Thickening In The Head

Wow. Someone should get the franchise over using the newest buzzword "thick" when describing impediments to quick crossing at the border. If I owned it and received a nickel for every time it has been used recently, I would be rich today!

I did not spend a lot of time looking for the date when the word was first used in relation to the border but it has been around for at least 5 years. It just seems that it has been in vogue relatively recently. Everyone seems to be using it from politicians to reporters to members of different associations.

Here are just a few references I have seen over the past few weeks

• "One of the goals that Canadians and Americans have is to thin the border," Ganong said Wednesday.
  
  "After 9/11, the border, if you will, got thicker."

Can't you just see it, Richard Simmons doing his "Sweatin' to the Oldies" exercises at the next SPP meeting trying to thin the thick border. I wonder what kind of gym clothes Harper's stylist would pick out! Here are some more examples:

• Traffic at border crossings can also thicken during long weekends. Therefore, it’s a good idea to check in advance to see if there are delays
  


• Yet delays triggered by the unexpected have risen every year since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
  
  "It's not in anybody's best interest - it's not in the United States' best interest and it's not in Canada's best interest to have a border that simply acts as an impediment to trade so that economic activity is halted," Mr. Kee said.
  
  Experts have dubbed this phenomenon a "thickening" of the border.



• Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Industry Minister Jim Prentice have also recently warned that "thickening of the border" is costing business heavily on both sides.
  
  Beatty reiterated those concerns Thursday to The Journal's editorial board. He said Canada-U.S. trade differs from that between other countries.
  
  "We don't just ship them wheat and buy car parts. We make stuff together. We're highly integrated ... so smooth functioning of the border is more important..."
  
  Potential investors are likely to set up shop in the U.S. to avoid the border hassles, he said.



• Faced with the thickening of the U.S-Canadian border and the downturn in the American economy, Canada is setting the stage for free-trade talks with the European Union. Preliminary studies have been ordered and in October, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will decide whether to give the green light to begin formal negotiations towards a new, trans-Atlantic free trade deal.



• PBOA President Stan Korosec, who is also Vice President of Operations for Blue Water Bridge Canada, agrees with Bradley. "Our members are also concerned about the thickening of the border," says Korosec. "We have been meeting with representatives of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection since the summer long delays experienced in 2007 and are pleased with their efforts to date to facilitate legitimate trade and tourism without affecting security. We hope that the Canadian Government allocates the proper staffing and resources to the Canada Border Services Agency (so that similar delays are not experienced coming into Canada this summer)".


• The warning echoes criticisms about a "thickening" border imperiling trade and productivity made recently by the North American Chambers of Commerce and the North American Competitiveness Council.



• Prentice sounds alarm over ‘thickening’ U.S. border



• Prentice's warnings about the "thickening of the border" were much more pointed than those Prime Minister Stephen Harper raised last month at a summit with U.S. President George W. Bush in New Orleans.


• Interminable lineups, frustrating delays – time is money, and these days, both are a-wasting at the 49th parallel...At a time when globalization is supposed to be bringing countries closer together, business leaders are bemoaning what they describe as a thickening of the 49th parallel.


• Canadians have reason to worry that American fears of 9/11 terror, coupled with raw presidential politics, put trade at risk. Washington is intent on “thickening” its borders with Canada and Mexico in ways that hurt our common $1 trillion trade, even though recession threatens all three countries.


• about thickening the border, a phrase I'm well aware of, we have consistently -- and I'd say, more appropriately, the Department of Homeland Security has consistently tried to work with the Canadians, to be as transparent as possible with them, explain to them kind of the process, what we're doing, how we're going about it, trying to make sure that we meet all of our legal requirements, but we also facilitate trade and travel.

Bureaucrats who really run things, especially American ones, should be very familiar with the term "thickening" since it has been used to describe them and how they act! The Brookings Institute wrote:

• "The past half century has witnessed a slow, but steady thickening of the federal bureaucracy as Congress and presidents have added layer upon layer of political and career management to the hierarchy. The past six years have been no different. Despite the president's promise to bring business-like thinking to the federal government, the Bush administration has overseen, or at the very least permitted, a significant expansion in both the height and width of the federal hierarchy. There have never been more layers at the top of government, nor more occupants at each layer.
  
  The impact of the thickening is in the headlines regularly. Information must pass through layer upon layer before it reaches the top of the hierarchy, if it reaches the top at all, while guidance and oversight must pass through layer upon layer on the way to the frontlines, if it ever reaches the frontlines at all. It is little wonder that no one can be held accountable for what goes wrong or right in government, especially in a hierarchy where presidential appointees serve for 18-24 months on average, and information is often delivered by word of mouth through a process that has come to resemble the childhood game of telephone. "

Read part of a press release from the C.D. Howe Institute back in 2003. This probably helps explain why border impediments or Senator Kenny's "Dirty Little Secret" really exist:

• "In a Commentary entitled “Risky Business: U.S. Border Security and the Threat to Canadian Exports,” Danielle Goldfarb, policy analyst with the Institute, and William B.P. Robson, senior vice president and director of research, say there is a compelling need for a broad new agreement on North American economic and security integration to lessen the vulnerability of cross-border trade. Recent border tightening by the U.S. in advance of a planned invasion of Iraq provides clear evidence of the need.
  
  “In the event of another attack, Canada will again be a target of U.S. complaints, partly because of legitimate concerns about inadequate security [in Canada] and partly because many Americans will be reluctant to accept blame for failings on their own side,” Goldfarb and Robson say in the Commentary, part of the Institute’s Border Papers series. “One small security flare-up linked to Canada could have major economic consequences.”
  
  The authors estimate that in the event of future actual or feared attacks, border disruptions directly threaten key sectors of the Canadian economy that account directly for as much as 45 percent of Canadian exports, 400,000 jobs and $3.7 billion of investment, as well as another half of each of those amounts for sectors that are indirectly vulnerable. The study adds that Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and P.E.I. have the greatest proportions of highly vulnerable industries...
  
  The authors add: “Effective ‘thickening’ of the border by extra security measures threatens to deprive Canada of the advantages — in particular, investment by producers seeking to serve the entire North American market — that trade liberalization within this continent has conferred.”

Want more? Here is something for you to read. Check out the Globe and Mail story on their website published on May 17 :

• "DEAD END FOR FREE TRADE
  
  
  NAFTA was meant to deliver timely, unfettered access to Canada's biggest trading partner. Instead, delays are longer, costs are higher, and business models are breaking down"

Of course you need to round out your education by reading what both the Brookings Institute wrote ("The Vital Connection: Reclaiming Great Lakes Economic Leadership in the Bi-National
US-Canadian Region") :

• "The largest challenge to further economic integration is posed by homeland security concerns and measures that have slowed border and bi-national economic exchange since 2001."

and the latest Report by the NORTH AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS COUNCIL:

• "The NACC continues to favor a more comprehensive approach to reducing border congestion that would entail shifting the customs clearance process, to the extent possible, away from ports of entry, and toward the inbound side of choke points such as border bridges and tunnels. In the longer term, as many inspection processes as possible should be moved away from the border."

Why am I telling you all of this? It's very simple. The problem of the border simply has little to do with a bridge or a tunnel no matter where located on the border between Canada and the United States. The bridges and tunnels in themselves are not responsible for delays.

Oh you will see the odd comment about Windsor/Detroit in passing (I mean really, the Governments will have spent on both sides of the river $50-$6M on the DRIC report by the time it is done so someone has to say something about it) but when you read all of these reports and read all the stories, the issues come down to Customs, Homeland Security and the US need for security.

That is why as I have said before I do not understand why the Canadian Government has decided to take on the United States over the Ambassador Bridge issue and is making such a big deal about it. It is such a small part of the whole free trade issue but it can become another softwood lumber issue easily if someone chooses to make it one.

NAFTA is at stake and a good part of our prosperity if we do the wrong thing. We cannot win if the Americans decide to look inward and become more protectionist. We can play elephantine but we are still the mouse in the end.

Accordingly, there is no point in the Prime Minister threatening the President of the United States with Canadian oil at the SPP meeting nor having an Industry Minister try to confront the President when they're both delivering speeches at the same conference nor leaking news stories to the CBC French language network stating things that the Americans are in no position to do at this time because of the law.

It makes no sense to embarrass a sitting Republican President nor to dismiss a possible Republican Presidential candidate as being unelectable by our Government's actions. Why hurt your friends?

It makes no sense to try and determine which Democratic candidate might be the choice in running for President, especially when one guesses incorrectly, and then compound that error by stating that you want to do a deal before that person becomes President. Why hurt your new friend?

Next time you see the word "thick" in relation to the border you probably will understand better what it means after you have read this BLOG.

Don't forget it also refers to the brains of certain bureaucrats and politicians who have not got a clue as to what they are doing other than destroying the relationship between Canada and the United States over one bridge in particular.

Is it really worth it?