Today Prime Minister Harper will fly to Washington where he’s expected to sign a perimeter security and economic competitiveness deal with President Obama. As with past U.S. negotiations, “deal” might be too generous a term for what looks like unilateral adoption of U.S. norms.

Based on news reports, the 32-point Beyond the Border Action Plan will create new checks on travel into and out of Canada and increase the amount of personal information that is shared with U.S. security agencies. It will announce new joint policing initiatives that could make it normal to have U.S. agents operating in Canada.

The perimeter deal will also likely commit to further convergence of Canadian and U.S. environmental, food safety and health regulations in areas important to large transnational business lobby groups. These groups are the main proponents of a new border agreement. Look out for them at the press conference in Washington this Wednesday.

What does Canada get out of all this? The government wants to deal with perceived long delays at the border for commerce, as well as differences in product safety, labelling or other health-related regulations which they say reduce the competitiveness of integrated North American supply chains.

Standardization can be a good thing when standards are high. And considering how integrated many Canadian and U.S. industries are, it makes sense to look at ways to ease the flow of goods. One obvious solution would be a new public bridge between Windsor and Detroit, where over a third of all Canada-U.S. trade takes place. Pre-clearance for certain shipments so there is no need to stop at the border also makes a great deal of sense.

Unfortunately the trade-off doesn’t. As was the case a decade ago, Canada is asked to adopt wholesale the U.S. vision and tactics of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism, with its increasing use of data collection and surveillance in the North American homeland. In return, the U.S. agrees to maybe, just maybe let trucks across the border a few seconds faster.

But if we’re still having this debate after a decade of integration, doesn’t it mean the U.S. is not living up to its side of the bargain? Canada, in other words, has been unilaterally adopting U.S. positions on security and economic regulation without any payoff. The farce has been repeated again and again, from the 2002 Smart Border Declaration through the 2005 Security and Prosperity Partnership and now to the 2011 “perimeter” agreement.

Of course the lopsidedness of the agreement will not deter its biggest fans in the business world and media. But it is just one of many reasons why Canadians and their members of Parliament need to play a deciding role in assessing the value and risks — to privacy, to public health — of this border deal.

On regulatory harmonization, does it make sense to adopt U.S. style industry self-inspection of food processing plants? Many believe moves in this direction led to the Maple Leaf Foods tragedy that left 22 people dead and many more sick from tainted meat. Do we automatically want to recognize in Canada the safety of new genetically modified crops or, in the case of salmon, GE animals? Do we want to stop testing pesticides approved for use in the U.S. just to get them to Canadian shelves quicker? According to news reports, and based on previous “security and prosperity” pacts with the U.S. and Mexico, this will be a big part of the border package.

Then there are the obvious privacy risks. Contrary to reassuring statements from Janet Napolitano, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, and her Canadian counterpart Vic Toews, the Canadian and U.S. systems for protecting personal information and privacy are quite different.

Canada’s federal privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, explains in a recent Huffington Post article that U.S. legislation does not protect information it collects on non-U.S. residents. The commissioner says there is no oversight in the U.S. with respect to the privacy rights implications of law enforcement and security activities, and no independent authority mandated to investigate the data-handling activities of the U.S. government.

Not that the situation in Canada is perfect — far from it. The Arar Commission, which looked into the deportation from the United States of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria where he was tortured, recommended that a single authority be established to oversee the activities of all Canadian organizations sharing information with their U.S. counterparts.

The Commission asked that checks and balances be put in place. They weren’t. Yet the Harper government may be about to drastically increase the types and amount of information that is sent across the border, as if it were any other commodity. In other words Harper wants to unilaterally move us further down the path of integration without making existing security practices truly accountable.

The Council of Canadians will not be alone in demanding an extended public and parliamentary debate on the new border plan before any of it can become operational. Past harmonization plans, including the defunct Security and Prosperity Partnership, have been secret and far too driven by business interests. More embarrassingly they also haven’t worked if we’re to believe the stories about a thickening border. Harper hasn’t yet explained why this one will be any different.

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson and Stuart Trew is the Trade Campaigner with the Council of Canadians.
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Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch. She is also an executive member of the San Francisco–based...