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Wednesday November 25, 2009

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Past Event

A Metropolitan Policy Program Event

Toward a Better Border: The United States and Canada

Canada, Trade, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security


Event Summary

Canada and the United States are each other’s largest trading partner, and approximately 400,000 businesspeople, tourists, truckers and regular commuters cross the border daily.

On March 25, the Metropolitan Policy Program hosted a discussion to help shed light on the evolving security and economic challenges associated with the U.S.-Canada border and to examine recommendations for improving border policy. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano delivered the keynote address.

Event Information

When

Wednesday, March 25, 2009
8:30 AM to 3:30:00 PM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map

Event Materials

Contact: Lael Harris

E-mail: lharris@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.3514

The event was hosted by the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and the Canadian International Council, in cooperation with: the Great Lakes Metropolitan Chambers of Commerce; the Council of Great Lakes Industries; and the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University.

View conference agenda » (PDF)

Conference paper draft : "Toward a New Frontier: Improving the U.S.-Canadian Border," by Christopher Sands » (PDF)  

Transcript

SECRETARY NAPOLITANO:  You know, President Obama when he visited Ottawa earlier this year said that the United States and Canada are so closely linked that sometimes we may have a tendency to take our relationship for granted. And I think what he meant by that is that that is something we need to guard against. So that is a friendship and a closeness that continually needs to be reinvigorated and reenergized.

The challenge for us, now, is that it needs to be continually reinvigorated and reenergized in the midst of this culture change where there really does need to be a border and there really do need to be protections back and forth and we really do need to think about how that’s going to work so that it does not unduly impact all of the trade that must be able to flow back and forth; so important to Canada, so important to the United States. That is a big challenge.

And we start there by saying all right, well what do we need to have at the border. Well we need first to have the infrastructure necessary to support increased trade and the infrastructure necessary to make sure that goods and people coming through that border are the goods and people that should be coming through that border. That it is not drug smuggling, it’s not others attempting to do harm, it is not, god forbid, a terrorist or someone of that ilk seeking to use that border as a mechanism to cross.


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