Holiday in Cambodia

The last ten years may someday be looked upon as the most consequential in American history since the civil war. In a lot of ways, it marks the death of seriousness in the United States. On issue after issue, from NAFTA to the Patriot Act; from warrantless wiretapping by the NSA to longstanding prohibitions on torture, Americans have collectively asserted that their laws and treaties mean something other than what they actually say.

Combine those things with runaway spending and endless debt and an increasingly incomprehensible foreign policy, and you very well may have a country in an irreversible downward spiral. That may sound ridiculous to some, but I would remind those people that no one saw the rapid disintegration of the world's other superpower coming the way it did.

There's no shortage of foreign nationals who insist on bitching on the United States' conduct, particularly as it relates to non-Americans, yet continue to visit and work there. If, for example, you don't want to be molested by the Transportation Security Administration, that can be easily avoided by not entering the United States. I haven't been there since the fall of 2004, have no immediate plans on returning, and I haven't been felt up by a single bureaucrat that I haven't invited to do so. A 100% success rate!

Besides, it's not as if the American government wants foreigners, particularly Canadians, to visit. In fact, it is going out its way to discourage it as much as possible.

I supported the 1988 Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA precisely because an economic union was supposed to facilitate the movement of people and goods across the world's longest undefended border, much as was the case with the European Union, which those agreements were a direct response to.

That turned out not to be the case. Even before 9/11, the U.S government has used the border and trade to get its way on issues ranging from softwood lumber, steel imports, pharmaceutical re importation and our domestic drug policy. Three years ago, hundreds of years of practice were reversed and a passport requirement was instituted for Canadians entering the United States (I always used my passport to travel there, but I wasn't obligated to and most Canadians didn't).

And now we're going to be taxed to travel there.

The Obama administration wants Canadians to pay to enter the United States to help ease that country's desperate financial crunch.

A proposed "passenger inspection" fee is outlined in the draft 2012 U.S. federal budget that has been sent to Congress. If adopted, the charge is expected to be levied against millions of commercial air and marine travellers from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, the only areas now exempt from the fee, and generate US$110-million annually. The fee would not apply to automobile traffic.

With about 16 million Canadians flying to the U.S. each year, a $5.50 head tax would raise almost US$90-million of the annual total and help pay for more beefed up U.S. border security.

(...)

"It's an indication that the United States is going to be looking to generate new monies to offset their budget deficit on outsiders who don't vote -- and that would be us," said Birgit Matthiesen, of the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters, Canada's largest trade and industry association. "The raising of any fees on the Canada-U.S. border is troubling."

None of this is happening in isolation, either. The Obama administration and the Harper government announced a couple of weeks ago that they are negotiating a North American border and security perimeter.

There was an interesting article in the Globe & Mail this past weekend about how the agreement would positively effect regulatory differences between the two countries. But it raises as many questions as it does answers. For example, whose regulations will be adopted? Who exactly do you appeal to if you disagree with the changes?

The same is true of things like immigration and citizenship policy, to say nothing of our criminal law. What about defence policy? Will Canadians be forced into a back door acceptance of the U.S missile defence shield that a duly elected government rejected? Something tells me that most Americans aren't going to adopt anything implemented by a Parliament unaccountable to them.

You don't have to like anything the Canadian government does. God knows, I profoundly disagree with almost everything it does. But that doesn't change the fact that it is at least accountable to us in ways that Washington can't be unless there's a political union.

What are were surrendering and what are we getting in return? This agreement is going to wind up destroying Canadian sovereignty in any number of ways. It can't help but do that, and even people that support it should acknowledge it. But is something as simple as crossing the border going to be any easier? The answer to that is emphatically no.

Entering the United States will remain considerably more difficult than it was before the Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1988, you'll be subjected to indefensible humiliations that border on sexual assault, and now you'll be charged six bucks for the privilege. And in five years, another group of American politicians are just going to say that this agreement doesn't mean what it actually says.

You could possibly make argument that the economic benefits of such an agreement outweigh the sacrifices we'll be forced to make, but that only proves that you haven't been paying attention. The last five administrations have been running America's economy like a banana republic and we're starting to see the consequences of that. More importantly, no one is prepared to even admit what's going to be necessary to avoid the abyss, let alone actually do it.

What country in their right mind divests itself of so much of its sovereignty to a declining power? If Canada sees lower revenues from North American trade, it isn't because of issues with the border. It's because the American government has spent the last decade making its money essentially worthless.

Sure, charge us the money. Why not? On the other hand, we can always holiday in Cambodia. Chances are that it won't be as frustrating.