...[T]he Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, met with the Honourable John Kelly, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, during his first trip to Canada as Secretary and they made the following statement.

“Some 400,000 people and $2.4 billion in trade cross our shared border every day. There’s no question that a strong relationship is essential to ensuring the facilitation of legitimate trade and travel, while securing our countries from shared threats. Today we continued conversations on our shared interests, common challenges and next steps for joint initiatives.

This work starts with building on our long history of successful passenger preclearance operations, which currently serve nearly 12 million passengers a year on flights to the United States from Canada’s eight largest airports. Following-up on the commitments in March 2016, we discussed next steps to expand preclearance to new locations in air, rail, land, and marine modes. Canada will also continue to consider potential operations in the United States. While there is still work to be done in terms of legislation with the passage of Bill C-23 in Canada, we tasked our officials to report back on these issues, as well as negotiate a path forward to pursue cargo preclearance or pre-inspection, including identifying potential pilot sites.

We recognize the importance of consistent, predictable and respectful interactions at the border for travellers in both directions, and we will continue to look for new ways to improve the flow of legitimate trade and travel. The secure and efficient movement of goods and people across the border helps create jobs and foster economic growth, and is vital to the livelihoods of millions of Americans and Canadians...

We look forward to our continued collaboration on issues that contribute to the security, economic growth and the protection of rights and freedoms in both our great nations.”

This was excerpted from a 10 March 2017 news release by Public Safety Canada.