More Border Controls on Canadians Going to the U.S.

It was announced last week that a meeting will take place in Toronto on October 3 between Tom Ridge, the Director of U.S. Homeland Security, and Deputy Prime Minister John Manley. Among items on the agenda will be the U.S. proposal that Canadians must have special passports in order to cross the border. This would be in keeping with U.S. legislation requiring all travellers to the U.S. to carry documents with biometric identifiers, such as iris scans and digital photographs, by October 26, 2004. Canada had applied to be exempt from this legislation; however, the Bush administration refused. It is likely that Canadians may have additional time to implement the requirement, but not much. It is expected that next month's meeting will work out the details.

Up until now, most Canadians crossing the border into the U.S. for holidays or shopping have been able to do so with relative ease. Often, only a few questions have needed to be answered and no identification has been required. However, there have always been exceptions; individuals who have been involved in progressive politics have often faced tighter scrutiny and have been subjected to harassment, as have members of national minorities and Aboriginal peoples. Since September 11, 2001 the atmosphere of suspicion at the border crossings has increased greatly. The Americans have accused Canada of being a safe haven for terrorists wanting to gain access to the U.S. and have used this as a justification for the proposed increased border security. Even though such accusations have proven to be false, they have stepped up this propaganda.

The era of relative ease of flow of people, goods and services across the Canada-U.S. border, which has resulted in approximately $1.5 billion of business per day, has come to an end. However, the Americans still want to keep Canadian business flowing in. So their strategy, already implemented with trucking firms, is to create classes of cross-border travellers. Large firms and trucking companies have registered under joint Canada-U.S. Smart Border protocol agreements, providing detailed information about their businesses and employees, in order to gain speedier access in special lanes at U.S. Customs points. Manley has supported all these protocols, saying earlier this year, " If we believe that access to the U.S. is important, and I believe that it is for economic prosperity, then we have to try to deal with the security concerns the United States clearly has."

In speaking about this legislation, Tom Ridge said that the U.S. is only trying to keep the "wrong people" out while letting the "right" people in. "We want to keep terrorists out without compromising the welcoming mat; since the founding of our country, it has long invited good people around the world to our shores to study, and to work and to live out their dreams. America remains, and must always remain, a welcoming nation." The U.S. record since September 11, 2001, however, paints a different picture. Thousands of cases of racial profiling, harassment and arrests of innocent people, have taken place. The Canadian government is not far behind.