Pubdate: Sat, 09 Mar 2002
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (WI)
Copyright: 2002 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.jsonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/265
Author: Mary-Liz Shaw

U.S. AND CANADA: HOLDING THE LINE

Two Nations Try To Raise Defenses While Staying Friends

Windsor, Ontario - The day after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, John 
Power, a trucker out of Moncton, New Brunswick, was hauling 40,000 pounds 
of limes into Canada from Laredo, Texas. He arrived at the truck inspection 
plaza in Detroit for a routine clearance - and was met by two National 
Guardsmen pointing guns at his face.

"It was like a war zone," says Power, a 10-year veteran of U.S.-Canadian 
border travel, the international equivalent of crossing the neighbor's 
yard. Until then, a stop at customs usually consisted of three or four 
questions in a bored drone - "Citizenship? Destination? Anything to 
declare?" - and then a wave forward.

His heart racing, Power stared at the gun barrels for several minutes while 
inspectors examined his documents and truck. "When they were through with 
me, they didn't apologize . . . they just said, 'OK, you're done,' and that 
was it."

Six months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the 
Pentagon, guards with guns, rarely seen at the Port of Detroit before, are 
permanently stationed there. They are evidence of the dramatic increase in 
attention being paid to the U.S.-Canadian border - attention long overdue 
in light of the geographic and economic relationships between the 
countries, and the need to balance security and ease of movement.

Canada and the United States are each other's largest trading partner, and 
theirs is the largest trading partnership in the world. Goods worth more 
than $1 billion cross every day; the combined value of imports and exports 
reached $380 billion last year. Canada is Wisconsin's largest trading 
partner, too; Wisconsin exports close to $4 billion worth of goods to 
Canada a year.

And yet much of the U.S.-Canadian border - the largest in the world, with 
roughly 4,000 miles cutting across North America and another 1,500 miles 
separating Alaska from British Columbia and the Yukon - has been relatively 
unguarded. Much of it passes through punishing terrain or icy waters.

Dozens of crossings are marked by orange cones and a "Closed" sign late at 
night. Travelers are expected to go the nearest 24-hour station. They used 
to be unwatched; today, they are monitored by border agents.

Other changes are more sophisticated. The United States and Canada have 
signed a 30-point pact to ensure the free flow of goods and ease of travel. 
Canada has pledged about $750 million to boost security and improve aging 
border stations. It is now considering arming its customs agents - 
something the agents' union has sought for years. On the U.S. side, 
President Bush has proposed putting $10.7 billion into border security, 
most of it for hiring new agents and for high-tech detection equipment.

About 245 border agents will be reassigned to the northern border later 
this year, almost doubling the number assigned as of December. About 700 
unarmed National Guard troops will be assigned in the coming months to 
patrol the Canadian border. And special sensors that detect nuclear 
materials are now in use.

There always have been problems associated with the northern border, though 
not to the same degree as those of the Mexican boundary, where some 9,000 
U.S. agents are on patrol.

But smuggling of drugs, alcohol, guns and tobacco - going all the way back 
to Prohibition - has been a recurring problem. Lately, it's been "B.C. bud" 
- - hydroponically grown marijuana from British Columbia - coming south; 
handguns going north; and child abductors with children going both ways. 
There has been illegal immigration, too. American agents have captured 
Mexicans and Latin Americans who tried to enter the U.S. through Canada.

When the Canadian Security Intelligence Service last year identified more 
than 50 potential terrorist cells in Canada, the northern border looked 
ripe for the picking.

'Like going to a suburb'

Where vacant, harsh land is the chief obstacle to security along much of 
the border, in Detroit-Windsor, the problem is volume. It is the busiest 
land crossing in North America, with about 40 million people going back and 
forth a year. About a quarter of all U.S. trade with Canada comes over the 
Ambassador Bridge or through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

People who cross frequently have grown used to more inspections, more 
questions, more demands to prove they are who they say they are. Most seem 
to appreciate the extra attention.

"We've had far fewer complaints since September 11," says Angela Ryan, U.S. 
Customs Service port director in Detroit. "There is more of an awareness 
now. Before, people would ask, 'Why was I stopped?' and we used to have to 
remind them, 'Well, you are crossing an international border.' It is like 
going to a suburb rather than a foreign country."

Detroit and Windsor are the two nations in microcosm. Detroit and its 
suburbs have 5.4 million people; Windsor and Essex County, 350,000. The 
United States has 281 million people; Canada, 31 million. The cities are 
connected by ties of trade, blood and history as far back as the 1850s, 
when Canada's Northwest Trading Company established posts in Windsor to 
exploit the Detroit market.

But even here, there are tensions between two nations.

"Americans base everything on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," 
says Maxine Sidran, a Racine native who has lived in Canada for about 30 
years. "For Canadians, it's peace, order and good government. The 
implications are immense."

Canada threw its support behind the campaign in Afghanistan, agreeing for 
the first time in its history to have its troops take orders from American 
commanders. Canadian spy networks were assisting American intelligence long 
before any missiles flew.

Yet Canadians were offended that the U.S. did not immediately classify 
Afghans being held at Guantanamo Bay as prisoners of war, subject to 
protections under the Geneva Convention.

Many were uneasy with Bush's hawkish call against the "axis of evil."

They resent that Canada, under pressure from the U.S., is re-evaluating its 
open-armed immigration stance toward people fleeing their homeland. The 
latest high-profile case to thrust the policy into question: A 
Tunisian-born man who claimed to be a refugee and obtained Canadian 
citizenship in 1995. He has now been identified as one of five potential 
suicide attackers seen on a videotape found in Kandahar.

To many Canadians, who have always seen themselves as peacemakers, this 
unilateral stance, to borrow the words of the first President Bush, will 
not stand.

"What we have now is a hegemonic power which is flexing its muscle," says 
John Godfrey, a member of Canada's House of Commons.

Trade and more trade

But philosophical differences rarely keep nations from doing business with 
each other. It was trade - and trade only - that motivated the handful of 
Detroit businessmen to build Detroit River crossings. The Ambassador Bridge 
opened in 1929; the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel a year later.

Detroit is one of only two international ports in America dealing with 
every mode of transportation: land, water, rail and air. (The other is 
Brownsville, Texas.)

All trucks going in and out of the Port of Detroit must pass through the 
truck inspection station at the bridge. Ryan, the port director, has 
handled some 25 media tours of the area since Sept. 11, and she doesn't 
take it lightly. Even so, it's a bit of a dog-and-pony show by now: There's 
the droopy National Guard tent, looking like a reject from the Bosnian 
campaign, where guardsmen and inspectors do random inspections on trucks; 
there are the inspection booths, the trucks rolling through at a rate of a 
half-dozen a minute; and there's the new baby - a mobile X-ray machine, a 
utility truck with a giant mechanical arm that searches a semi's contents. 
A sophisticated time-saver, it costs $975,000.

Time is money at this port.

The combination of fewer trade restrictions, which took effect with the 
North American Free Trade Agreement in the early '90s, and "just-in-time 
manufacturing," which has trucks delivering machine parts and other 
essentials to automakers on demand, has pushed commercial trade to levels 
never anticipated.

Trucks rumble over the bridge all day long, some of them four or five times 
a day. Each of the lanes is about 12 feet wide; trucks on the outside, cars 
on the inside. During the midweek hustle, the trucks form a moving wall; 
for cars, it is like driving through a roofless tunnel.

The tunnel traffic is considerably lighter, with more passenger cars and 
about 600 trucks a day.

As for the rest of the trade, barges bearing rail cars with hazardous 
materials float down the Detroit River all day. And there's Detroit 
Metropolitan Airport, about 20 miles away.

But the truck traffic is the key to the trade. Think of it as "a rolling 
inventory, just another part of the assembly line," says Ben Anderson, 
chief inspector at Detroit's Fort Street Cargo Facility, where truck driver 
John Power met the armed Guardsmen on Sept. 12.

A Detroit native with 33 years spent working the border, Anderson has a 
cool, easy manner. He looks like what he is - a grandfather - except those 
alert eyes betray his training.

Some 6,000 to 7,000 trucks a day funnel through the plaza, renovated in 
1993 to handle up to 5,000.

"If we have issues with a load, it does slow up traffic," Anderson says.

Slow traffic can't begin to describe what happened in the days immediately 
after Sept. 11. With U.S. inspectors under orders to check every cab, trunk 
and change holder, vehicles backed up through city streets, choking freeway 
exits. Trucks on the Canadian side were nose to toe for seven miles to 
Ontario's Highway 401. Auto plants ground to a halt, their assembly parts 
locked in traffic.

It lasted for days.

"It was . . . unprecedented," says Matt Marchand, struggling for the right 
word to describe the mess. A policy adviser to Windsor's mayor, Marchand 
has lived and worked in Windsor most of his life. "The backups were 
measured in miles and hours."

These days, initiatives such as pass-cards, off-site inspections and 
preapproval of goods through computerized filing mean those who cross all 
the time can get through faster, leaving agents to concentrate on those 
they know nothing about.

Most say traffic is actually faster now than it was before. But businesses, 
particularly on the Canadian side, struggle against perceptions of border 
stalls.

Discretionary travel - restaurant-goers, Casino Windsor gamblers - fell 
more than 30% after the attacks. The tunnel's business, a gauge of 
discretionary city-to-city travelers, dropped 50%. Some of that business 
has returned; the tunnel is now at 75% of its pre-Sept. 11 business. But 
some might never come back.

Personal fears continue

Fears of more attacks remain. The bridge, with its vital commercial 
traffic, and the tunnel, which spills out next to General Motors 
headquarters in downtown Detroit, look like targets to locals.

"I hate that they (terrorists) make me think about it now," says Detroit 
resident Patti Brown, who hasn't crossed since Sept. 11. "It's even freaky 
working here."

Brown, 51, speaks from the basement of the Renaissance Center, GM's 
headquarters, where she manages an upscale coffee shop. The center's black 
and gray columns look like giant lipsticks on the low-slung Detroit 
skyline, the most conspicuous piece of real estate for miles.

Thirty years ago, Brown was a sarong-and-sandal girl in a steel-and-smoke 
city. She decided to move to Montreal.

"Coming from here, I was exposed to this whole new world. I loved it," she 
says. "My world would have been much smaller if I'd stayed home."

Back in her native Detroit, Brown watches Canadian television and expects 
to hire some Canadians to work in the store this summer, as she has done in 
the past. But that is the extent of her contact with Canada these days.

"For them to do what they did - learn to fly, hijack planes. . . . One 
thing you can say about these people, they weren't stupid," she says. "I 
work a little too close to the tunnel for comfort. I just feel it could be 
very easy for someone to penetrate that border."

Across the river, the sentiments are shared.

Eric Mayne grew up in Windsor, born of a Canadian mother and an American 
father, and crossed the line often to visit family and friends in Michigan. 
He celebrated both the Canadian and American Thanksgivings, Canada Day and 
the Fourth of July.

He crosses the bridge every day from Windsor to work at Ward's Automotive 
Reports in Southfield, Mich.

He never used to think anything of it: Take a right off Huron Church Road, 
round a bend, head onto the bridge, hear the thwump-thwump of tires over 
the metal connectors, scramble for the $3.50 toll, glare at the pickup 
driver who cut in, smile at the guy in the booth.

The routine isn't so mundane now.

"Ever since September 11, whenever I get over that bridge I feel like I've 
just dodged a bullet," Mayne says.

Dissolve the border?

Some believe security would be simpler if there were no border at all, and 
both countries could concentrate on securing their shores. The view is 
common among business people near the border.

"The world is becoming borderless," says Alfie Morgan, a business professor 
at the University of Windsor who specializes in cross-border trade. "If 
there is any part of the world that should be borderless, it should be 
Canada and the U.S."

Free trade and other pacts have gone far in removing tariffs and other 
sticking points to easy commerce, so "why not go all the way?" asks Morgan, 
echoing a frequently heard argument.

Canada's trade relationship with America already accounts for 80% of its 
economy, so "are we having all this hullabaloo over 20 percent?"

"And what is the rest of Canada anyway? What are we trying to preserve? The 
Yukon? Northern Alberta?"

Morgan advises companies how to navigate the dizzying waters of customs and 
taxes for the two nations. He supports controversial ideas, such as Canada 
adopting the American dollar and allowing U.S. Customs agents to sit on the 
Canadian side to inspect trucks before they reach the Fort Street station.

His borderless theory is not outlandish here. There are few places on the 
planet where two countries come so close to being a single unit as the 
Detroit-Windsor corridor.

Windsorites watch Detroit television, listen to Detroit radio and root for 
Detroit sports teams. Some even speak with a touch of a Midwestern accent, 
with flat, drawn-out vowels, instead of the more clipped tones heard around 
Toronto. They can tell you where to eat in Greektown and where to park at 
Joe Louis Arena for a Red Wings game. Detroiters watched live Olympics 
coverage on the CBC, know where to get the best steak in Windsor and jog on 
Windsor's riverfront.

"It is extremely unique," says Marchand, the Windsor mayoral adviser. ". . 
. It's very cosmopolitan. And then there is this huge trading relationship 
that sits on top of that."

But the debate over joining the U.S. is an old chestnut north of the 49th 
Parallel, where a remarkable amount of energy is spent trying to keep 
American culture at bay. Consider Canadian content laws: Canadian TV 
stations and radio stations must air at least 30% Canadian-made 
programming; American filmmakers who make their movies in Canada have to 
use a percentage of Canadians to be eligible for government grants.

As for the idea of armed U.S. border agents on the Windsor side, some 
Canadians regard this as an offense to their sense of peace and order, a 
threat to their sovereignty.

Sovereignty, shmovereignty, Mayne says; protecting the bridge is purely a 
matter of public safety.

"This whole sovereignty debate going on in Ottawa (expletive) me off to no 
end," he says. "Those people have no clue what it's like to travel that 
bridge every daybeside these trucks.It's outrageous. You know, Canadians 
often talk about American ignorance ofCanadian customs and culture. Well, 
that (debate) is a glaring example ofCanadian ignorance."

Morgan isn't likely to get his wish. The line separating the United States 
from Canada might fade in places such as Detroit-Windsor, but it won't 
disappear.

For some Canadians, 90% of whom live within 100 miles of the border, that 
line signifies part of who they are.

"Yes, we have to make sure we have access to the American market," says 
Godfrey, the member of Parliament. But maintaining a distinct Canadian 
identity is essential, too.

"What if those two are incompatible? Do we swallow our adherence to our own 
laws and international laws? How far do we go in terms of clamping down on 
our own civil liberties just to keep the border open? I would have to say 
for me, I don't think that trade is number one. We're not placed on this 
planet to trade at all costs."
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens