Avoiding a Border War

Within weeks of Sept. 11, 2001, the United States and Canada had developed their Smart Border plan, a 30-point strategy for making the border safer while keeping people and goods moving across. Smart Border is remarkable because it came together quickly with a common understanding of the absolute need for security and the absolute need for a border that controls but does not block movement.

The plan relies on new technology like biometric identifiers and expanded databases, but mostly it relies on cooperation between the two countries. This cooperation remains crucial, but the farther Sept. 11 recedes in memory, the more the administrations of President George Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chretian seem willing to let barriers go up between the two nations.

The war in Iraq has highlighted the differences. Though Canadians are fairly evenly divided on the question of the war, the Chretian government remains, for the record, strongly opposed and this has deepened the divide between the two leaders. The divide has allowed useless comments from a Chretien aide about the president (“moron”) and from Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish the nation in general (“I hate those bastards”), with the promise of more to come. President Bush is due to speak in Ottawa early next month and already anti-war groups, including an MP, are preparing to heckle him. It would not be surprising if the president suddenly discovered he was too busy to make the visit.

Canceling the speech might help the president avoid worldwide coverage of Canadians shouting at him, but it won’t help the relationship between the two countries. Certainly, the White House could have extended itself farther in recognizing Canada as a hemispheric partner and a friend after Sept. 11. But the Chretien government’s comments on the war have not been helpful either and the result is that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security now is considering a plan that would add additional border stops at each crossing. People entering the United States would then be stopped twice in a space of a few hundred yards, thereby slowing traffic at the border and turning routine crossings into the equivalent of going through an airport screening every day.

This would be terrible for Maine, which has friendly relations with its Canadian neighbors no matter what happens in Washington and Ottawa. This state depends on regular trade, with Canada and regular travel routes that cross the border, and, of course, families often live on both sides. And it would be worse for relations between the two countries because it would dash any chance for saving the cooperative spirit that began the border discussions and replace it with concrete and steel. Even worse, the opportunity for increasing security here can be found through U.S.-Canadian agreements to secure Canada’s far fewer ports of entry while worrying less about the border.

Members of Congress whose states lie along the border will see these problems at once, but they must make the administration aware of them and reinforce the idea, that whatever individual expression of disdain for U.S. policies, now is no time to lock out an ally of such profound importance.