Give U.S. no reason to close border, Canada warned

By: Robert Sibley

The continued flow of goods between Canada and the United States — and thus convincing Washington that Canada isn’t providing easy access to terrorists targeting the U.S. — is this nation’s biggest security challenge, bigger than the boost to defence spending or the preparations to join the U.S. in a war on Iraq, one of this country’s pre-eminent political scientists.

“The primary security threat to Canada is economic, and it comes from the United States,” Denis Stairs of Dalhousie University, one of the most respected academics in Canadian political science, told delegates at a one-day conference on future of relations between Canada and the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “It is a function of our economic dependence on the American market and on American capital.

And because of this economic dependence, the “central security challenge for Canada — the security challenge that goes to the core of our national prosperity — is the preservation of the confidence of our American neighbours that we are taking every reasonable step to ensure that they are not physically targeted by terrorists operating from Canadian soil.”
Mr. Stairs was speaking at the Borderlines conference on “Canada in North America.”
The Canadian government can promote multilateralism and human security agenda all it wants in the hope that this will lead to a more peaceful world someday, he said. But in the world of realpolitik, “what is essential is reassuring Americans about their security. We do this or else.”

“If we fail at the operational level (to prevent a cross-border terrorist strike), even through no fault of our own, if we fail even once so that American lives are lost at the hands of agents who launched their assault from Canadian soil, the campaign to reassure them (that the border should stay open) will be immediately and entirely lost.

“The Americans will conclude for good that their northern buffer is not a buffer at all, but a safe haven for their adversaries.”

Mr. Stairs said that in the aftermath of last year’s terrorist attacks, the overriding imperative for the Canadian government was to prevent the United States from shutting down the U.S.-Canada border. The Liberals, he said, were confronted with one core policy question: What must they do “to satisfy the Americans that the border can be left open safely; that is, without exposing American citizens to increased security risk.”
Nothing in the last year has changed this policy concern, Mr. Stairs said. Canadians may not like it any more than they like being so dependent on the U.S. economy, but that’s the way it is. “Our fundamental interest is inescapable and very clear. Given these interests, we have to convince the Americans that we are not part of their security problem.”

This task has as much to do with perception as it has to do with realities. The federal government has probably done reasonably well in the last year in trying to improve anti-terrorism security, particularly when it comes to the U.S. border. The problem, however, is convincing the Americans of this. “If they think we are doing OK, then in a sense we are doing OK.”

This matter of perception is especially crucial because ultimately there is no sure-fire defence against terrorist attacks, he said. Certainly, Canada can lower the odds of a successful terrorist operation from this country across the U.S. border, but there are no guarantees.

And if at some future date terrorists are able to strike across the border from this country, and the Americans believe Canada had not done its best beforehand to prevent that strike, the damage to U.S.-Canada relations would be “incalculable,” said Mr. Stairs.
“If we fail at the operational level (to prevent a cross-border terrorist strike), even through no fault of our own, if we fail even once so that American lives are lost at the hands of agents who launched their assault from Canadian soil, the campaign to reassure them (that the border should stay open) will be immediately and entirely lost.

“The Americans will conclude for good that their northern buffer is not a buffer at all, but a safe haven for their adversaries.”