As Americans look north to flee Trump, Canada peers back in worry

OTTAWA, Ontario — The move-to-Canada memes started spreading in earnest shortly after Donald Trump looked increasingly likely to win Florida: "Election Night Starter Kit," read a post on Instagram, above photos of U.S. passports and an Air Canada plane. Another post depicted a machine-gun-toting man riding a moose, with the words "Canadian Border Patrol Watching for Illegal Americans."

The comedians may have been on to something. Later on Tuesday night, the website of Canada's immigration department crashed. Social media quickly filled with speculation that it had been overloaded by Americans looking for a new country to call home.

Lisa Filipps, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said on Wednesday that the department's site had failed "as a result of a significant increase in the volume of traffic," but gave no details about the source of the traffic. The site was back in operation by midmorning but responded slowly and erratically.

Such a desire to flee an election result in the United States is often expressed, but rarely borne out. On the other side of the border, Canadians reacted to Trump's election win with concerns of their own, even anxiety, but also a whiff of pride.

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"It definitely makes me happy to live under the Trudeau government," said Cordell Jacks, 36, an international development worker in Vancouver, British Columbia, referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Jacks added that he wanted to see his country become a leader in championing human rights and battling climate change. "Canada's going to be in a higher position to take on global issues that America's going to put to the side," he said.

Since being becoming prime minister a year ago with a promise of "sunny ways," Trudeau has enjoyed an unusually close relationship with President Barack Obama. Now the Canadian government must plan for a future where the differences between Trudeau and Trump will probably go far beyond style.

During the presidential campaign, Trump rejected action to mitigate climate change while Trudeau has made it a priority, including setting minimum national carbon taxes. While Trudeau caught the world's attention by fulfilling a promise to admit 25,000 refugees from Syria, Trump has proposed closing the United States' doors to them. And Trump has argued that America's allies should boost their military spending at a time when Trudeau is backing away from combat roles for Canada in favor of United Nations peacekeeping missions.

For a country with an economy that depends heavily on exports to the United States, the most worrying uncertainty for Canada involves Trump's protectionist trade stance and his vow to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. While Trump's attacks on NAFTA have mostly been aimed at Mexico, the pact, and the agreement between Canada and the United States that it incorporated, effectively left much of Canada's industry largely producing for export.

Mark Warner, a trade lawyer in Toronto, said that while it was unclear what Trump had in mind for NAFTA, he fears that a Trump administration will rekindle old trade battles with Canada.

"We're going to get sideswiped by some of this stuff," Warner said. In particular, he said he expected Trump to promote "Buy America" clauses in government infrastructure projects that will shut out Canadian companies — a violation of NAFTA.

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Not every Canadian, of course, was displeased by the election result.

"As a gay, liberal, healthcare-loving Canadian, most of my friends thought I was crazy to be supporting Trump," Ashley MacIsaac, who is perhaps Canada's most famous fiddle player, said in an email. "But I suggested he had to win to offer a chance for world peace by preventing WWIII with Russia and for his stance on radical Islam."

In Cape Breton, Nova Scotia — MacIsaac's home — the life of Rob Calabrese, a radio disc jockey, has been unexpectedly upended by a tongue-in-cheek website he set up in February: Cape Breton If Trump Wins. Despite a surge in election night traffic, the site did not crash. And the election result, Calabrese said, generated about 200 emails overnight.

"It was all very playful before, but now there seems to be a sense of urgency to them," he said of the emails.

Andrew Griffith, a former director general of the citizenship and multiculturalism branch of Canada's immigration department, said most of those suggesting they would leave the United States because of Trump would not qualify as refugees and would have to go through a system that rates them based on factors such as education and job skills.

Having a firm offer for a skilled job in Canada can make getting a visa a relatively fast process, Griffith said. But in general the process can be protracted, expensive and without guarantees. And for almost everyone, he added, starting life over in a new country, even one next door, would be disruptive.

"It's not an automatic process despite the Twitter posts saying 'You're all welcome here,'" Griffith said. "Well, you're not all welcome."

Ian Austen reported from Ottawa, and Dan Levin from New York. Craig S. Smith contributed reporting from Stephenville, Newfoundland.