The walking dead are already among us. The amount of trash and filth that is generated here is astounding, a stunning assault on our environment, let alone property crimes and health costs. As much as kayakers protested that drilling rig at Harbor Island a few years back, the complete absence of protest from same environmental activists for the sheer filth we now have to put up with smacks of hypocrisy. If this was 1780's Britain we would be exporting Nuisance-making scofflaws to an Island, to Van Diemon's land, to Australia. The thing is, it worked. A massive re-set of expectations. We need a Big Island. Given climate change progresses, the sea ice is eroding, the tundra moving towards tropical I would suggest here, Melville Island, in the Canadian arctic:
What with the conundrum of immigration facing this country it seems more than justifiable for every heavily vetted immigrant or Dreamer kid who has shown great promise and employability that we give citizenship to, we allow the deportation of nuisance making addict scofflaws to Melville island, a place where you have no past. If you won't work and clean up for yourself and there is not a legitimate reason why (the old, the young, the truly disabled, the transiently unemployed), you go. You got needle marks and a tarp surrounded by trash in the woods or by the highway or through a hole in a chain link fence, you signed your own warrant.
Some would say, "but Boot, Melville Island is Canadian" and to that- if diplomacy fails us (And I can't imagine it would) we offer to pay for Canadian scofflaws (have you seen East Hasting's street in the past few years, JFC- that's what we get to look forward to) to be sent there as well, so long as our unwanted went as well. If the Canadians are not of accord then there is the Larson Ice shelf, in Antarctica...that colored line is an emerging crack that is rapidly progressing. Soon this chunk of ice the size of Vancouver Island will be free of territorial claims...
