'Three Amigos' a bit short of clout print this article
Harper, Bush, Calderon meeting constitutes a summit of low expectations

Brian Flemming
The Daily News

The post-9/11 security establishment in the United States - in the form of a bloated, blinkered Homeland Security Department - has done more to impair Canadian-American economic relations in the nearly six years since Sept. 11, 2001, than the wildest al-Qaida dreamers ever imagined possible.

In that sense, as in so many others, the Islamists holed up along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border are winning what was once called the "Global War on Terror" and is now called the "Long War" - as though anyone really knows how long it will last, or whether it will mutate into a postmodern Hundred Years War.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) made Canada's border with America more porous and efficient. Traders on both sides of the border thought it might, one day, be as free and open as European Union borders.

Instead, thanks to an almost irrational American fear of extremist violence, a.k.a. terrorism, the U.S.-Canada border is getting more difficult for both people and products to penetrate - from both sides. Just try getting quickly across the St. Stephen-Calais entry point with Maine on a busy day if you don't believe the border is becoming less porous.

It's not clear whether the hardening of the Canada-U.S. border is on the agenda of today's Montebello summit, where President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are having their annual get-together. If it is not, that automatically makes this meeting more of a media show than a tough policy session.

Indeed, the Montebello summit should really be called the Marshmallow summit, because of the acute political weaknesses of the three North American amigos.

Bush is not just a lame duck: he's a political dead duck. Harper heads a minority government whose poll numbers are stuck in neutral. And Calderon won last year's Mexican election by such a small margin that many believe his election was tainted. Political clout, they do not have.

Duh

On the U.S.-Mexican border, illegal immigrants pour across in the thousands. Washington has been unable to stanch this human hemorrhage. Instead, Congress recently tried to prevent Mexican trucks from crossing into the U.S. Duh.

On the U.S.-Ontario border, there was supposed to have been a post-9/11 pilot project that would have "pushed the border back," far behind the actual physical border. Cargo would then have been pre-cleared - just as people are at the new pre-clearance area at Robert L. Stanfield International Airport - well before the trucks hit either side of the border.

But an out-of-political-control Homeland Security Department shut this project down for so-called security reasons. To add insult to insanity, the Americans have unilaterally imposed "user fees" on cross-border Canadian truckers and forced Canadian airline passengers to cough up a fee to pay for U.S. inspections of Canadian agricultural products entering the U.S. Duh, again.

Setting up sensible pre-clearance procedures for goods going by land to either country seems to be impossible on what used to be called "the world's longest undefended (sic) border." The pathological fear that still haunts Washington has caused security to trump trade.

Canadians will have to wait for Bush to ride off into the sunset before the border begins to get unstuck - an extraordinary assertion, given that 77 per cent of Canadian imports from the U.S. come across the border in trucks, while 51 per cent of American imports from Canada arrive the same way.

Border constipation

For our integrated North American auto industry, border constipation is a near disaster because this industry relies on just-in-time inventory deliveries to build cars efficiently.

As Canadian and American trucks form long lines daily at secondary clearance centres to reconcile their manifests with their cargos, the inevitable temptation will be to consolidate car manufacturing on the American side of the border. That will not help Ontario - or Canada.

So don't expect much today when the communiques are issued at Montebello. They will be very fluffy.

What a shame.

And well done, Osama bin Laden & Co. We're even dumber than you thought we were.

Brian Flemming has been involved in high-level meetings of Canadians, Americans and Mexicans concerning the Security and Prosperity Partnership

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