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SHARE A HANDSHAKE: MOVE PEOPLE AND CARGO ACROSS BORDERS AND REDUCE REDUNDANT PAPERWORK (2022)

2022
International Relations and Trade

Canada and the United States share a long history of border innovation and excellence. Four major bi-national efforts since the 1995 Shared Border Accord created our current framework for cooperation, culminating in the 2011 Beyond the Border Action Plan. The 2015 Land, Rail, Marine and Air Transport Preclearance Agreement (LRMA)[1] also promises to generate incremental benefits in the coming years.

Much work remains, however, to address a range of processing and policy issues to fully coordinate efforts between governments and between the private and public sectors. The consultations leading up to these new action plans revealed a strong desire to create predictability in border and security processing. More importantly, the border was seen as a place that goods and people flow, not as a single line or step. A shared vision was developed encapsulating a future for the United States and Canada. The bigger picture thinking here is: do we move to a new Open Skies agreement between Canada and the US that opens the entire market to all air carriers (US and Canadian)? We do need to open the door.

 

Background

The new vision is based on eight major challenges within travel and trade sectors and the services that enable border and security clearances:

1. Pandemic resilience and international traffic recovery

Traffic volumes will continue to recover as airlines gear up again. There is an opportunity to get into underserved markets that have been vacated by legacy airlines during the pandemic. We will return to 2019 growth projections nearly doubling across all modes in the next 20 years, with the aviation sector reaching almost 2.5 times more traffic by 2038. The concern is whether our systems will be able to keep up with growth or be limited by insufficient resources, leading to long queues.

2. Wasted resources from duplication

Significant progress has been made in the last 25 years to remove a large portion of paper-based processes, from multiple data-entry to duplicated application forms. More work remains to simplify programs, many of which are separate, requiring almost the same information and are aimed at similar objectives.

3. Privacy issues must be addressed up front

With the proliferation of information sources tied to personal identity or commercial confidentiality, there is the need to improve the performance of the entire system to better manage privacy. Privacy by Design and its seven principles identify best practices that augment existing public agency requirements to conduct privacy impact assessments and do so early in the process.

4. Ensuring ideas are future proof

Scalability and systems that cannot be linked together are examples of problems still faced as border process requirements evolve. Standalone systems may be desirable for speed of implementation but there is the need to ensure connectivity with future changes to systems.

5. Resilience to evolving threats

Dynamic and asymmetric threats are problems faced by public and private sector stakeholders. The resilience of the system to accommodate future shocks through risk-based approaches also further reinforces the need to develop as much efficiency in the system today as possible.

6. Lack of sustainable private-public partnerships

From user fees to investments in facilities and requirements, there is a perception of an unsustainable model for funding future changes. The private sector presents strengths in investment, acquisition, technology deployment and research. These may also represent the opportunities to sustain future cooperation.

7. Underuse or overuse of technology

In the past two years, there have been focused efforts towards product-based pilot projects. “The blockchain pilot” or the “biometric pilot” are important because they are emerging technologies with benefits. The use case however needs to balance the process, staffing envelope and risk model to ensure the success for new technology adoption.

8. Global competition

Finally, the challenge collectively is not the debate over whether Canada or the US stands to gain from future improvements. The economies are intricately linked, as are the cycles of innovation in border and security excellence. The competition is how Canada and the United States, as a joint US $100-trillion economy by 2038, will remain competitive in the world market. Movement of people and goods include land,[2] sea,[3] air[4]and rail[5].

A number of key initiatives are already in research or about to begin.[6]

Updated projects in 2022 (from the initial 16 pilot projects with five major themes) are:

  1. Adopt a Remote Clearance Approach based on machine learning/AI
  2. Screen Once, Accept Multiple Times
  3. Employ risk-based model for our shared borders
  4. Move Away from Fixed Checkpoints to Clearing Flows
  5. Greening the Border.

Net Benefits to 2038

  • Co-economy Canada & US: $100 trillion; 460 million residents
  • Cargo growth: 2-2.5x
  • Travel growth: 1.7-2x
  • Border: predictable, secure, integrated
  • 38,000 fewer new officers needed
  • New Model: joint governance, tech accelerated

Net Results – More competitive Canada & US

  • $13 billion/year travel/supply chain benefits
  • Reduced/deferred facility costs
  • Potential savings to incremental hires
  • 2x – 4x return on investment

Why It Matters to BC[7]

  1. Three of the top 11 busiest airports in Canada are Vancouver, Kelowna and Victoria
  2. Common two-hour line-ups at truck crossings
  3. Exports of mining, wood, coal, propane, oil, LNG/mixed goods imports internationally
  4. Annual container volume Vancouver ports: 3 million TEU from 27 major marine terminals
  5. Cargo value $200 billion Canadian
  6. 898,473 cruise ship passengers in 256 sailings

 

THE CHAMBER RECOMMENDS

That the Provincial Government:s work with the Federal Government:

  1. To support the contributions of the Future Borders Coalition of 80 bi-national organizations including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, specifically:
  2. To expedite the implementation of the six Beyond the Border II Initiatives:
  3. US-Canada Facial Recognition Pilot Project
  4. Single Window eTA/ESTA[8]
  5. Remote screening of goods and co-location of facilities in the US
  6. Trusted traveler program integration
  7. Rescreening elimination

 

[1] . The Beyond Preclearance Coalition now renamed The Future Borders Coalition - was formed to develop a long-term vision for trade and travel, especially CUSMA – the Canada US Mexico Agreement, now in effect. The Beyond Preclearance Coalition of 41 bi-national organizations is outlined in the Beyond Preclearance White Paper, and now, has 80 members. In May of 2022, a renewed and updated White Paper will take some of the ideas in this policy and build them out.

[2] Land borders require careful co-ordination of lanes and infrastructure at border plazas. Preclearance offers more flexibility to locate activities away from the physical border. More efforts are needed to ensure traffic can be streamed through the introduction of biometrics to confirm identities, by using mobile technologies to ensure trucks and cars are ready to proceed and by limiting the amount of stops at the physical border in favor of activities before departure, enroute or at a controlled destination upon arrival.

[3] Maritime Container, break-bulk and other commodities shipped to the United States and Canada have experienced significant changes since 2001. Pushing the borders out is largely a success, especially for container movements. More work remains to incorporate clearances for US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), and across all government agencies. This will enable intermodal transfers to trucking and rail to move more efficiently from one country to the other.

[4] Cruise passengers are largely air transfers and for certain markets (e.g., Alaska or Caribbean cruises) there is the opportunity to further leverage biometrics further to enhance processing. Same-day entry and exit between countries could be greatly facilitated. Six cruise lines have already started to generate pilot projects on biometrics with CBP and this can be further integrated with air transfers and CBSA processes. A robust system exists for in-bond air cargo, but similar to the maritime mode, more is needed than just approvals from a customs agency. A government approach is needed to deal with different commodities – specifically agricultural products. Consequently, a future view towards testing out full in-bond air-air and air-truck is needed, as well as advancing air cargo preclearance. Air passengers have several important dynamics due to the rapid growth of traffic, and the large number of biometrics implementations.

[5] Rail is the second largest mode after trucking, moving some 15% of US-Canada trade. One of the major sources of demand for rail movements is shipments moved to rail cars from ports. At the same time, there is US and Canadian-origin traffic from North American-based factories, lumber yards, etc. The principle is the same: clear before departure and minimize the activity needed at the border itself. Remote screening and enroute clearance processes could significantly reduce the burden on rail lines at the border to de-stuff containers or rail cars for inspection. Similar to air and cruise ship processing, the model for preclearing passenger trains or clearing upon arrival would greatly benefit from the biometric model of processing.

[6] Key initiatives include: (a) Further integration of passenger vetting and biometrics to ensure that Canada and the United States are not at a competitive disadvantage versus Europe in attracting foreign tourists. (b) Early results demonstrate upwards of 50% throughput benefits compared with the current generation of automated passport control. A unified approach is needed in the preclearance environment. (c) Create a streamlined connections environment. Canada has made major improvements at airports in recent years. Biometrics may provide the ability to better manage connections at US facilities. Further co-operation can be advanced by leveraging excess capacity at new US preclearance sites for Canadian-bound traffic. Joint preclearance could be a stepping stone for full global preclearance starting with allied countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand and potentially be integrated with exit control facilities and systems.

[7] https://www.beyondpreclearance.org/the-white-paper Beyond Preclearance: The White Paper October 5, 2018 ibid.

[8] eTA – Canada: electronic Travel Authorization; ESTA – US: Electronic System for Travel Authorization, an automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the United States under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP). Consultation with Sam Samaddar, North American chairperson for Airports Council International (ACI), a large organization that represents the interests of many airports around the world. [According to ACI, the organization has more than 700 members and operates in 1,933 airports in 183 countries. https://www.beyondpreclearance.org/the-white-paper Beyond Preclearance: The White Paper October 5, 2018. Note the paper will be updated as of May 2022.