Joseph Butson

For the past four years, I have driven across the Peace Bridge to request a Visa to work in the United States. On each trip, within 20 minutes or so [one time my Mother came along to see what happens!] I was given my TN visa, good for one year, and resumed my day.

This makes me a legal alien, documented to work in the US. I’ve never taken this for granted at all. In fact, growing up so close to this borderpoint, I’ve crossed it hundreds, perhaps close to a thousand, to visit, go to a sports event or catch a flight. The drill is so routine to me that, even the “visa” visit, it strikes me as somewhat strange that a Canadian or American citizen ought not need to get this approval anymore.

Obviously, the attacks on the USA on September 11, 2001, changed this perspective more than a little bit. But it isn’t like there are hostilities between Canada and the USA arising from those events or any that follow. In fact, much has been made about the security cooperation between the two countries since then. Uniform approaches to refugee applications, shared intelligence and knowledge has integrated the two countries from the perspective of mutual security and protection.

Their are vocal minorities in both Canada and the USA that see a problem with a more free flow of goods and labor across the border. Though termed nativists they more likely resemble protectionists or isolationists. They favor actual walls and/or tariff wall to control and protect their native economies and to secure themselves.

However, the majority favors ready access to friends, relatives, customers and experiences different from their native environment. The vast majority are law abiding, certainly productive and free people able to pursue their lives absent unnatural barriers to their enjoyment.

The Canadian and American governments have much to gain from a common market environment. These governments long ago recognized and adapted their differences to meet the repective needs of industry, culture and security.

Both metric and US forms of measurement have been considered in all things affected by them. Pounds are converted to kilos; centimetres to inches; celcius to farenheit and so on. Manufacturing networks of transnational companies have adapted and harmonized supply, distribution and service to effect an effective grid of just in time deliver of raw materials and finished goods throughout the nations respective transportation networks.

Many marvel at the European Union’s common market, common currency and the ease of which many nationalities have subsumed differences to achieve a market less fettered than in the past. But that effort to create a United States of Europe required a new constitution and unified governance approach failed to be approved, rightly so, by the sovereign states comprising Europe. That the push to unify Europe failed surprises no one, however, it sets up their next stage of development of a governance “combination.”
The “US of E” model is based on the “CAN-AM” relationship, a powerful trading block and cultural dynamo that threatens Europe through global growth and influence. The sovereign countries of NAFTA needed not to combine their governance but simply to begin their union of customs and trade. Yet the style of the EU Union with labor mobility, will clear up the current bottleneck of trade at the border points.
I can just hear the LOL across the pond! But the North American culture, high and low, envelops the West and East. The trading model, too, is far more integrated and growth oriented than the mix of near state run economies of Europe.