Filibuster CartoonsTitle: Mr. Harper goes to Washington (click to view)
Date: December 9, 2011
The Right Honourable Stephen Harper ventured down to Washington, D.C. this week for one of his periodic meet-and-greets with President Obama. In a welcome change of pace, however, there was more than just pointlessly bilingual press conferences and bland friendship declarations on the agenda: the two leaders inked something known as the
Declaration on a Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness, or DSVPSEC, which the Prime Minister immediately declared to be "the most significant step forward in Canada-US relations since the North American Free Trade agreement."
It was perhaps a more revealing statement than he intended. Though NAFTA has obviously done an enormous deal to increase US-Canadian trade in the years since its 1994 passage — the Prime Minister's Office
claims a jump of 200% — it was also a very flawed and imperfect document, and one that promised a great deal more than it eventually delivered. Much like this thing.
Officially, the DSVPSEC deal is meant to help "thin the border" (to use the popular slogan) separating Canada and the United States by promoting greater efficiency in trade and travel matters through increased formal cooperation between Canadian and American authorities. Suitcases and bags at North American airports will now be screened under a common set of standards, for example, thus eliminating the need for them to be irritatingly re-screened during US-Canadian or Canadian-US connecting flights. Ditto for overseas goods arriving at one country's port before being trucked into the other; passing Canadian customs will soon be good enough for the USA, and vice-versa, once the two national standards become identical.
Perhaps most notably of all, both governments will now also agree to share data on the men and women who successfully leave each other's countries, in order to help thy neighbor crack down on illegal immigrants and enforce deportations. Amazingly, those back-to-back border guards somehow aren't exchanging this kind of info already. Keeping track of the strangers coming
in has apparently always taken precedence over ensuring the trouble-makers find their way
out.
Ambitious rhetoric aside, DSVPSEC will ultimately impact the job descriptions of border security bureaucrats far more than the lives of average North Americans. Passport requirements for entering the US — perhaps the most serious and arduous post-September 11 chore imposed on Canadians — will remain in place, and increased screenings and paperwork for new classes of "suspicious" entrants have the potential to actually increase border crossing hassles and wait times. Promises of increased economic integration have similarly remained vague, though the Harper administration is clearly gambling that they will come eventually in exchange for all this security stuff. As it stands, the deal makes the usual promises of increasing US-Canadian "regulatory harmonization" in a number of industries, particularly
food and health products, but the exact details, when they do come, will likely be the result of much political haggling and interest-group tainted compromise.
Canada-US trade has stagnated in the years since 2000, partially due to War on Terror-related border paranoia, but much of it the result of growing inefficiencies in the aging "free trade" regime as well. It's now estimated that around 3% of the value of cross-border trade is simply eaten up by the costs of regulation and time-wasting bureaucracy, and the frustration of business on both sides has been acute. In Canada, we tend to assume that less trade with the US means more trade elsewhere, but the science is rarely that elegant in practice. Often less trade with the US simply means less trade period, as irritated Canadian producers opt not to increase exports to Asia, or wherever, but simply relocate to the United States and cut out the border hassle altogether. As
Jon Ivison noted in yesterday's
National Post, Canada's total annual trade with India — often touted as the great Canadian economic partner of tomorrow — currently equals a measly
two days worth of trade with America. Even our good buddies in China only consume two percent of our exports and generate 10% of our imports, compared to 78% and 52% for the States.
These numbers are low for a reason, and its not just a lack of Canadian ambition. For a country as geographically isolated as Canada, it's simply not physically feasible, let alone cost-effective, to have a particularly robust trade relationship with any nation other than the next-door USA. There is no port in Europe or Asia that can possibly hope to duplicate the effectiveness of the 30 trucks that drive across the US-Canadian border every
minute.
Harper and Obama both deserve some kudos for recognizing that no plan for economic growth in either nation can ever hope to succeed without a renewed focus on improving continental trade policy, but it seems both men are also far too timid and bound up in conventional wisdom to propose anything truly bold. As is so often the case in times of recession, protectionism has proven to be a growing force in both Canadian and American domestic politics, and both Harper and Obama, with their endless assurances that the DSVPSEC agreement does nothing to "compromise sovereignty" seem more interested in pandering to the sensibilities of that crowd than acting as true leaders.
Some time ago, former prime minister Brian Mulroney — the architect of the very first Canada-US free trade agreement — counseled Stephen Harper to do "something big" in order to secure a lasting legacy. The fact that Harper is willing to believe he's done just that for signing a mild border agreement that is, at best, merely an overdue obligation, reveals that Canada may still have to wait a while before we get a leader brave enough to take the next step in this country's most important relationship.
