Talks falter on U.S. Customs station in Canada

Talks falter on U.S. Customs station in Canada The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has terminated negotiations to set up a border pre-clearance facility on Canadian soil to inspect travelers and commercial vehicles heading across the Peace Bridge from Fort Erie, Ontario, to Buffalo, N.Y.
   In a letter to U.S. Secretary Michael Chertoff, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged both sides to resume talks and find a solution to prevent further delays to the pre-clearance pilot program.
   The Peace Bridge is the third-busiest commercial, and second-busiest passenger border crossing with Canada and annually carries $20 billion in trade. About 6,000 trucks traverse the span each day. Canada and the United States have the largest trading relationship in the world, with more than $530 billion in two-way exports per year.
   The governments have been negotiating for nearly two years to relocate U.S. primary and secondary inspection stations to the Canadian side of the border. As originally conceived, the reciprocal pilot program would allow Canada to also station inspectors on U.S. soil. Pre-clearance is seen as a way to improve security by checking people and conveyances before they cross into the United States and to reduce processing delays during busy periods. Improving processing time is constrained by the lack of space on the U.S. side of the border to expand U.S. Customs facilities.
   Canada and the United States are working closely through the Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative to develop a common approach to security on the northern border. In the past, DHS officials have said a pre-clearance system could be an interim step towards integrated border inspection areas in which customs authorities conduct joint screening and clearance operations for passengers, vehicles and cargo.
   The pre-clearance concept faced several hurdles, including jurisdictional issues governing the authority of inspectors on foreign soil and dealing with labor unions that represent government inspectors.
   The North American Competitiveness Council, an industry consortium providing guidance to how to achieve the cross-border trade facilitation and security goals of the Security and Prosperity Partnership in North America, made the pre-clearance program one of its priorities for 2007 in a recent report to the U.S., Canadian, and Mexican governments. Businesses want better infrastructure in place to speed processing, which has slowed with heightened security since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
   Time is running out to establish the pre-clearance checkpoints. The Peace Bridge Authority gave May as the deadline for Canada and the United States to reach a final agreement for pre-clearance to be included as part of any capacity expansion project. The authority said after that it would eliminate pre-clearance from their capacity expansion project and proceed to work with the city of Buffalo on a traditional customs plaza on the U.S. side.
   In a report released Monday, the Conference Board of Canada said that heightened security measures at the border have not slowed Canadian export volumes but have increased costs for Canadian companies. The pro-business association said companies could be motivated to locate production facilities in the larger U.S. market to avoid cross-border costs.
   A new tax on Canadian shippers went into effect over the weekend to help cover the cost of increased security measures.
   The Conference Board called for pre-clearance of shipments and trusted trade programs for vetted shippers as ways to overcome costs and uncertainty of delays at the border.