Crossing the line: What does the US Presidential election mean for our shared border?

Lisa Raitt: Thank you for tuning in to The Raitt Stuff. I’m your host Lisa Raitt and in this podcast I’m going to share insights on current hot topics in the areas of public policy, politics and business, with some guests along the way. Welcome back to The Raitt Stuff. We’re going to continue talking about the Canada-US relationship given that there’s going to be an election in the fall in the United States and perhaps an election in 2025 here in Canada federally. Today as a guest, I have somebody who has an incredible amount of experience in Canada-US relations, both in terms of working as well as in terms of personal preferences, I guess is what I’m going to say in that sense. I have with me today the incredible Dr. Laura Dawson, who is the Executive Director at the Future Borders Coalition, which is a bi-national organization dedicated to building a better Canada-U.S. border for travel and for trade. Now, I met Dr. Dawson when she was the director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. And in between that and being at the Future Borders Coalition, Dr. Dawson was the North American lead at the Amazon Web Services Institute. Prior to all of this, she was a senior economic advisor at the US Embassy in Canada, and as well, she has a PhD in political science from Carleton University. Thanks so much for joining us. I’m going to call you Laura, by the way. I’m not going to call you Dr. Dawson.

Laura Dawson: Oh, please do. It is delightful to be here. Thanks for the invitation, Lisa.

Lisa Raitt: It’s been too long, but I really enjoyed working with you when you were at the Canada Institute, and I’m delighted to see that you’re back pushing on Canada-U.S. relations. We need you here.

Laura Dawson: Thank you, thank you. It’s my thing. I tried to go to other places, you know, went to Amazon, but it’s like the Godfather. I try to get out and they pull me back in. It’s Canada, US that I do.

Lisa Raitt: I like it. Well, I’m not that way in politics, so I don’t completely understand what you’re talking about. Once you’re out, you’re out. But I do really appreciate you taking the time. And I have always been a fan of the Future Borders Coalition. I think you’ve done some really important work highlighting the importance of that trade route, of that personal boundary between our two countries, because a lot of times you have two families on either side. But I wanted to understand where the Future Borders Coalition is today and who makes it up.

Laura Dawson: Sure, well thanks for the question. The Future Borders Coalition is kind of unique. It focuses on two things, movement of people and supply chains commercial. And I really like this approach. In my previous work, we tried to do all the issues, Arctic and security and domestic issues. With this, we just look at those two channels of goods and people. We don’t limit ourselves necessarily to just the few minutes, hopefully, it takes you to cross a border, but we take sort of an end-to-end approach. So we also look at infrastructure and sustainability and accessibility and use of digital tools through the whole supply chain and through the whole movement of people. Originally, we were more focused on travel and we still have some really strong travel members, but as the movement of people issue becomes more challenging, we also find ourselves moving into migration and asylum seekers, et cetera. So our mandate is increasing and we’re struggling a bit to maintain that narrow focus, but our members are just terrific. They come from the full range of transportation, supply chains, airports, bridges, tunnels, shippers, et cetera. And what’s great is it’s Americans and it’s Canadians. And I think we have a lot of trust and a great relationship with the officials in both countries. So they will call us up and say, hey, we’ve got this thing at the border. Can we have a closed door meeting to discuss with the two countries together how we might solve this together? So that’s a really privileged position. And I feel very lucky to be in it.

Lisa Raitt: Well, I think we’re lucky to have you. You mentioned migration and you testified last year at the US Homeland Committee about immigration. Tell us a little bit about the messages you shared with the US lawmakers.

Laura Dawson: Yeah, I mean, there is no doubt that the United States has a crisis on its southern border. And it’s not just the US’s problem. The global migration issue is everybody’s challenge to help to manage, but it’s focused on that US southern border. And unfortunately, the opponents of Joe Biden are using any opportunity they can to discredit him and they’re using the Northern border as a weapon against Joe Biden. And so they’re taking statistics that indicate, yes, there are challenges with unlawful migration, there are challenges with drugs and illicit trade on the Northern border, but honestly, these are like one 100th of the magnitude on the US border, but they’re taking these and they’re exaggerating and they’re amplifying it. And the problem with that is it inspires fear among Americans about those criminals coming across from Canada. And it also inspires political opportunists to say, hey, let’s build a wall right across the Great Lakes. Let’s post the National Guard. Let’s slow down travel and trade with Canada because they’re growing fear that bad things come from open, well-managed borders.

Lisa Raitt: Is it fair to say that the parts of the country that are raising these questions about the northern border, are they states in play in the election?

Laura Dawson: Yes, states in play in the election and also a lot of states that are adjacent to the northern border. So for example, Elise Stefanik, her district is right on the border with Canada, it’s upstate New York, exactly the area where there’s a lot of trade and commerce, but also the area where there’s a lot of challenges and where we really do need to work together to manage illicit trade and movement of goods. So yes, she has a point. A lot of these folks have a point. But I think if we get in there and manage the messaging, we can strengthen the relationship and also deal with the concerns about the northern border.

Lisa Raitt: I was told last week that I’m going to say an official, an elected official in Maine once said famously, or maybe it’ll be famous now, that Canadians are all right, but they’re just annoying.

Laura Dawson: (laughs) Yes, yeah, yeah.

Lisa Raitt: So how do Americans think about Canada?

Laura Dawson: Yeah, I mean to the extent they think of us at all, they think of us well. I mean, I live, I’m a Canadian married to an American living in Atlanta, Georgia. My family’s still up in Canada, so I’m there a lot. But here in the United States, Canadians are under the radar. And a lot of that is intentional. A lot of businesses say, hey, I don’t want to be the tall poppy that gets its head knocked off. I’m just going to play along in stealth mode and have Americans assume that we are also an American company. For example, there are some banks who have Toronto or Montreal or Canada in their names and Americans know these brands very well but they don’t know that the T in TD stands for Toronto. Similarly, my husband, he likes to play spot the Canadian. And so we’ll go past a Circle K convenience store, which are here all the time. And my husband will say, hey, that’s a Canadian company. And most Americans don’t know, as you just said, it’s Couche-Tard from Laval that owns all of these great American gas station stores. So Canada has benefited, Canadian businesses have benefited from kind of passing as local. But then when the government needs to, and with Canadians, need to reach across the border and say, hey, this relationship is important, don’t start taking apart our trade agreements or militarizing our borders, Americans don’t have a sense that that is important to their interests.

Lisa Raitt: Right, so I’m going to drill down on that on trade because I don’t think a lot of folks remember necessarily that in the Canada, US, Mexico free trade agreement or the US, Canada, Mexico, CUSMA or USMCA, whichever side of the border you’re on, NAFTA too, for lack of a better way of saying it, there is a process that starts in the fall with respect to affirming whether or not the parties are going to remain parties or if it needs to be renegotiated. Can you give us a little bit of an insight into what impact that could have in terms of Canada-U .S. relations?

Laura Dawson: Sure. I mean first this could not come at a worse time. We know that doing any presidential election, trade will always get kicked in the shins because it’s a quick political sound bite, bringing jobs back to America, et cetera, et cetera. So Canada’s already going to be struggling through that over the next several months until we get to the November elections and having to defend the importance of the relationship. And then we slide right into this CUSMA -NAFTA 2 review. And so what has to happen in 2026 is all three parties have to agree to renew the agreement over a long term. And it’s going to get politicized. It’s going to have all sorts of interest groups and politicians getting in there and saying, hey, wait a minute, we’ve got some access to grind with this agreement. And so if they can’t renew it in 2026, it goes into this purgatory stage where every year thereafter, the parties go back and say, well, are we good for another year? Are we good for another year? The problem with that, as you know, is this is horrible for business and investment planning. So if you’re a foreign investor or if you’re a multinational manufacturing in Canada, are you going to want to stay in a country where the roots of the agreement could be pulled up within a year? Are you going to want to invest in that? That’s pretty uncertain. If you’re a company that is manufacturing in Ontario and upstate New York, you’re going to say, this is too risky. I’m going to pull my investment back from Ontario and put it in upstate New York. So that’s what this uncertainty of the USMCA review is going to do. And I’m very concerned that there isn’t a clear way through how to manage this renewal that’s going to be good for Canada.

Lisa Raitt: And we should remind listeners that Democrat or Republican, there’s no real difference when it comes to protectionism.

Laura Dawson: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly it. Historically, Canadians have done better on trade under a Republican government, but Canadians tend to love Democrats, because they’re nice and they repeat kind of the same values that a lot of Canadians have. But on trade, they’re not, historically have not been great. And if you look at the Biden trade record, it’s kept a lot of the things that were punitive towards Canada that were instituted under the Trump government and just sort of grandfathered into the new regime. So that’s problematic. Similarly, I’m very concerned when Canadian politicians talk about MAGA and Trump and Republicans in very disparaging terms because that’s hurting our economic relationship. There are American business people who are Republican and Trump supporters and who also do business with Canada and are happy to do that. But when they see their political values getting attacked in Canada, they’re going to think twice about why am I continuing to do business with Canada when clearly they are so invested in the other side.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah, fair point. I read this week that the United States is moving to having it mandatory that if you’re traveling domestically, that you have to have something called REAL ID and not necessarily rely upon driver’s license or state issued kind of identification. Is that going to have an impact on the border?

Laura Dawson: It’s not going to have a direct impact on the border, but it shows the trajectory of where the US is going in managing ID and providing identification to Americans that is recognizable in a broad number of fronts. I mean, it’s a hassle when you can use a driver’s license here, but you can’t use it there, or when you move states. But what they’re doing sort of under the hood with REAL ID is ensuring that that’s something that can be verified by a broad number of organizations that the person attached to that card is really who they say they are, that they don’t have security or even health issues. And so as we see this more universality and consistency of ID in the United States, we’re missing the boat in Canada by not having similar or aligned procedures so that we can be using them for our travel our cross-border movement. And so that there’s, everybody hates being held up at the border, right? And proving who you are, proving who is in your car is one of the biggest hassles that we have, even with passports, because sometimes the person in the picture doesn’t look like the person who’s sitting in front of you. And having this sort of REAL ID and digitally assisted decision support is where we’re all going and it frustrates me that Canada is really quite offside with the United States. Not that it’s going a different direction, just that it’s spinning the wheels and not really going anywhere that is problematic.

Lisa Raitt: Yeah, well, we’ve hit our time and we could go on talking and talking and talking about the border. It’s one of those things that it’s a great thing when you don’t notice the border because only problems come when there’s a problem at the border, as we all know. But I appreciate the work you’re doing on it. It is an absolute necessity that we keep our borders as open as possible between us and the United States. And I’m looking forward to hopefully having it back on so we can talk about what’s happening in the trade negotiations going forward because you mentioned it, but Mexico’s a party to this as well. And they may have bigger issues with the United States than Canada does. And we’re all part of the same party.

Laura Dawson: Absolutely. Well, thank you, Lisa. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Lisa Raitt: Always. Thanks a lot, Laura. Thanks so much for tuning in. Now, if you have any questions or comments or even requests on topics to discuss, drop me a line at [email protected]. Your interactions actually will make this better. I’m your host, Lisa Raitt, and this has been The Raitt Stuff.

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