A Border in Sharper Focus

In the Civil War, Confederate troops launched guerrilla raids into New England from Canada. When the official heat got too great for the 19th century Canadian regional revolutionary Louis Riel, he ducked into Montana for a few years. In the mid-1800s slaves fled on the Underground Railway, finding safety the moment they reached Canada. The Canadian border was where Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief, headed after causing Custer’s last stand. And much later, those avoiding the Vietnam-era draft traveled northward.

The 5,524.5-mile border between Canada and the United States was noted again this week during President Bush’s meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. The border is unusual--unusually undefended, unusually open, unusually busy and now under unusual scrutiny.

Like skyscraper security, the porous political line was long taken for granted by tourists, businesses, even youth sports teams on both sides. The openness has helped the flow of goods, services and culture--well over $1 billion and 545,000 people per day --in the world’s largest bilateral economic relationship. It may have also let terrorists slip in.

The new examination’s immediate focus is security; no democracy benefits from a neighbor’s instability. Canadians and Americans jointly man North American air defense. Thousands of U.S. air travelers diverted Sept. 11 spent days in Canada, many in private homes. Canadian fighters patrolled after the attacks.

The stakes are enormous for economic integration. Parts for “U.S.” cars, for example, are made and assembled on both sides of the border. With the reigning “just in time” inventory philosophy, any continuation of 18-hour customs waits creates factory havoc on both sides.

Bush said the U.S. won’t insist that Canada toughen its liberal immigration and refugee policies to match the U.S. But, wisely, neither leader precluded Canada’s moving that way on its own, a realistic recognition of common interests, including the fact that 75% of Canada’s manufacturing output goes to the United States, 70% by land crossings.

Chretien vowed to stand by President Bush “every step of the way.” Chretien also vowed at home not to change Canada’s character. Those goals aren’t mutually exclusive. Even absent official proclamations, the harsher new realities of terror in North America (Canada had its own brush with terrorism some 30 years ago, Quebec separatist bombings, kidnappings and a murder) is likely to drive these two countries even closer together than anyone envisioned on Sept. 10.