Border Security ‘Dumb’ and Costly, Chamber of Commerce Chief Tells Americans

(Financial Post – Eric Beauchesne)

Americans are shooting themselves and Canadians in the foot with their array of security measures at the Canada-U.S. border, according to the head of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

They are not only adding to the costs of doing business across the border, and putting at risk millions of jobs on both sides, but are actually undermining the security of the U.S., Perrin Beatty says in a prepared speech to be delivered Thursday to the North Carolina Technology Association in the state capital Raleigh.

“Indeed, mis-allocating security assets to the 49th parallel can actually make North America less safe, as it takes away badly-needed resources from other priorities,” Beatty said, urging a shift from random searches to a more intelligence-based system of security that used new technologies and systems to identify risky cargo and individuals.

“This approach will be far more effective in finding terrorists or potentially dangerous cargo than random searches or simply spreading the same resources indiscriminately over a much broader base,” he said.

Meanwhile, Beatty said the current border security measures are hurting both Canadian and American businesses, in what is a closely integrated North American economy, while giving offshore competitors a cost advantage.

“For example, automobiles built in North America may cross the border six or seven times in various stages of production, each time attracting costs resulting from compliance or from delays,” he said, adding that those costs add several hundred dollars to the price of a North American made vehicle.

“In contrast, cars imported from overseas attract these costs and delays only once,” he noted.

“This means that, as a direct result of government policy, we are discriminating against products manufactured in North America and in favour of those produced abroad at a time when the North American industrial base is under unprecedented pressure,” he said.

“Economists have a word for this – ‘dumb,’” he added.

A recent report by the Canadian and U.S. chambers of commerce and more than 40 other organizations recommended a string of short-term measures to promote the flow of cross-border traffic, including such basic suggestions as ensuring adequate staffing at border crossings and speedier clearance of pre-certified low-risk shipments and people.

However, the situation is getting worse not better, Beatty said in an interview Wednesday in advance of delivering the speech.

“There are more delays, it’s getting more costly,” he said, noting that line-ups of vehicles trying to cross into the U.S. at one Ontario-Michigan border crossing have gotten so long that provincial authorities had to put up portable toilets on the provincial highway leading to the bridge. Read the complete article.