If we give, we might get more

Trade treaties don’t have to be about anything but trade. Notwithstanding the dire warnings at the time, there was nothing in the original free trade treaty that obliged Canada and the United States (later joined by Mexico) to harmonize policies, in any field whatever. To be sure, there were always gains to be had from reducing overlap and duplication. But whether to do so was entirely up to the signatories, each weighing the benefits against the costs to its sovereignty and freedom of movement. Even as trade flows swelled and our economies became more integrated, it was still largely a discretionary matter. September 11 changed all that. The minute it became clear that, for the Americans at least, security trumped trade, we were all on notice to find a way to ensure that it never became a choice between the two. And if we were to square the competing demands of security and trade, it would have to mean more cooperative approaches -- harmonization, in other words -- if only at the border. Yet we have never really come to grips with just what that might mean. On the one hand, business groups and assorted eggheads have issued a number of windy proposals for “deep integration,” Grand Bargains and the like -- a security perimeter, a customs union, even monetary union -- which have always struck me as solutions in search of a problem. And on the other hand, there is the passport issue. It has been two years since Congress passed legislation insisting that all travellers coming to or from the United States, whether foreigners or citizens, must carry a passport or “passport-like” identification. It was easy to see that this could have a potentially devastating impact on trade and tourism, especially into this country. Just one in five Americans holds a passport. The time and expense of obtaining one -- multiplied by the number of family members -- could easily be the difference between vacationing north of the border or staying home. And while the proportion of Canadians passport-holders is closer to two in five, the potential headache for business and other travellers, especially in the transition stage, was obvious. Yet the previous government, while highly engaged on other border issues, seemed to have no plan to avoid this onrushing train, other than to sit tight and hope it would miss us. With the January 2007 deadline fast approaching, there is no prospect of that happening. Congress is as determined as ever. What are we going to do? The choices are unappetizing. Passports are cumbersome to obtain, and bulky to carry. Anyone who has sat through the line-up in their local passport office can imagine the chaos if suddenly they were joined by millions of would-be day-trippers. Yet what is the alternative? A national ID card? Think of the expense -- from the people who brought you the gun registry -- to say nothing of privacy concerns. A souped-up driver’s licence or health card, using the latest biometric and other security measures? How? Reissue everyone with new ones? Or stamp a chip into the one you have now? Yet the passport mess was just one of the issues on which the three leaders acknowledged the pressures for closer cooperation are becoming inescapable. Immigration, in light of the mounting controversy over illegal, largely Mexican immigration in the United States; energy, given the new demands from China and India, and the new threats to supply from Middle East; natural disasters, such as the ice storm or Hurricane Katrina -- destined to become a more common event, if you believe the global warming jeremiahs; even the risk of an Asian flu pandemic: all demand a coordinated response. But if binational and trinational approaches become more the norm than the exception, that raises issues of its own. The case will increasingly be made for going beyond ad hoc committees and annual summit meetings, into more formal, institutionalized arrangements. Vicente Fox, the Mexican president, is already pushing in this direction, against varying degrees of resistance from his partners. It isn’t at all clear how far we should go down this path. What begin as lean, purpose-built “secretariats” have a way of metastasizing into empire-building bureaucracies. And even if you keep it to just the three leaders, the further you intrude onto what were previously inviolable national jurisdictions the more “democratic deficit” concerns arise: treaties between leaders that cannot be amended or detracted from in any way leave little role for elected legislatures. So we are probably right to be feeling our way as we go. There isn’t an obvious course we should follow, and if there were, there is nothing like a popular consensus that we should follow it. But if incrementalism is in order, it is still possible to think strategically. To now, Canada has been largely in the position of reacting to U.S. concerns, as in the passport matter. But, without getting too ambitious or indulging in crude attempts at linkage, is it not possible to bring some Canadian concerns to the table at the same time? As the endless softwood imbroglio amply demonstrates, there is still unfinished business with regard to trade remedy laws. Ideally, the solution would involve replacing national subsidy and anti-dumping regimes with a continent-wide, competition-law approach. Perhaps a greater willingness on our part to cooperate in other areas would pique the Americans’ interest. In this way, we might find the path of trade negotiations leads in the other way from usually supposed: from harmonization back to liberalization.