Posted on 11/17/2001 2:23:42 AM PST by Clive
OTTAWA -- Call it "Put up or shut up."
It's the new approach U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill says he's taking, along with Finance Minister Paul Martin, to put critics of the Canada-U.S. border to the test.
O'Neill said he's heard all the reports about Canada being a staging ground for terrorists and a sieve that allows evil-doers to enter the United States and he doesn't buy it.
"I've heard these things and ... what we resolved is we need to take these vague ideas and run them to the ground," O'Neill told reporters after meeting with Martin before the G-20 meeting began yesterday.
"Where these (accusations) turn out to be just vague generalizations and accusations, we will bring the people who are making them to the table ... and prove to them that they're wrong."
O'Neill, a former industrialist before turning politician, said he's never found Canada's borders porous, as many critics say they are.
"As a matter of fact, I hungered for quicker transactions between our countries."
Both politicians promised to spend what it takes to make their shared border safe and improve the flow of goods and people, but put no pricetag on that.
There is speculation the government will spend $500 million on a new infrastructure program for bridges, roads and technology that would clear up logjams at the border.
"No amount of money has been settled yet, that will come out in the budget," said Martin. "But whatever it takes, we're prepared to invest it."
O'Neill said the U.S. will also ante up what's needed.
"We will put the resources that are required to achieve these objectives," he said.
LINEUPS A PROBLEM
Border lineups and red tape have long been a problem for Canadian manufacturers and exporters and Sept. 11 has only exacerbated the problem.
Revenue Minister Martin Cauchon, who also met with Paul Martin and O'Neill, announced officials will set to work on a "concrete action plan" to ease commerce.
"This is not something we should do in years or months, but in weeks," O'Neill said.
A fact that escapes many who don't live in border states.
Especially, it appears, Texans.
Delays at the border are detrimental to the economies of both countries.
Canada has been notoriously lax in screening fraudulent refugee claimants and in allowing rejected claimants to escape execution of deportation orders, but so has the US.
people who participated in the September 11 attack had been resicent in the US, were on US issued visas, travelled around the US in rented cars, took flying lessont in the US, rented time on airliner flight simulators without having any apparent connection with an airline (even as a job applicant), and routinely flew back and forth between the US and Germany, without ever touching Canadian soil. One of the most recent scams is for people resident in the US on student visas to "lose" their documents, show up at a US-Canada border crossing, and claim refugee status.
While the claim is wending its weary way through the appeals process (a process that may take years), the claimant is ostensibly living in Canada as a welfare recipient but actually living and studying in the US. His monthly welfare allowance is deposited directly to his Canadian bank account but drawn by him through a US ATM machine.
I wonder how many people who were born in Canada or the US are on both countries' books as refugees?
There's just a lot of holes
I've never been stopped for a check crossing the U.S. border. When I was a kid with my folks, we were stopped once because we had some oranges.
Coming back to Canada, I've been checked plenty of times. That's why I always carry a passport, so I can get back into my own country. They usually stop you checking for goods, but I take my passport, just in case.
As far as I'm concerned, with Americans training Terrorist pilots, and allowing them to travel about within their own country, etc. We should probably be a little more stringent at our American crossings, but as long as they can recite the American National anthem, I'd let them in.
OTOH, it's not perfect. The Catholic Youth Organization dances once (several decades ago) had the practice of making any new kid recite the Hail Mary before he was let in to the dance. A lot of protestant boys learned it in order to get in.
Uh? Just put your head in the sand then? Canada is not liable, nor willing (leftist PC combat boots are a fashion there), nor capable of protecting us, and that's the main issue, period.
Conversely, it is OUR responsibility to defend our borders - neither Canada nor Mexico are charged by their citizens or laws to protect a neighboring country. Treaties might promise mutual defense but when the attacker is a car load of un-profilible 'minorities' you can bet that PC and economics will win out over defense.
While I think it would be very eighborly of either Canada or Mexico to assist in this new type of defense, it is clear that neither wishes to yield the economic benefits of letting us go it alone -
So be it.
From today forward I will add the northern border to my short list of placed that need to be fortified. If some find it more difficult to get to walmart, and others have to pay a bit more for gas or cigarettes, if the occasional transient has to buy drugs, have liposuction, or have a baby on the 'wrong' side of a border, so be it.
Now shut up and get me a Lablatt's before we decide to make you the 51st state.
You and I have no control over the consequences of NAFTA and no one can be held liable for fiascos because of NAFTA. Every one has washed their hands off of this responsibility and this O'Neil believes that by making a scene about "sieve" is going to improve his argument. It ain't so, it is a vapor and spit argument.
In other words extortion of the people's safety rules.
The bottom line is more laws, less enforcement and work for the government.
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