Canada =/ Mexico

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We should worry about U.S. border plan

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/610863

Mar 31, 2009 04:30 AM

Comments on this story (86)

James Travers

Here's a quick quiz. Which developing news story is most important to Canada: Is it (a) the deferred auto industry rescue ( Washington's new Afghanistan plan or © Brian Mulroney's cash dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber?

Answer: None of the above. Each is significant; all are poorly matched against Janet Napolitano's casually considered endorsement of a Canadian border with the bristling defences of the one the U.S. so forcefully guards with Mexico.

In a few phrases, Barack Obama's homeland security czar inflated Ottawa's worst fears that Washington will apply one policy to two strikingly different boundaries. Napolitano's musings also carry this warning: the federal government must work much harder if it is to seize the opportunity of a new U.S. administration to recalibrate Canada's sustaining relationship.

Unless Napolitano can be persuaded to change course, the world's largest trading partners will be moving in opposite directions on managing 8,900 kilometres of border. Where Canada is edging toward the European "perimeter" approach, the U.S. is retreating from prudent risk management, toward the largely illusory safety of walls, guns and dogs.

Underestimating the popularity of Napolitano's position would be a dangerous Canadian mistake. There's not much for Americans not to like. Scrutinizing visitors is feel-good promise to a country still traumatized by 9/11, while border thickening is easily unscrambled code for trade protectionism.

So it will take considerable effort to convince Americans in general, and Democrats in particular, that creating border "parity" is bad policy even if it's good politics. In debates like this, emotion too often trumps logic and Canada is stuck with arguing facts to prove two nations bound to the U.S by a common free trade agreement are as different as beavertails and tacos.

Canadians aren't sneaking into a country that's now home to almost as many illegal Mexican migrants as there are people living in Ontario. Marijuana isn't flowing south the way hard drugs are flooding north into the U.S. through Mexico. Despite the now damaging tag of the world's longest undefended border, Ottawa is at least as concerned, and competent, as Washington at keeping terrorists out.

Making Canada's case would be easier if this country had a clearly defined U.S. strategy, or more effective tactics to implement it. Obama's decision to visit here first and Stephen Harper's ubiquitous presence on U.S. television are baby steps in a process that demands a giant leap forward in managing the capillary connections between countries sharing a common economic, defence and security space.

Being just one of the Three Amigos at yearly North American summits isn't nearly enough for Canada. Finding common solutions to common continental problems remains a priority, but Harper requires more solo time with Obama. Both governments need to put extra energy, as well as political capital, into what former U.S. secretary of state George Shultz memorably called "tending the garden."

It's hard to imagine much that's more urgent than nurturing a relationship that includes $600 billion in annual two-way trade and provides the U.S. with, among other things, secure energy. Still, politics is local and it's not easy to resist the empire-building lure of pouring money into border protection.

Job One for Canada is now grabbing the lapels of Obama's acolytes and northern Democrats to explain why Canada isn't Mexico.