Canadians make nearly 40 million trips to the U.S. every year, and $1.6 billion a day crosses the border in goods and services. It makes sense then that Canadian and U.S Governments are working out a new border deal, called “Beyond the Border,” to make some long hoped for improvements to current policies on both sides.
The goal of this new deal is simple: reduce congestion at the border and align security efforts. There’s a lot up for discussion, and about $1 billion expected to be spent on infrastructure projects in the next five years. So what will we be getting after all this?
We should anticipate efforts to align regulations about what can cross the border. As it stands each side has different policies about what can and cannot cross the border in consumer goods. The new agreement should include more succinct policies regarding various items, hopefully making things a little less disjointed.
With so many people crossing on a regular basis, there is keen interest in creating a process which will allow regular travelers, as well as trucks carrying goods, to cross in a more timely fashion than they are currently able to. Implementing this may mean opportunities for Canadians to become members of the NEXUS program or a similar program, recognition of “trusted” companies, and perhaps specified lanes for different types of travelers.
There is also talk of a singular entry and exit system with the hope that this could improve monitoring of when travelers are leaving one country and entering another. This system will include tracking of who is leaving each country, as opposed to simply who is entering. This is a result of the government’s inability to keep track of how many deportees have failed to leave, how many left on their own, or how many international students may be staying here illegally after their visas run out. This system might not tell us where in Canada they are, but we will know whether or not they have left.
One of the more major points is an agreement to more information sharing. The Governments are saying that by sharing more information they can do much of the screening away from the border and thus increase productivity at the border. Canada’s privacy commissioner urged the government to make sure that all information is dealt with according to the privacy protections required under Canadian law.
Another aspect being widely discussed is expanded law enforcement co-operation programs. Basically this part of the agreement encourages more teamwork between Canadian and U.S law enforcement on cases which are near the border, affect the border or cross the border. We could see this happening as a pilot project as soon as next summer. It is noted that a similar program, Shiprider, exists with regards to shared waterways such as the Great Lakes.
More co-operation and co-ordination of military efforts is also expected so that mobilization of one countries armed forces to assist another in the case of a natural disaster (for example) can be swift.
There are also expected clauses on the protection of critical and cyber infrastructure. This means more security measures for confidential online information and Government online infrastructure in general, as well as higher security for ‘critical infrastructure’ such as oil and gas lines, electrical grids, and so on.
Each of these clauses comes with its own evident pros and cons. Some clauses have been more heavily critiqued than others, however. Primarily these include clauses surrounded the collection, treatment, and sharing of information between the two countries.
Many Canadian organizations have deep concerns regarding the sharing of personal, medical, and criminal information of Canadians and non-Canadian citizens who visit our country and also visit the U.S. Canada and the U.S have different legislation regarding the privacy protection of citizens and these differences must be addressed and considered in any information sharing agreement.
Some critics, including NDP foreign affairs critic Helene Laverdiere, warn that in our attempt to appease the U.S’s security-obsessed mindset in this border deal we are diminishing our own sovereignty through excessive information sharing and an overall sense that Canada is giving up too much for the U.S.’s satisfaction. Others such as Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae state that the plan just doesn’t look like the breakthrough it’s being made out to be.
Still, supporters of these points and the trade agreement as a whole will diffuse these concerns by commenting that there is no need to worry about our privacy and that our civil liberties are not being sacrificed.
They will also throw another argument into the mix by streamlining some of our processes and eliminating unnecessary procedures. For example, if you were to fly from Canada to the U.S, your bags would be checked on both ends. This deal would eliminate that so bags are only checked once in a new system titled “Screened once, accepted twice”.
Canada will help make this process possible by investing in some new explosive detection equipment for our airports. (“Screened once, accepted twice” would apply to crossing the border on land as well.) There is money to be saved; an estimated $16 billion a year, actually. This suggests that with minimal interruption to most peoples’ lives, and an actual improvement to the lives of those crossing the border on a regular basis, we could top it off by giving our economies a bit of a boost.
The projected timeline for all of these plans includes many pilot projects in the next two years, beginning as soon as April 2012. It will take much longer than that for the affects of the entire plan to be realized and felt as it is carefully implemented. The full program is expected to be in place by June 30, 2014.
