Reinventing Borders

In order to achieve what the Canadian government has described as a border that is open for business but closed to terrorism, our countries need to create a zone of cooperation encompassing the continent rather than focusing security efforts on the line that separates us. We must emphasize protection of the approaches to North America while eliminating regulatory, procedural and infrastructure barriers at our internal border.

• The inadequacy of our borders is the most immediate threat to both national and economic security in North America. Our border with the United States stretches for thousands of kilometres, but 90 percent of cross-border movement takes place at just 20 crossings. On September 11, 2001, and the days following, the border effectively shut down. The world's largest two-way trading relationship was paralyzed.
• The Smart Border Declaration of December 2001 was an important step forward. Its 30-point program is having a meaningful impact in improving security while reducing barriers to low-risk border flows of goods and people. Canada and the United States must maintain the momentum in moving forward on this agenda.
• The Smart Border accord, however, should mark a beginning, not an end. Ultimately, we need to transform the internal border into a shared checkpoint within the Canada-United States economic space. The objective should be twofold: to shift the burden of protecting our countries against global threats away from the internal border to the approaches to North America; and to eliminate unnecessary regulatory, procedural and infrastructure barriers at our internal border.
• A shared system for commercial processing, shared infrastructure, shared policing and even a voluntary shared North American identification document all could help to ease flows of people and goods across the border further without threatening the security or sovereignty of either country.
• Canada and the United States should also pilot multilateral cooperation in securing container traffic to ensure that there is no need to interfere with this traffic within North America. Similarly, a shared approach to protecting legitimate visitors to North America could serve as the model for multilateral cooperation while maintaining sovereignty and the distinctiveness of policies related to receiving immigrants who are vital to our societies and of refugees to whose protection we are equally committed.
• In addition to improving the management of the border, both countries should continue to reduce tariff barriers. For most goods, Canada and the United States already charge the same rate of duty on goods from third countries or have rates that are within two percentage points. In general, the two countries should harmonize tariffs at the lower of the two current rates for as many categories of goods as possible. Because of highly charged political issues in areas such as agriculture, even a concerted effort is likely to fall short of a customs union, but the goal should be to eliminate the need for rules of origin and other burdensome customs requirements on most goods flowing between the two countries.