Was it only a coincidence that inside days of Canada’s Liberal authorities saying Bill C-2, the Strong Borders Act, Donald Trump’s administration in the USA launched its long anticipated travel ban?
Maybe. However the timing additionally highlights the longtime shared border saga between Canada and the U.S. — and may compel Canada to carve its personal path.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Like Trump’s 2017 travel ban, his 2025 directives considerably forestall or restrict entry to the U.S. for residents from 12 principally African and Center Japanese international locations, with more possibly on the horizon. It’s prone to face judicial challenges and will not survive for lengthy.
In distinction, Invoice C-2 might result in a number of important and broad statutory adjustments that Canadians will deal with for years to return.
Knowledge privateness considerations
Days earlier than Trump’s announcement, the Canadian authorities superior the controversial Robust Borders Act overlaying a large swath of proposed legislative adjustments, from intensified border safety measures to extra restrictive immigration and asylum insurance policies.
Embedded inside the proposed laws, as Canadian legislation professor Michael Geist and others have identified, are significant risks to digital privacy, together with elevated govt authority — also called “warrantless” powers — without judicial or civilian oversight.
In these respects, the proposed Canadian laws might be thought of extra worrisome than Trump’s journey bans.
Within the fog of the continuing commerce conflict between the U.S. and Canada, the main target is on American tariffs and their financial influence. However little consideration is being paid to Canada’s longstanding co-ordination and co-operation with the U.S. by way of border administration.
Sadly, Canada has a historical past of appeasing the U.S. on the border. The interval following 9/11 is value noting.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi
Elevated co-ordination submit 9/11
Successive Canada-U.S border agreements have caused important institutional change and reform. These embrace the Smart Border Declaration — signed shortly after 9/11 — and Beyond the Border, inked a decade later between the Barack Obama and Stephen Harper governments.
These agreements included larger reliance on biometric and surveillance know-how, binational information-sharing and accelerated, sturdy co-ordinated and co-operative border enforcement (particularly the Shiprider program and the Built-in Border Enforcement Workforce or IBET).
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
The early 2000s noticed the rise of latest establishments such because the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), together with important coverage adjustments that included prolific and extra sturdy American pre-clearance of individuals and items, and authorizing CBSA brokers to hold firearms (which was once controversial).
Continuously, these reforms had been in response to American stress or reactionary U.S. insurance policies. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), for instance, is an American coverage that has compelled travellers to provide passports when crossing the U.S. border for nearly 20 years.
In distinction to the “elbows up” rhetoric of the final a number of months, Canada hastily made changes to its border policies.
The narrative of co-operative and collaborative Canada-U.S. border administration, nevertheless, has not all the time been because it appeared. Continuously, negotiations and co-operation were difficult, and never with out price to some autonomy in Canada’s border administration.
Asylum seekers
Up to now yr, there have been growing considerations in regards to the influence of potential will increase in asylum claims in Canada due to American insurance policies. These elevating considerations usually make reference to Roxham Road, the unofficial border crossing that thrived over the past Trump administration on account of a loophole in the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA).
Learn extra:
Roxham Road: Asylum seekers won’t just get turned back, they’ll get forced underground — Podcast
Such gaps in laws had been modestly addressed, together with within the proposed Invoice C-2, which would require arriving migrants to assert asylum inside 14 days of arrival. After that point, claimants won’t obtain a listening to and be topic to deportation.
It’s troubling to ponder deporting asylum seekers amid the ongoing deportation spectacle in the U.S. being carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Amid renewed American pressures underneath Trump and a history of border co-operation, it’s not shocking Prime Minister Mark Carney is following his predecessor in making an attempt to appease the U.S. president via Canadian border policy. And since asylum claimants usually languish for as much as two years in Canada’s immigration and asylum system, it’s clear there are issues.
However that doesn’t preclude the necessity to suppose critically in regards to the sweeping powers proposed in Invoice C-2.
Specifically, enhanced govt powers — in lots of circumstances by establishments that haven’t any civilian oversight — should be scrutinized.
Many of those adjustments are paying homage to the type of co-operative — and typically coercive — border insurance policies that emerged within the post-9/11 years. It might be argued that Canadians ought to have expressed “elbows up” responses to American pressures to reimagine our border nearly 25 years in the past.
Moreover, these adjustments function reminder that co-operative and co-ordinated administration of our border is more and more “baked in,” and regardless of tariff rhetoric, that’s unlikely to alter dramatically with out important pushback from Canadians.
Revisionist historical past
It’s value reflecting on the nostalgic and revisionist accounts of the coercive — not actually co-operative and collaborative — post-9/11 period of border safety administration, particularly within the warmth of the continuing Canada-U.S. commerce conflict.
Canadians ought to keep in mind they stay throughout a time of deep integration in border administration — however Canada can all the time assert its personal pursuits and marshal its personal sources to handle borders and those that cross it.
Within the lengthy Canada-U.S. relationship, coercion has usually masqueraded as co-operation. There are far fewer coincidences in border coverage than we’d suppose, probably together with the timing of the Robust Border Act. However Canada should all the time consider its insurance policies by way of whether or not they serve Canadian, not American, pursuits.
In contrast to the Trump administration’s journey bans and deportations, Invoice C-2 introduces a large swath of adjustments Canadians might grapple with for many years.
