Hamilton Spectator - October 29, 2007
The Calgary Sun - October 7, 2007
The Chronicle-Herald - October 6, 2007
By Colin Kenny
Many Canadians are mad as hell at the U.S. government’s intentions to require passports for identification at border crossings by the summer of 2008 – or June, 2009 if the U.S. Congress slows things down. In either case, I think the passport issue is trivial compared to what should be bothering Canadians at border crossings.
The impending requirement to produce a passport (or similar identity card if they ever come up with one) is no big deal. In fact it will enhance security at our borders, which is a good thing.
Every other nationality currently needs a passport to enter the United States. Even Americans returning to their homeland are going to require a passport. So why should Canadians be exempt? And why are Canadian politicians and diplomats wasting their breath trying to talk the Americans out of it.
If the Americans manage to develop some other kind of identity card that will be cheaper and just as secure as a passport, fine. Then Canada will have to clone that card and put a maple leaf on it instead of an eagle, and one would expect the two countries to reach an agreement to recognize each other’s cards.
Passports certainly offer each country a lot better security than the current practice of allowing people through with driver’s licences from various states and provinces. These come in such a wide variety of formats that forgeries are hard to detect.
No, passports or eventual replacement identity cards shouldn’t be what’s bothering Canadians. What should be bothering us is that the huge lineups at border crossings are threatening the Canadian economy. And – perhaps for their own good reasons – In fact, I am beginning to suspect that they’re happy to see those lineups.
Am I paranoid? Maybe. But go to Sarnia and look at the trucks and cars lined up for four or five kilometers, inching ahead, motors running, road-weary truck drivers getting even more tired, tourists vowing never to come back, and tell me why the two governments aren’t making it a huge priority to solve this problem. Go to Prescott and see the vehicles lined up all the way back onto the 401, blocking a lane.
These are crossings that people used to use to go to lunch in a restaurant across the bridge and get back in under two hours. Now, if you’re going to have lunch you’d better leave at breakfast time and buy dinner there as well, so you can eat in the car on the way home.
When I visited the United States as Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I asked some American politicians why fixing the border situation wasn’t a bigger priority for them. Their reply was that the only people who ever pressured them to do anything were Canadians not U.S. voters.
In fact, wouldn’t a lot of U.S. voters be pleased with a situation – like clogged U.S.- Canadian borders – that might make investors less willing to set up in Canada and more willing to set up in the United States?
By the early 2000s Canada had become a very attractive place for international investors to locate production facilities. There were a variety of factors that made Canada attractive. Workers were well-educated – and cheaper, because the Canadian dollar was worth less than 70 cents U.S. Healthy care costs for workers were cheaper, because of Canada’s national health care plan.
But for investors far more interested in serving massive U.S. markets than the relatively small Canadian marketplace, none of this would have been enough if there weren’t easy access to those U.S. markets. Trucks streamed back and forth across the Canadian-U.S. border under the new corporate regimen of “just-in-time” delivery, which meant an end to expensive inventories. Companies could set up facilities on both sides of the border and know they could ship their widgets from Point A in Canada to Point B in the U.S. within hours – sometimes within minutes.
In its investment promotional brochures, Industry Canada was able to brag that “Of Canada’s 30 largest cities, 17 are within an hour-and-half’s drive of the United States, and many are much closer.” Even in 2003, two years after 9/11, Industry Canada assured travellers that commercial [Canada-U.S.] border crossings were averaging “less than ten minutes.”
There seemed to be plenty of good will on both sides to ensure that the border crossing remained fluid. In December, 2002 the two countries even signed an agreement to create a ‘smart” border to make the world’s No. 1 trading relationship even better.
But between 2003 and 2007, despite pre-clearance plans like NEXUS that were designed to make crossings more efficient – Canadian-U.S. border crossings somehow became more and more constipated.
Jim Miller, then senior vice-president of Honda Canada, had offered this quote for publication in 2003: “There are no longer two separate Canadian and U.S. marketplaces on this continent. It has become one North American market, and Canada is an ideal place from which to serve it.”
Two year later he withdrew his quote, telling Industry Canada that it was no longer an accurate description of what was happening. The borders were bunged up, and industry was taking note.
There is blame on both sides. Our committee has argued for years now that Canadian border guards should be less concerned with collecting relatively miniscule duties from people shopping in the United States and simply focus on security – with more efficient security technology to speed up the process. That would speed things up, but the Canadian government has not responded.
On the American side, you really have to wonder whether American politicians want to respond. A large chunk of their electorate is angry that so many U.S. manufacturing jobs have disappeared – some to places like China and India, but others to Canada. By the beginning of this century, Ontario had drawn even with Michigan in automotive production. That was an amazing coup, but you didn’t hear Canadian politicians or bureaucrats crowing about it, because it so annoyed the Americans.
You have to believe that a high percentage of working stiffs in the United States aren’t upset that those border crossings are jammed. And now that the Canadian dollar is approaching the U.S. dollar in value, you have to wonder how many corporations aren’t looking for an excuse to shut down production in Canada.
Like clogged-up border points.
My suggestion to the Canadian government is that it had better take every measure possible to reduce those border lineups, and quickly. Because I don’t think they are going to get a lot of help from politicians and bureaucrats south of the border. These people may have decided that a “smart” border with Canada isn’t necessarily an efficient border.
Colin Kenny was chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence during the last session of Parliament. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca