Following their meeting this morning in Washington, Canada\u2019s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Barack Obama highlighted the need to continue to build on and accelerate the work of existing bilateral agreements to facilitate trade between the two countries, enhance security of the shared border and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n
According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, aside from some new processes there was little new that hadn\u2019t been announced before. However, David Bradley, president of the alliance, says \u201cany time you get the leaders of the two countries agreeing, even directionally, to cooperate on things like border efficiency and facilitation of low-risk traders, that is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it amounts to anything remains to be seen. As always, the devil will be in the details.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, the leaders say they \u201creinforced\u201d their countries\u2019 intentions to bring into force the Canada-US Agreement on Land, Rail, Marine and Air Transport Preclearance. However, the only specific announcements related to an agreement in principle was to expand preclearance to the Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport and Quebec City\u2019s Jean Lesage Airport as well as for rail service in Montreal and Vancouver. With regard to freight, all the leaders would say is they will \u201cexplore the conditions necessary for cargo preclearance and identify opportunities to pilot this approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCTA is hopeful that one day we will see true binational pre-clearance of commercial trucks before they reach the border, perhaps from a factory or distribution centre, so they won\u2019t have to stop at an inspection booths at the border, but we\u2019re far from that today,\u201d said Bradley.<\/p>\n
The major impediment to true pre-clearance, as opposed to pre-inspection or pre-screening (which still requires actual clearance on the US side, resulting in two stops rather than one) has been the desire of the US Customs and Border Protection to retain full US legal powers on Canadian soil.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister and the President also announced both countries will fully implement a system to exchange basic biographic entry information at the land border \u2013 again something that was agreed to some time ago.\u00a0 This would expectedly mean the collection of \u2018entry\u2019 information into either Canada or the United States would also serve as \u2018exit\u2019 information for the other country. While it is somewhat concerned this requirement is a further intrusion into the supply chain, CTA acknowledges that sharing entry data is a better alternative than a previous U.S. proposal to have CBP agents stop every vehicle prior to exiting from the country.\u00a0That approach, says Bradley, \u201cwould have increased the risk of delays both entering and exiting the United States.\u201d Legislation is needed in Canada before the information sharing agreement can be introduced.<\/p>\n
The two leaders also committed to advancing regulatory cooperation between the two countries \u201cto its next level\u201d by forming a joint Canada-US group of senior officials, including, for the first time, officials from regulatory departments, which CTA presumes (given references to motor vehicle safety and \u201cinteroperable connected vehicles\u201d) will include Transport Canada and the US Department of Transportation. The proposal would bring together a business, consumer expert group on regulatory cooperation and call upon all departments and agencies to \u201cgenerate ambitious short and medium term initiatives\u201d and work plans by early summer.<\/p>\n