Canada-US perimeter info merged with ‘action plan’ website

In the 6 February 2013 edition, Embassy online magazine provided the following information regarding the Canada –U.S. Perimeter Plan website that has now merged with CBSA’s Action Plan website.

Privy Council Office spokesperson says shift reflects government priorities.

The Harper government has killed a separate website that contained information on its perimeter plan with the United States, and merged the information with another website that largely champions its domestic budgetary policies.

Borderactionplan-plandactionfrontalier.gc.ca was set up to provide information on the government’s sweeping December 2011 perimeter plan with the US, one that will bring the two countries closer on everything from trade and shipping to policing and immigration.

The web address worked throughout 2012, but is now no longer functioning. If either the French or English component parts, borderactionplan.gc.ca and plandactionfrontalier.gc.ca,  are loaded in a web browser, the user is redirected to actionplan.gc.ca, the government’s website for budgetary efforts that it has branded its “economic action plan.”

The information on Beyond the Border and the Regulatory Cooperation Council, as they are officially known, is now displayed alongside other government policies such as fostering a new Canadian shipbuilding industry, and supporting the oil sands and the mining sector.

The Beyond the Border Blog, which contained other news, has also been merged with the Jobs and Growth Blog that is filled with examples of how the government’s budgetary measures of all shapes and sizes can help typical Canadians.

The old website was popular both inside and outside government. For example, the government’s own perimeter plan progress report, released in December, cites the now-dead link. As well, a handful of academic reports and published books cite the link. As of Feb. 5, the old link does not redirect users but simply results in a blank page.

The US government has put its perimeter plan information on several different websites, including those for the US Department of State, the US Department of Homeland Security, the White House, and the website for the US Embassy in Ottawa, among other locations.

The Canadian government first denied that the website was dead. “The site in question was not removed,” wrote Public Safety spokesperson Jessica Slack in a Feb. 1 email.

She added, “if you are experiencing difficulties with that particular web site, please consult http://www.actionplan.gc.ca/en/content/beyond-border for the latest news on the Beyond the Border Action Plan.”

Embassy tried multiple times to access the original website and asked others to try loading it from different locations, with no success. After further questions, the government defended the move as aligning with its agenda.

“The two Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness initiatives...are important priorities for the government; they are contributing to a more competitive business environment and therefore form a key component of the Economic Action Plan,” wrote Raymond Rivet, director of corporate and media affairs at the Privy Council Office, the bureaucratic arm serving the prime minister, in an email on Feb. 5.

Laura Macdonald, political science professor at Carleton University whose book cites the old web address, said the move to bring the perimeter deal into the sphere of the budget brand reflected past efforts to obscure information from the public— such as with the Security and Prosperity Partnership, in some ways the perimeter plan’s predecessor.

“There was just basically very little public sharing of information of what was going on...it seems to me a kind of similar thing happening now,” said Ms. Macdonald, who is the co-editor of the book North America in Question: Regional Integration in an Era of Economic Turbulence, along with Jeffrey Ayres, a political science professor at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont.

The Conservatives have spent tens of millions of dollars on an advertising blitz associating themselves with the “economic action plan,” according to several reports in the Canadian Press. A Feb. 4 CP report noted these ad budgets have expanded significantly since 2008.

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