It's The Customs, Stupid

I do try to be positive after all. Honest.

But how can I be after reading asinine remarks like those of Industry Minister Jim Prentice who was delayed at US Customs for about 45 minutes sitting in a truck cab. Can you blame me for how I write!

Somebody in his Ministerial staff goofed up royally. It will hit the fan when he gets back to Ottawa. Didn't someone give him a book of Windsor border crossing platitudes that he could mouth. You know like "Windsor is the most important border crossing point in Canada and we need to ensure that traffic flows smoothly." Or "The Windsor border is our most important infrastructure priority."

Instead the Minister said:

• "His verdict: Prentice was "extremely surprised" the federal government hasn't addressed Windsor's border situation, the busiest in the world, since 1929."

DUH!!!! Where has he been since he became a Cabinet Minister? Where the heck has Transport Canada been? Has this matter never been brought to Cabinet? Or more importantly, where is Brian Masse on this issue?

Do you mean to tell me that our NDP MP responsible for the border has not been able to explain yet what the border situation is like? Perhaps the problem is that Brian Masse doesn't understand the border issue and is confusing everybody in Ottawa about it. Some of that seemed to come through during the hearings for Bill C-3. If this is what his representation for us is like, then we have big problems here.

Mind you, Brian did say this in his recent press release:

• "I have already achieved an accomplishment in this area with amending and ensuring the passage of the International Bridge and Tunnel Act which became law earlier this year."

I think he forgot about how many of his amendments were rejected--that amnesia disease that strikes politicians again-- and how this Bill may actually hurt Windsor, not help it. So it is no wonder he is confused.

It is shocking that a Minister would try and blame the border mess on the previous Government after all of this time. Why he sounds like Eddie Francis in the WUC fiasco blaming the mess on past Administrations and not "politics."

I know that the Conservatives are Canada's New Government but really saying "he was "extremely surprised" the situation wasn't addressed years ago by the previous government" has to be one big, giant cop-out.

Wow, is Prentice ever making it easy for Susan Whelan to beat Jeff Watson in the next election. Obviously, it seems Jeff has done nothing either to make the Government aware of the issue if the Minister is so out to lunch.

The biggest disappointment, but not really a surprise, is that the Minister has no idea how a border should operate. It would seem that Transport Canada does not understand that either if this is what the Minister believes. What is the point of building a new bridge and spending billions of dollars that merely creates a giant parking lot across the Detroit River if there are not enough fully staffed Customs booths that would clear traffic.

Customs is the problem for heavens sake, not capacity! Lanes are not the issue, the number of fully staffed booths are.

Doesn't the Minister know that the volume of traffic at the border now is significantly decreased from that of 1999? It is the same at other border crossings across Canada. DRIC has reduced their traffic volume projection numbers already several times at the Windsor border. Take a look at the optimistic traffic projections at the Blue Water Bridge and compare that with actual volumes. Some private investor is fortunate that the Government put in money to build the new bridge there rather than a pension fund.

The most obvious explanation that it is Customs that is the issue is the opening by the Bridge Company of four booths on the US side. That cleared up the backlog of trucks immediately on Huron Church Road at a cost of only a few million dollars. Compare that with the Horseshoe Road that Schwartz wanted to build that would have cost hundreds of millions of Taxpayer dollars and all that it would have done was provide parking spaces for trucks.

It would appear that there was a backlog that impacted FAST trucks. Was there another US Customs computer glitch or a security crack-down? Or did the Americans want to teach the Canadian Minister who was the real "boss" at the border since they knew he was coming over. Realpolitik at its finest!

It might have been that the truck in which the Minister was riding was stuck behind non-FAST vehicles in a line-up. That is precisely why the Ambassador Bridge wants their Enhancement Project completed quickly. It is to have an extra lane built in each direction, a third lane, for NEXUS and FAST vehicles.

The world has changed if the Minister did not know that. In 1999, the Bridge was able to clear more trucks with fewer Customs booths than they can today. It takes about triple the number of booths to clear fewer trucks.

The issue, dear Minister, is not capacity and adding bridges that cost billions, but ensuring that trucks can go through a security process quickly with the required number of fully staffed Customs booths open on both sides of the river. That is what the Enhancement Project is all about.

The Minister should be talking to his colleagues in cabinet about expediting that project rather than wasting billions on creating new parking lots in the air. The problem is that Transport Minister Cannon is in hiding, too busy worrying about electing Conservatives in Québec. As far as I know, he has never yet met with the Ambassador Bridge people to discuss the border crossing. And where is Ambassador Michael Wilson? What a disgrace!

But hold on there, perhaps I got it all wrong. The Minister did say that cabinet is "in favour of anything that increases the throughput." Perhaps he does get it after all. Oh sure he had to talk about "capacity" and "public infrastructure." Remember, the Government has to "respect" the DRIC process.

Throughput however is not capacity. Remember when the Government challenged the Bridge Company to increase throughput by 25%. The White House fact sheet said in 2006:

• "To promote prosperity by reducing the costs of trade, the United States and Canada decreased transit times at the Detroit/Windsor gateway, our largest border crossing point, by 50 percent."

Remember what the proposed Michigan House said in relation to a "resolution expressing appreciation and support for the Ambassador Bridge:"

• "Whereas, The Ambassador Bridge has continually taken steps to enhance its service and to increase the volume of traffic that can move safely and efficiently between Canada and the U.S. with capacity increases in 2001 and 2004; and...
  
  Whereas, In response to a December 2004 request from outgoing U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, and Canada's Deputy Prime Minister, Anne McLellan, for a 25 percent increase in throughput capacity at each border crossing by June 2005, the Ambassador Bridge has presented plans for a 50 percent increase in capacity on the U.S. Plaza and a 45 percent increase on the Canadian Plaza"

All that without spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a new bridge too.

Is all of this just more games playing? Are we in limbo until after the Provincial election? Do we have to wait until some time in the middle of October to find out whether we are going to have a Federal election? Is this the Government speaking out of all sides of its mouth?

I am just so tired of it all. Aren't you? I just hope that the Michigan Legislators have the courage to cancel the DRIC project so that we can get down to the serious business of how a border should properly operate.

Just to give you a different perspective of the Ambassador Bridge Company and how they manage the border, I attach part of a newspaper article from a Texas newspaper that I saw today:

• "In Fabens, the 1938 wooden bridge, will soon be taken down and a new bridge will be built 600 yards upstream between Tornillo and Guadalupe. The new bridge, with a price tag of about $100 million that includes access roads and inspection buildings, will be one of the largest on the border with six vehicular lanes.
  
  That bridge project is the only one in the area and one of five in the nation to have received a presidential permit, said General Services Administration spokeswoman Shala Geer-Smith. The new bridge, 12 years in the making, should start going up in 2010 and be complete by 2012, El Paso County officials said.
  
  The bridge will be paid for with federal and county money.
  
  But El Pasoans continue to dream about new bridges.
  
  Last year's Border Improvement Plan by the El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization listed options for future ports of entry in the area, including crossings in Sunland Park and Socorro.
  
  But the most popular option was a bridge in the middle of El Paso's East side at Yarbrough Drive.
  
  Stephanie Caviness, owner an executive search firm for maquiladoras and president of the Foreign Trade Association, called the idea "ambitious" but also "one great possibility."
  
  "Avenida de las Torres (in Juárez) runs right to the border, so a lot of the Mexican access infrastructure is in place," she said.
  
  This summer, Donald Michie, president of NAFTA Ventures Inc., took a trip to the U.S.-Canada border to visit the Ambassador Bridge, a privately owned border crossing in Detroit. He came back convinced that infrastructure was not so much a problem in El Paso as was bad traffic management.
  
  In a report to the El Paso Bridge Commission, Michie said that the three-lane bridge in Michigan can process six times the traffic volume of El Paso with crossing times of less than 20 minutes. Bridge Commission Chairman Tanny Berg said waits longer than 20 minutes are a problem.
  
  The owner of the Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit International Bridge Co., does not rely on slow public funding for bridge improvements -- "no 900-day project," Michie wrote, a referring to the more than two-year Downtown construction project.
  
  The bridge's private managers work well with CBP officers, Michie said. Moreover, they dedicate themselves to traffic flow management while officers stick to law enforcement. Michie reported that bridge employees are posted in traffic to radio CBP when traffic gets heavier so they can open more lanes.
  
  The company also has facilities ahead of the bridge for truckers to make sure they have the proper import-export paperwork before they get to CBP inspectors, Michie said.
  
  Wait times recorded by the CBP one day last week showed a reported wait at the Ambassador Bridge of 5 minutes at 2 p.m., compared with 20 minutes at the Bridge of the Americas and 110 minutes at the Zaragoza Bridge at the same time."