Harper’s deal to do a deal

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is promoting the new Beyond the Border deal as an ambitiously “large vision,” the biggest breakthrough in Canada/U.S. affairs since the North American free trade pact. And President Barack Obama found a few words in Washington on Wednesday to hail the “greater convergence” that it will bring to continental security and trade.

But that’s the view from 40,000 feet. Down in the weeds, the deal looks less like the bold Action Plan that Canadians were led to expect to ease America’s chronic 9/11 anxieties and to bolster trade, and more like a cautious work in progress that will be figured out, fought over, and rolled out in pilot projects for years to come. As the perfunctory Obama/Harper meeting indicated, and the documents make plain, it’s a plan to come up with a plan, mostly, with pertinent details to follow.

“We intend for the Beyond the Border Working Group to report (to Harper and Obama) in the coming months,” says one text, “and after a period of consultation, with a joint Plan of Action to realize the goals of this declaration, that would, where appropriate, rely on existing bilateral border-related groups, for implementation.”

The sheer opacity of such a “target” makes the cost/benefits hard to gauge at this point. As interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae sees it, “there’s a lot less here than meets the eye.” If so, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, given concerns that the Conservatives may be trading away sovereignty and travellers’ privacy rights for dubious economic gain.

Under a sweeping new entry-exit system to be in place next year Canada will share more information on travellers, including people arriving here from abroad, or going from here to third countries. So-called “trusted” travellers will be speeded across borders, while those deemed “high risk” for terror, crime or immigration fraud will be red-flagged, or prevented from getting here.

Beyond that, Canada and the U.S. sensibly intend to screen cargo before it reaches the border. To invest in border infrastructure. To bolster cyber security. And to harmonize some standards on goods such as vehicles, food and drugs. The idea is to ease border tie-ups that cost $16 billion a year, without tossing safety or health overboard.

Given the leisurely rollout, Parliament will be in a position to give the deal close scrutiny as details emerge. So will Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, and civil rights, business and consumer groups. Until now Harper has kept the process under wraps, and the public in the dark. Sober second thought begins now.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, for one, has called for a Commons debate on the deal. They want Ottawa to ink a formal pact with Washington to guide the swapping of information for security purposes, and they urge the creation of a “single authority” to oversee agencies involved in such transfers. They want Ottawa to be transparent about what it is sharing. And they want people to be able to challenge incorrect data. Certainly, there’s no room for complacency.

Yet however Canada’s domestic debate plays out, and however much the final deal is massaged, Harper deserves credit for managing to draw Washington into a process to reimagine the border at a time when many Americans would be only too happy to seal themselves off from the rest of the world. Given that Canada’s prosperity rides on the $650 billion worth of trade that we do, and the 10 million jobs that ride on it, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Now we need to get the details right.

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Source: Toronto Star