What Was The Point of Passports Again?

The Winnipeg Free Press posted a story today about a Winnipeg' couple’s experience crossing into the US for a weekend trip of golfing and shopping. Unfortunately 54 year old Donald Miller’s name and birthdate was shared by someone who, when entered into the US CBP system, came back as “armed and dangerous”.

CBP officers surrounded the car and drew weapons on the couple, instructing them to get out of the car where they were handcuffed and brought into separate interrogation rooms where Mr. Miller was subjected to what the news story describes as an “embarrassingly intimate search”. He was not told why he was being detained although he asked, and had a gun pointed at him during the search and during an interrogation. Finally he was freed and was told it was mistaken identity.

I’m in agreement with Donald in that there was nothing wrong with how the CBP officers reacted. Just like I would expect for our Canadian guards, if the information given suggests someone in front of them could be armed and dangerous, they need to protect themselves and ensure any threat is vetted and identified.

But wasn’t the WHTI supposed to deal with this? Canadians are now crossing with either a government issued passport or enhanced identification card. Canada has spent millions implementing these programs to ensure our citizens meet the requirements of the US border.

Even more disturbing is the system CBP officers use is an FBI operated database. From the news story:

The National Crime Information Center is a computerized database operated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The database contains information on criminal records, fugitives, missing persons and wanted persons. As well, stolen licence plates are on file, as well as stolen boats and guns.

The information comes from several areas including the FBI, federal, state, local and foreign criminal justice agencies.

The database is open only to federal, state, local law enforcement agencies and other related justice agencies.

So you run a name through an FBI operated database, a name pops up saying armed and dangerous, but…what…the FBI database has no picture of the suspect, no description, nothing that can be cross referenced against the passport photo or *gasp* even just LOOKING at the guy in the car? Instead, a name and birthday match are all that’s required to yank a guy from his car and put him through the ringer while they determine if he’s *the* guy.

Maybe before Canada sunk so much money into getting our people ready for the WHTI standards we should have issued demands on the Americans to get their information systems in order as well.

And I totally echo Don’s comment about nobody offering any apology, regardless of the officers just doing their job.

"Thing is, the Americans don't know how to say 'I'm sorry for the inconvenience.'"

Visa: You Can’t Get Into Canada Without It (for Mexico and Czech Republic Citizens Anyway)

I’ve had a few days to digest what’s gone on between Canada, Mexico, and the Czech Republic. For those that are out of the loop, here’s the backstory:

Since 2007 Canada has received more than 12,000 Czech and Mexican refugee claimants came to Canada with most of them being illegitimate. For each claimant, it costs around $29,000 because while the paperwork is being done they are cared for and put up somewhere in Canada. That’s almost $350 million dollars that Canadian taxpayers have put forward to care for people escaping other countries, and remember a high percentage are illegitimate.

The reason Czech and Mexico are singled out is because they’re the two countries who have the largest number of refugee claimants coming to Canada. Obviously the cost as well as security issues need to be addressed, and that’s what the Canadian government tried to do this week.

On Monday it was announced that all travellers from Mexico or the Czech Republic need to get a visa to travel to Canada. In one of the biggest WTF decisions I’ve ever seen, the new rules went into effect yesterday (Tuesday). That’s right: announce new visa requirements on Monday, put them into effect the next day…although, bless their hearts, the government did allow a 48 hour grace period.

Of course Mexico and the Czechs aren’t too happy about this. Mexico’s government hasn’t seemed to be too vocal (probably too busy with other stuff like drug cartels and US/Mexico border relations) although their citizens are definitely pissed off. The Czech Republic took a more dramatic stance, petitioning to the EU and making a huge drama-queenish type of display.

Canadians are also upset as well. One story suggested that Mexican tourist dollars bring in $235 million into Canada’s economy every year, and many businesses rely in part on Mexican tourists. Notice I’m not mentioning the Czech’s. In every story I read, I didn’t see one mention or suggestion of how Czech visitors en-masee provide value to Canada’s industries other than keeping our immigration department fully staffed.

So what are some next steps or possible solutions to this first-draft attempt of saving taxpayer dollars and securing our border?

Extend The Grace Period
Even the Americans gave us months of notice that we’d need passports to cross over by land. For Canada to make this announcement on a Monday and have it go into effect the next day, even with a 48 grace period, is unacceptable. We have a good relationship with Mexico and there’s no reason to punish the majority of travellers from there because of a comparatively small group that costs us big money at home.

And don’t forget that Canadian industries that rely on tourism dollars got no advance notice either. So not only are people in Mexico scrambling to get travel visas for upcoming trips, businesses expecting those travellers now need to brace for the hit to their expected income.

The Canadian government needs to extend this timeframe. Do the right thing and give these people at lest 4 – 6 months notice.

Mexico and Czech Republic Could Just Pay Up
Here’s another idea: since its people from other countries trying to leave and seek asylum, how about if we charge those countries for each asylum seeker? Kinda like a cost share: legit travellers can still come in visa free, and for those that feel that their government isn’t doing enough to protect them from imminent harm or persecution, maybe *THEY* can foot the bill while we determine qualification for refugee status.

Of course, that adds a whole level of cost collection, but it puts onus on where the problem is originating from. Canada isn’t looking for refugees, but we believe in helping those that truly need help. If Mexico and the Czech Republic could pony up some cash so we can help THEIR citizens who are trying to escape, that would be appreciated.

Canada’s Immigration System Needs Fixing?
I pose this as a question because I don’t really know if it does or not. You could say that its a bloated bureaucracy that is more of a cost suck than anything, but you could argue that about any arm of government. The important thing is that the people working in our immigration system have access to information, tools, and resources to ensure they can expedite the approval process for anyone seeking entry to Canada through immigration, whether refugee or otherwise. If we’re going to be seeing huge savings by reducing dollars spent towards Mexican and Czech refugees and eliminating that extra burden of paperwork and support, then we should see increased performance in other areas.

It’ll be interesting to see what plays out over the next few weeks.

BF

Related articles and sources:

TheStar.com – Visa Restrictions Spark Backlash

TheStar.com – Families Fume as Vacation Plans Wrecked

Globe and Mail – Visa Decision Leaves Tourists In A Panic

CBC – Toronto Tourism Braces for Mexican Visa Impact

Happy Ending for Ava, Backlash from “Our Friends”

My last post talked about the heartbreaking story of Ava Stinson, a baby born 14 weeks premature. Because there was no room at any of Ontario’s prenatal care centers, she was flown to Buffalo, NY, for treatment. Her parents weren’t allowed accross the border to see her because they didn’t have passports. Well great news: CBP has given them permission to cross the border and be with their daughter! Kudos to the authorities for doing the right thing in this situation.

So let’s switch gears to the many articles, commentaries, and blog posts by American authors that have tapped this story as proof that socialized medicine is a failure.

Consider this article by Jim Hoft (check out this re-posting also, as the comments are much more colourful). He talks about the number of cases where Canadians went to the US for similar premature birth needs, and how countries with socialized medicine have wonky infant mortality rates because of whether a premature child is included in the stats or not. Two things really made me laugh in his piece though.

In fact, there were at least 40 mothers or their babies who were airlifted from British Columbia to the United States in 2007 because Canadian hospitals didn’t have room for the preemies in their neonatal units.

So first Jim, some lessons on Canada. Canada’s population is approximately 33.2 million. British Columbia makes up 4.4 million of that. If *only* 40 mothers or babies had to be sent to the US for treatment, that’s pretty damn good. Also, realize that in many cases US cities are closer than the next major Canadian city (keep reading, there’s a map to help illustrate this when it comes up again). Sorry Jim, but throwing small numbers to try and prove your point just doesn’t work.

On to the other part of his article:

As we've seen with these socialized systems, some people will inevitably be denied the care they need to survive. No doubt, with Obamacare Americans will be forced to accept an inferior product with fewer choices.

Wow…”some people will inevitably be denied the care they need to survive.” Are we talking about Canada here, or the millions without adequate health care coverage that live in the USA currently? And accepting inferior care with fewer choices…maybe I’m wrong, but don’t HMO’s tell you which hospitals you can/can’t go to?

Jim isn’t the only one though. Over at Carol’s Closet, Carol was commenting from south Florida on the whole episode. She initially posted this entry, followed by this one. Let’s see what she had to say…

The country who’s health care is soooo much better than ours.

There wasn’t a single available neo-natal bed in the entire province so little Ava was transported to Buffalo, NY. Lets here it for National Health Care aka rationed health care.

First off, I don’t know who keeps telling American’s that our health care is better than the care the receive. I have no doubt that the doctors and hospital staff in the US are of a high calibre, and I don’t necessarily think that our health care system is *better* than in the US. But what our system does provide is health care for everyone. That’s the key difference: we see health care as something every citizen should have access to, a basic right of residing in this country.

Carol tries to jab our system…but I don’t think she gets it. Yes its an issue that there wasn’t a hospital bed available in Ontario. But with *our* system, the authorities were able to consider an out of system, potentially more expensive option in the US for this baby’s care. Our system took care of her, regardless of the fact that it had to happen outside our borders.

Carol references an article by Ed Morissey who asks similar types of questions.

But why wasn’t there a NICU bed for the child in the entire nation of Canada?  The government of Canada won’t pay for more.  They don’t exist to expand supply to meet demand; their single-payer system exists to ration care as a cost-saving mechanism.

Again, a geography lesson is required here. I highly doubt that there wasn’t a bed available anywhere in Canada. What I do suspect is that it made more sense to send the baby to Buffalo as the next closest hospital. Consider this map:

The “A” is Hamilton, and the red line shows where Buffalo is…a very short distance. We know that there isn’t a bed available in Ontario, so the three red circles represent the next closest Canadian cities. Now, what makes more sense for the health and well being of the child? The closer hospital does! 

In closing, my goal of this post isn’t to try and convince anyone about Canada’s health care system being better than the US model. Our system is not perfect, and for all the good of our system we also have some bad. No, my goal here is education. There are so many misconceptions about our health care system and how it operates, and from comments on the referenced blog posts it seems political ideology trumps common sense.

Also, check out my post on Clarifying Public Healthcare for some stats and info Canada’s health care system.

It’s Time to End the “Friends” Rhetoric

I’m sick of hearing North American politicians use the term “friends” when talking about each other’s country. Friends don’t treat each other the way Canadians have been treated by the US in recent months, specifically around the increased border security and related policies that have cost Canadians and Canada dollars, time, and hassle. And yet Canada and its provinces have responded to these new requirements, issuing driver licenses and other government issue ID that are “enhanced” to meet the NHSI standards. We have done our part and shown that we are willing to play by the rules of our “friend” to the south.

And yet, the US government is so rigid, so monolithic, and so black-and-white that they cannot see past their own policies when common sense and basic humanity should prevail.

I read with outrage the story of Ava Stinson. Ava was born on Thursday, 14 weeks premature. There were no available beds available in any of Ontario’s neonatal intensive-care centres, so she was sent from Hamilton ON to Buffalo NY and a facility there.

In Buffalo Ava lies in her bed alone, fighting for her life. She’s too young to understand the idea of mother or father, but we can all understand the agony parents in this situation would feel and the longing and need to be by their child’s side. But they aren’t. Natalie and Richard, Ava’s parents, didn’t go to Buffalo. Why?

Because they don’t have passports.

Yes, our “American friends” couldn’t understand the special circumstances surrounding this situation…couldn’t take the time to validate Ava’s parents in other ways with other pieces of identification. They weren’t going for a vacation, or working, or possibly something illegal…they just wanted to be by their incredibly sick child.

For shame on the Department of Homeland Security! For shame on those from the CBP who could have tried to make an exception to the passport rules and didn’t!

This is not the action of a friend.  

Clarifying Public Healthcare

Earlier this month Rhonda Hackett wrote a great commentary piece in the Denver Post entitled “Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths”.

Rhonda is a Canadian who has been living in the US for the last 17 years, and wrote the column based on discussions she frequently has with Americans and Canadians alike on whether one system is better than the other. I’m not going to re-hash what she’s written, but I do want to point out a few key items:

- Taxes in Canada are only slightly higher than in the US.

- 31% of every dollar spent on health care in the US goes to non-medical costs (paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc.). Provincial single-pay systems in Canada operate with a 1% overhead.

- 10% of Canada’s GDP is spent on 100% of its population.
17% of USA’s GDP is spent on 85% of its population (and that’s not considering the millions with inadequate coverage). So in Canada everyone gets care and we still spend less overall than America which spends more but doesn’t cover everyone.

As a Canadian who’s lived within this system his whole life, I am in no means saying our system is perfect. But the idea that socialized medicine somehow delivers less quality and is always more expensive is incorrect.

How Can We Identify Threats If We Can’t Identify Our Citizens?

Sylvie Menard spent a fantastic vacation in Mexico, and was passing through customs in her home city of Montreal. Unfortunately for Sylvie, her name and birth date matched someone who was wanted by police.

Now, we live in a time of information…where authorities have access, for better or for worse, to more information on us than we may be aware. Or maybe we only think they do? Sylvie’s experience suggests that the amount of information available to authorities at the border is slim, or even scarier that its more a lack of common sense and experience.

After being subjected to initial and secondary screening she was handcuffed, read her rights, and brought to a cell. While the police were called to come and verify her identity, a female border officer asked her to disrobe so she could verify whether a pink tattoo was present on her butt…a physical trait mentioned in the wanted woman’s description. There was no tattoo of course and the officer returned again to further investigate to ensure it hadn’t been surgically removed.

So let me get this straight: our border officers jumped to the conclusion that this woman *must* be the one that is wanted because her name and birthdate matched, and then went all CSI to look at whether this tattoo was present. Interesting. What I would have expected instead is for them to find a physical description (which they eventually did) or a picture and compare that to her. Also, Sylvie was carrying her passport, driver’s license, and health card; she had identification that they could have looked up and verified before performing any sort of physical inspection.

I’m not even going to comment on the idiot police officer’s recommendation to just “change her name” to avoid this in the future. How about this: how about our law enforcement agencies get their acts together and implement information systems that allow them to determine a person’s identity quickly and efficiently? How about we have trained staff that can grasp common sense  solutions instead of defaulting to outrageous extremes?

When false matches occur authorities do have to investigate them. But this isn’t professional police investigation; this is weekend security guard at the local mall antics that have no place at a Canadian port of entry.

Canada Drawing Their Own Line on American Protectionism

This morning in Whistler the Federation of Canadian Municipalities passed a resolution that it will only support municipalities that adopt policies stating they will only buy from companies that reside in countries without trade restrictions against goods from Canada.

This story begins in Halton Hills, a community of 58,000 people. Hayward Gordon Ltd., a pipefitting company, moved its operation to Halton Hills a few years back. It recently lost a pipe-fitting contract in Ontario to a Salt Lake City firm. The mayor of Halton Hills learned around that time that, because of the “Buy American” policies in place, Hayward Gordon couldn’t bid on projects in Salt Lake City.

So while US companies are still free to come take work away from Canadian firms IN Canada, we’re not able to have our companies try to source business south of the border. As the mayor put it in a Toronto Sun story:

I am not against free trade, but it has to be fair trade.

Halton Hills fought back in their own way: they passed a resolution that the municipality would only deal with companies whose country of origin allowed Canadian companies opportunities to bid on work as well. It was this act that started a movement, with other Ontario municipalities passing similar resolutions and ultimately to the resolution voted in this morning at the FoCM summit.

But what about NAFTA? Isn’t there already a free trade agreement in place that should be taking care of all this stuff? Unfortunately, as an article from Investors.com points out, NAFTA is too high level:

…much of the money allocated to infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges and the like is being spent at the city and state level where Nafta rules do not override "buy American" provisions or sentiment.

The Washington Post cites examples such as the town of Peru, Ind., which told a Canadian supplier it was rejecting sewage pumps that were made near Toronto. John Hayward, president of Hayward Gordon, the Canadian pump-maker, says many U.S. towns have told him they can no longer buy his products because of stimulus provisions.

Work done on a construction project at Camp Pendleton was literally pulled out of the ground when someone noticed Canadian pipe fittings had been used. The fittings were made by a Toronto-based company that had been doing business in the U.S. for 60 years. The company had supplied plastic pipe to be used in a new health care facility at the Marine Base north of San Diego.

The Canadian government isn’t sitting on its hands during all of this. Stephen Harper is entering discussions with the US to try and get Canada excluded from the “Buy American” provisions, although that will only go so far as there’s nothing that can be done to the protectionist sentiment in America. Still, the resolution passed by the municipalities also includes a 120 day waiting period to see how the US responds before putting it in action.

Some have suggested that this sort of tactic isn’t necessary and will backfire; that we should let the elected leaders sort this out and “convince our customers to remember who their real friends are”. As I’ve stated before, “friends” don’t treat each other this way. This is business, and in business relationships both sides need to be satisfied with the agreement.

We want to do business in the US, and we want US companies to do business in Canada; but the rules of opportunity need to be the same on both sides.

Canada needs to start standing up for itself and not playing the nice guy with friends that seem more like opportunistic bullies.