2008-11-01 Ottawa Citizen, “American officials are pressuring the Federal Government to supply them with information on Canadians .. Canadian officials have said .. will meet the new standard .. by 2011 .. but there’ll be tremendous pressure (from the U.S.) to get there faster.”

In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians, says an influential analyst on Canada-U.S. relations.

“Not only about (routine) individuals, but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there’s no indictment and there’s no charge,” Christopher Sands of the Hudson Institute told a security intelligence conference in Ottawa yesterday.

“This raises privacy flags everywhere, but we’d like to know who your suspicious people are before they enter the United States.”

He recounted a recent conversation in which Stewart Baker, assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security, told him Canadians have “had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they’ve paid nothing.”

The Bush administration, Mr. Baker continued, is now telling Canada “we want to give you less access, but we want you to pay more and, by the way, we’re standardizing this (with other visa-free countries) so you’re not special anymore.”

Mr. Sands concluded, “this politically is a very difficult difficult message to pass on to Canadians, setting aside all of the privacy concerns, but it’s one that’s unlikely to change in the next administration.”

The case of Maher Arar also changes nothing.

“I don’t think that we’re convinced Maher Arar was vindicated or acquitted by your process,” Mr. Sands said, referring to the O’Connor judicial inquiry. “What you did was re-evaluate the treatment of Maher Arar and decide that procedural mistakes along the way had been made. That didn’t vindicate him from the charge that he was involved in fundraising for terror.

“People in Canada have turned the man into some sort of national hero, but if you expect the next administration to join you in sending him laurels, I think you’re going to be mistaken. Even Barack Obama … is not going to go near that with a 10-foot pole” and Mr. Arar will not have his name removed from the U.S. no-fly list “in my lifetime.”

European nations, meanwhile, have agreed to begin sharing more information with the U.S. on their citizens starting in January, part of what Mr. Sands said is a gradual movement by the U.S. toward a “simpler policy” for all visa-waiver countries to provide a “package of benefits,” to the U.S. in exchange for ease of access. Mexico already has such an arrangement.

Canadian officials have said this country will meet the new standard, “plus or minus a little,” by 2011, he said. “But there’ll be tremendous pressure (from the U.S.) to get there faster.”

John Sims, deputy minister of justice, later told delegates Canada is “not getting a free ride. There are challenges of how we share intelligence now and we don’t have all the answers,” he said. But, “the quality of the information that we still share regularly with our allies is of the highest quality and I have no doubt whatsoever that it’s seen to be very valuable and is prized by the people with whom we share it.”

Regardless of who wins the U.S. presidency next week, Mr. Sands said it will be a few years, at the least, before the next administration will take a political gamble on easing Canada-U.S. border restrictions.

Canada may, in fact, find it difficult to chart independent security and intelligence policy.

“You’ve been there (on shared security), we appreciate that. But I think that also sets the context for what we’re going to be asking you for after the next administration takes office.

“Because of the nature of terrorism as a threat, it is less negotiable for you to help us when it comes to domestic security measures taken in Canada that directly impact on our security at home.

“So while we live in a world in which an independent foreign policy for Canada is as possible as ever, an independent security policy, an independent intelligence policy, becomes trickier because we need Canada to help us protect ourselves and to protect yourselves.”

To maintain even the status quo along the border, the Canadian government needs to make its commitment to border and internal domestic security clear to the incoming administration, he told several hundred delegates, most from Canada’s national security establishment.

Both Mr. Obama and John McCain have talked about changes to the controversial U.S. Patriot Act, closing the Guantanamo Bay prison and altering policies on torture, and there will tremendous pressure on whichever man is president, once they made those changes, not to have another terrorist attack.

“If they do, people will say, ‘you softened the stance (of President George W. Bush), you weakened the stance and — you saw it on Sept. 11 — the great American tendency is to ignore problems too long and then overreact.”

If any such event is traced back to Canada, damage to Canada-U.S. relations would last weeks, if not years, he said.

An indication of where Canada-U.S. border relations — and therefore economic trade — will head under the next U.S. administration will be evident with the appointment of the anticipated new head of the Department of Homeland Security.

“There is no more important cabinet secretary to Canada today … because homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends.”

It will be extremely important, he said, that the next secretary appreciates Canada’s efforts against terrorism and the “tremendous progress” the two countries have made on domestic security co-operation.

“That has to happen before we have a conversation about changing border policies. These will be new people in Washington and we need to start at the beginning, saying, ‘Canada is not a threat and we’re making every effort to make sure that we don’t foster a threat anywhere inside’ ” our borders.