2 April 2009

We need borders without boundaries

The following article is by Allan Gottlieb, enior adviser to the law firm of Bennett Jones LLP, and a former ambassador to the United States. It appeared in the 2 April 2009 edition of “globeandmail.com”.

Just before President Barack Obama's visit to Ottawa six weeks ago, my colleague Michael Kergin and I expressed concern that the Canada-U.S. border was becoming a serious obstacle to the free flow of commerce and people. Our border, we wrote, increasingly reflected 19th-century concepts of sovereignty rather than 21st-century realities. It was in the national interest of both countries to prevent our border from turning into a wall….

Our hopes for change have been dampened, if not dashed, by the comments of Mr. Obama's Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, at a recent seminar in Washington. Her words, in fact, seem to point in the opposite direction from border liberalization.

If her prescriptions are regarded as an expression of U.S. policy, they reflect an outlook toward the security of our borders that may have been shared by the Bush administration but never articulated in this manner. Almost eight years after 9/11, the open border between us, according to the new Homeland Security czar, is a thing of the past. And we'd better get used to it. "It's a real border," she said, "and we need to address it as a real border." Canadians (and Americans), she warned, need to accept this "culture of change."

Noting the differences between our two countries in the way we screen people and goods and in our risk-assessment policies, she spoke again of moving to "change the culture of no border to border," while asking: "How do you make the U.S.-Canada border a futuristic border?" And just in case Canadians thought we could make some progress on obstacles at the Canada-U.S. border, by distinguishing them from far more intractable issues at the U.S.-Mexico border, she observed that "one of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feeling among southern border states and in Mexico that, if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border."

To most Canadians - accustomed as we are to the proud boast of many generations that the Canada-U.S. boundary is the longest undefended border in the world; the special relationship that characterized our history for half a century or more; a defence partnership as unique and close as that of any neighbouring states in the world (and never shared by Mexico) - the Homeland Security Secretary's comments should come as a surprise, if not a shock….

Canadians are accustomed to protectionist sentiments and pressur