culture that denigrating Americans is a sign of sophistication.

The latest “burn” is to look down their noses at an America that is riddled with sickness and gun violence. It’s the wild, wild west down there. People are dropping dead in the streets, the cities are savaged, and citizens keep demanding to eat at restaurants even though they’re stepping over dead bodies strewn across sidewalks. This is the picture their news gives them. I know from talking to my own friends and family that this is what they believe is happening here. They literally think Americans are dropping where they stand, all day every day.

As a result, Prime Minister Blackface Trudeau has released a statement saying he does not see the border opening for quite some time thanks to American COVID spikes.

“Until the virus is significantly more under control everywhere around the world, we’re not going to be releasing the restrictions at the border,” Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. when asked about the issue.

Canadians on social media are celebrating the move and why wouldn’t they? All the news they’re getting from here is making it sound like we’re sitting in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

I cannot convince my Canadian family that outside of what is shut down, life around my parts is pretty normal and it’s the same for most of the country. The traffic is lighter, the streets in big city centers like Los Angeles are more sparse. But the homeless are as saucy and plentiful as they ever were. Even they’re still alive. No masks, no distancing, but strangely enough also almost no COVID.

My neighbor is mowing his lawn as I write this. Tomorrow we’re all walking up to see the lights in our town square. My Chicago friend is taking the train to work. My New York friends are walking dogs and getting takeout and and meeting with friends. Almost everyone I know had some kind of Thanksgiving gathering, albeit a bit smaller than normal.

While we’re certainly suffering some pretty oppressive government responses, the idea that Americans are overwhelmed with COVID is a manufactured idea. You could drive across this entire country and not see one COVID-dead body in the street and there are not lines for hospital treatments. Governors Cuomo and Newsom are saying their states are headed towards an overwhelming and very serious spike yet neither had made requests for field hospitals or hospital ships.

That’s because while some ICUs in some states may reach near capacity, we are not headed towards “bodies in the street” like we were told would probably be happening back in March. We are not faring any worse than any other industrialized nation. The number of COVID cases is a bum metric, as many people are tested multiple times over and yet all of those tests get counted as “cases.”

My point is, things down here are as fine as they can be in a pandemic. Canada would be just fine with keeping that border open for the few Americans who really feel like traveling these days. But they don’t want those dirty, redneck, cootie-riddled Americans stepping foot on their ice rinks.

“Let’s keep those dirty Americans out until they learn to stop trying to be free and all that horse crap!”

Anyway, Trudeau and the Trump administration seem to agree that as long as the border is open for trade it can remain closed for the little people.

Canadians may count that as a weird kind of triumph, but the rest of us couldn’t care less.

I can assure you that most Americans didn’t even realize the border was closed to travel because most Americans forgot Canada is still up there, doing things and pretending they don’t have massive problems with racism and sexism in their own government right now.

So I’m with Trudeau. We really don’t need to be mixing with such a problematic country right now. Keep the border closed. We don’t need one more Canadian actor coming down here and stealing our Hollywood roles. And no one actually likes poutine. People just say they do because they think it makes them sound cultured, when poutine is just about the most pedestrian dish you can eat. Most of hockey has matriculated down here and you guys have given no indication that you intend to take back Justin Bieber or Samantha Bee, so it looks like we’re done here.

BUILD THE WALL.