Thinning border, thinning sovereignty

This month will be a particularly busy one for me on the work front, with three trips to the United States: Santa Clara, Orlando and Savannah. I'm writing this blog from the Maple Leaf Lounge at Toronto's Pearson Airport as I wait for my flight to the West Coast of the United States, so it seems appropriate I weigh in on one of the current issues du jour: border security and negotiations over a Canada/US border agreement.

It goes without saying that I travel a lot, almost exclusively to the United States. It's been that way since I started my current job in 2005. So from the perspective of a frequent business traveler, I've seen first-hand the impacts of the thickening border in the post 9/11 era. I check all my liquids, have a mania for metal, and always have my belt and shoes off. I;m just the facts with customs & immigration agents. Really should get a Nexus card one of these days though.

Point is, a thinner Canada/US border would be a great benefit to me personally. I'd love a European Union-style open border, where the borders are thickened when entering the common zone and thinned within. It would be a big time savings.

I just don't think it's viable in the Canadian context, though. This negotiating process has been so secretive, and deliberately so, that we just don't know what's being proposed. That's a problem in itself. But we know the basics about how any sort of agreement of this sort would work. If you're going to streamline the flow of people and cargo at the Canada/US border, you need to thicken security and regulation at the international border. In essence, if Canada and the US are going to be a common zone, you need the same rules and security around entering that common zone from outside, whether your point of entry is Canada or the U.S.

Invariably, when it comes to harmonizing regulations, it's not going to be harmonizing to a lower standard. It will be harmonizing to the higher standard. And invariably, that will mean the U.S. standard. It would be negotiated but remember we're the mouse, not the elephant.

A thinner border will necessarily mean a dilution of sovereignty, as Canadians tend to have our own ideas about appropriate levels of regulation, but would need to trade that for harmonization. Now, on straight security issues, we could probably work most of that out. Inspection levels for cargo, no problem there. Airline security is already harmonized (to the U.S. standard) for transborder flights. The main driver for a deal is cargo and trade, not passenger traffic. But it's hard, if not impossible, to separate the two.

If it stopped at security screening issues, we'd be fine. But there's another aspect that will invariably be part of this: immigration issues. Any harmonization will likely need to involve changes around not just the movement of cargo, but people. Which countries are considered safe and which aren't, who needs visas and who doesn't, their terms and validity, and so on. Refugee policy could even come into it.

If someone is going to be more free to move once they're inside the zone, the rules to enter the zone need to be the same, or one point of entry will become a weak-point to be exploited. Again, the higher standard will prevail, and that will inevitably mean the U.S. standard. And I think that's a piece of sovereignty the Canadian public will be less willing to give up.

Now it could be Canadians are becoming more conservative on some of these issues. I think the Conservatives have been trying to prep the ground with their visa battles, and the manufactured crisis/outrage over Sri Lankan refugees. The strong negative reaction over the latter would seem to indicate a hardening attitude within the Canadian population.

I think though that if the government doesn't tread carefully, it runs the risk of running ahead of public opinion and triggering a backlash. Particularly if this is seen as a secretive process.

Just how much sovereignty are Canadians willing to trade for a smoother border? We may soon find out.

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Hands off my laptop

As a regular traveler to the United States on business, and therefore always with my laptop, this article certainly gives me pause. I’ll certainly be thinking twice what files I have on my system before my next trip, and leaving a back-up of my critical files at home. The security provisions for traveling to the U.S. are getting increasingly ridiculous, but perhaps none more so that the take off your shoes rule, instituted only because some guy tried to make a shoe bomb. As one wit said, thank-god there wasn’t an underwear bomber…yet.

Returning from a brief vacation to Germany in February, Bill Hogan was selected for additional screening by customs officials at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C. Agents searched Hogan's luggage and then popped an unexpected question: Was he carrying any digital media cards or drives in his pockets? "Then they told me that they were impounding my laptop," says Hogan, a freelance investigative reporter whose recent stories have ranged from the origins of the Iraq war to the impact of money in presidential politics.

Shaken by the encounter, Hogan says he left the airport and examined his bags, finding that the agents had also removed and inspected the memory card from his digital camera. "It was fortunate that I didn't use that machine for work or I would have had to call up all my sources and tell them that the government had just seized their information," he said. When customs offered to return the machine nearly two weeks later, Hogan told them to ship it to his lawyer.

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