Securing the "Ontario-Vermont Border": Myths and Realities in Post-9/11 Canadian-American Security Relations

Question: Mr. President, why did you block the reimportation of safer and inexpensive drugs from Canada which would have cut 40 to 60 percent off of the cost?Bush: I haven't yet. Just want to make sure they're safe. When a drug comes in from Canada, I want to make sure it cures you and doesn't kill you....I've got an obligation to make sure our government does everything we can to protect you. And what my worry is, is that, you know, it looks like it's from Canada, and it might be from a third world.1SHORTLY AFTER THE EVENTS OF 9/11, the TV drama series The West Wing presented a episode in which the fictional White House of liberal Democratic president Josiah Bartlett was held in a terror alert lockdown caused by a dangerous terrorist who had entered the US illegally via the Ontario-Vermont All the details in the show were designed to emulate reality. The writers and producers apparently assumed that the natural place for a terrorist to enter the US was from Canada, while nobody noticed, or cared, that Ontario and Vermont are not in fact contiguous.There is no reason, of course, why a fictional White House could not feature a fictional border, but I have chosen this blooper as my title for good reason. Post-9/11 Canadian-American security relations are about the realities of terrorist threats, but they are also about myths. America's northern border as a risk to its homeland security is part reality and part myth. The realities are found in sober intelligence analysis and responsible security planning, on both sides of the border. The myths are constructed at the juncture where reckless media, politicized intelligence, and opportunistic politicians feed off one another. Unfortunately for Canada, myths as well as realities have very real consequences, counted in Canadian economic losses and insecurity, negative effects also felt in the US but in proportionally less painful doses and more readily shrugged off in a wartime atmosphere in which fighting terrorism is not just one priority, but the only priority.Worse from the Canadian perspective is that the combination of reality and myth, and the exaggeration of reality when cloaked in myth, threatens serious long-term damage to Canadian sovereignty, as much from within as from without. Influential forces in Canadian economy and society are poised to sell ideas of deepened continental integration on a variety offrants. They cite the post-9/11 security environment as necessitating such big ideas, and as a window of opportunity to achieve their realization. As facilitators, there is a carrot and a stick. The carrot is the economic promise of a fully integrated North American free market, finally freed from the remaining vestiges of post-NAFTA protectionism. The stick is the threat of US displeasure and retaliation in the form of border closures and exclusionary policies directed towards Canadian businesses. The big idea advocates declare that post-9/11 offers the opportunity to negotiate economic security for Canada in exchange for national security for the US.Big idea advocates are articulate, and their voices, funded from very deep pockets, are resonant and influential. They are also mistaken in many of their assumptions, misleading in some of their arguments, and dangerous in their policy prescriptions. There could scarcely be a less propitious time to negotiate deeper continental integration, whether on security or on economic matters, than an historical moment in which the US-the Bush White House, certainly, but congress under either party-is determined to assert American national sovereignty without any qualification by foreigners. Any deeper integration could not hope to bring along with it a Europeanstyle political superstructure in which Canadian representation and a Canadian voice are built in. Harmonization of policies clearly means Canadian acceptance of American standards, even where these are inappropriate to Canadian realities. …

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