Canada is as safe as Boston. Lift the Border!

Is there any ideology or lunatic religious fringe on Earth that hates the 26-mile Boston Marathon—a race that honors that run from Marathon to tell the citizens of Athens that their young city and its democracy were safe? Likely not.

Nihilism, whatever its accent or distance from my particular way of thinking, is still nihilism. It can’t be streamed in high schools, vanquished by early childhood education, or caught by dogs or bureaucrats at the border. It’s not a menace that can be shot out of the sky by a new policy and a quarter-trillion-dollar budget.

Nevertheless, enough time has already passed for last week’s tragedy to be exploited to advance partisan and bureaucratic interests. Does an almost Orwellian security machine centered in the US and global in its reach need more money and a good shaking at the top? Could immigration reform—if not the constant, unrelenting flow of millions—be dangerous? Is this the time to enhance every border standing?

However last week’s murders are defined, murder and terrorism ("terrorism" for those who insist that that’s an under-used word) will continue. Still, this is a moment when people are actually looking for leadership.

To be bigger than a footnote, leaders could respond by being constructive.

My nomination is to concretely rebut reports that Obama’s bureaucracy is considering a border-crossing fee to help pay for the unnecessary bureaucracy that interferes with the land movement of millions of Canadians and Americans—that assumes that neither side is as good as the other side in maintaining domestic security, and that neither side has found a perfectible devise to detect and deter nihilists.

The wholly euphemistic Perrin Beatty of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce complained that a new border tax would “diminish a sense of ‘North American community.’” Surely, we need a more emphatic assertion of North American interests and ambitions.

A sense of community never built anything or solved an important problem. We have great cities and united nations today because leaders came forward before and said, “We live together; we share values and objectives; let’s get organized.”

I wouldn’t hold my breath or take an early flight home from Rome. But, I’d be impressed if either Stephen Harper or Barack Obama said: “Spending more money keeping Canadians and Americans apart is a distraction in fighting violence, and diminishes our economic and intellectual horizons. Twenty-four years ago, Europeans took down a murderous wall. It’s time to take down a ridiculous one in North America.”

With our help, Harper and Obama may open the border issue

All the morning papers report that Stephen Harper and the White House are negotiating a New Border Vision: "A 21st century border management system" that will attempt to streamline north-south traffic and enhance continental security and intelligence sharing. Apparently there will be renewed emphasis on the “perimeter” which implies greater harmonization of each country's access rules and surveillance practices.

Click on: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/BORDER+DEAL+WORKS/3949155/story.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-negotiating-perimeter-security-deal-with-us/article1830782/

Since these negotiations were carefully leaked to the press, without a heads up to Canada’s minority Parliament, it is fairly safe to guess that the deal will carefully respect Canadian sovereignty.  The incremental nature of the negotiations is reinforced by the suggestion that a staff group (already with its own acronym, BBWG, for Beyond the Border Working Group) will be given 120 days to develop an action plan. Also, we are told that a similar deal was made with Mexico in March.

For those who believe that Canada and the US need and can have a wide open border, news that governments are working on the issue will generate mixed feelings.

It could be another distraction. Without addressing Canadian sovereignty, no great change is possible. As I’ve argued before:

Of course, the United States wouldn’t need the 49^th parallel as a border if the security that border
provides could be guaranteed on Canadian soil and at all Canadian points of entry. Logically, this would mean that American security services could also ignore the border and operate in Canada as they operate at home. Unavoidably, this would trouble Canadians who care about Canadian sovereignty—the unqualified accountability of the Canadian government to Canadians for the actions of security officials operating in Canada. Yet, the President of the United States cannot delegate responsibility for American security, no strings attached, to any foreign power—even one as well regarded, brave and empathetic as Canada. After another terrorist attack, Obama can fire his Secretary of Homeland Security but he can’t fire Canada’s Prime Minister.

However, without truly opening the border, this New Border Vision—conceived by a Canadian free-trader and a cosmopolitan President—should demonstrate the limits of the status quo and prompt more creative thinking. As the passport requirement will surely continue, along with a floating currency and separate trade policies, Canadians might start questioning our status on this continent and the costs that escalate by being apart, by resisting even the logic of the European Union.

Our Ambassador’s letter about the border

Gary Doer was a very successful and deft Canadian premier. Living in the midst of an American election and not being able to exercise his considerable political skills must be painful. This week, he felt and exercised that phantom limb. Doer scolded Nevada Republican candidate Sharron Angle, insisting in a public letter that “We do not have a ‘porous border’ but rather one of the more secure borders in the world,” (“Among US politicians, claim that terrorists use Canada as base dies hard” The Globe and Mail, Oct. 19: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/SOMNIA/article1763054/ )

 

His letter won a pleasing headline in Toronto but is of no use to Canadian interests in Washington. 

Both governments and both economies are now paying billions for security systems along the Canada-US border. The border is hardly a sieve. However, it literally is America’s “most porous border.” Neil Reynolds, economics columnist for The Globe and Mail, calculated that to bring all America’s borders, including 49^th parallel, up to the standards of most of the US-Mexico border would cost up to 30 billion dollars! That was written in 2007 and used data published by the US General Accounting Office. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, continues to promise Americans that all its borders will receive the same high degree of attention. 

It is true but not reassuring to boast that Canada has one of the “more secure borders in the world,” as Doer asserted. Canada is known, and praised, for being one of the most cosmopolitan, open societies in the world. In that context, to Americans, Canada is, in all its glory, the world next door. As long as Americans can only feel relatively secure, pressure will continue to weigh in favour of doing more to secure that border, not less.

So long as the United States is hated in many quarters and Canada is open and sovereign, with its own home-grown potential terrorists, the President of the United States must keep in place a seamless American security parameter for Americans. 

Of course, the United States wouldn’t need the 49^th parallel as a border if the security that border provides could be guaranteed on Canadian soil and at all Canadian points of entry. Logically, this would mean that American security services could also ignore the border and operate in Canada as they operate at home. Unavoidably, this would offend Canadians who care about Canadian sovereignty—the unqualified accountability of the Canadian government to Canadians for the actions of security officials operating in Canada. Yet, the President of the United States cannot delegate responsibility for American security, no strings attached, to any foreign power—even one as well regarded, brave, and empathetic as Canada. After another terrorist attack, Obama can fire his Secretary of Homeland Security but he can’t fire Canada’s Prime Minister.