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Michael Wilson, Canada's Ambassador to the United States, is visiting the Pacific Northwest this week. In Oregon he'll meet with a roundtable of people to talk about green energy and then sit down with Governor Kulongoski to continue that conversation and discuss general trade issues, the 2010 Olympics and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiatve (better known as: you need a passport to get into Canada as of June 1). Before any of those meetings he'll visit Think Out Loud.
It isn't a big secret that I am Canadian. I guess my "ehs" give it away. As a Canuck, I am regularly humored by the questions Americans have about the Great White North. For example: "Who are the Barenaked Ladies?" "Why are so many Canadians funny?" or "Is lacrosse really the national sport?" Those, together with queries about our loonies and twoonies take up much of my time.
Questions for Michael Wilson will undoubtedly be more serious. Wilson is probably best known north of the border for his time as Minister of Finance under Brian Mulroney's government in the 1980s. At that time he reformed the tax structure, introducing a national Goods and Services tax, and helped to negotiate the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and, subsequently, NAFTA. He returned to private industry for many years before being nominated as Canada's 22nd Ambassador to the United States by current Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006. This week, he's making his first trip to Oregon in that role.
According to the Government of Canada, 88,750 Oregon jobs are supported by Canada-US trade. In fact, Canada was the number one recipient of exported goods from Oregon until last year (when China jumped to first spot). A surprising number of trucks, metal products, and plywood go north. An equally surprising amount of energy (including petroleum and coal), fertilizers and softwood lumber comes south.
And of course, people traverse the border too. Many Oregonians hit up Whistler to go skiing, Victoria to have tea, or Vancouver to celebrate their 19th birthdays. As of June 1, however, the crossing will be more difficult. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative goes into effect meaning that everyone will need a passport to cross. How will this new regulation affect your plans?
Do you do business with Canada? What makes it easy? What makes it difficult? Do you travel to Canada? What do you want to know about our neighbor to the north? What do you think these two countries can learn from each other? What do you want to know from Canada's Ambassador to the United States? (Like maybe what's up with the twoonie, perhaps?)
Tagged as: business · canada · sports
Photo credit: Michael Clapp / OPB
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Thanks to Ambassador Wilson for being on this show. Both of my sisters live in Canada (I live in WA) and I have found much to admire about their health service and other aspects of Canadian society. I say this as a caregiver for my late beloved wife who died from terminal cancer.
Re; Athabasca tar sands, yes the energy costs of extraction are higher than that for cheap and easy crude, but then there has not been any cheap and easy crude for some time. Petroleum is going to cost more in dollars and energy no matter how one looks at it. Security of supply is important.
Re; tariffs, I would ask our readers and commentators to review the effects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill of the 1930's. It was regarded as bayoneting the incipient economic recomery in the early 1930's and plunging the globe into the Great Depression. It would be unavoidably tragic if our political decsion makers follow the same path.
Best to all,
Wecanoe,
Carson, WA
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I'm considering moving to the Vancouver, B.C. area in the next five years. How easy or challenging is it for a U.S. citizen to move to Canada?
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It's very easy, it took me about 16 months from start to finish. You can start here http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/index.asp
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Thank you for the link
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I study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and am consistently amazed at the low pricetag that accompanies a college education in Canada. I think in terms of public universities, the US could learn a lot for Canada.
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I love Canada. I can't say enough good things about it. I would move there in a second if I could. Why?:
Two Four Seasons hotels in BC.Hotel Shangri-La with a Jean-Georges restaurant.
Thomas Haas Chocolates.
All the Fairmont hotels.
The Hermes store.
Holt Renfrew.
Solly's Bagels.
Good chain restaurants: Milestones, Earl's
How did Vancouver get such amazingly beautiful urban planning? Something that Portland can't seem to achieve (like all the gross buildings in our waterfront development).What is Vancouver doing about public transportation? That would perhaps be my only complaint.
What are race relations like in Canada? Are there few problems? You don't seem to hear much about it---maybe, that is a good thing!
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I'd like Ambassador Wilson to comment on the issues that are keeping Amtrak from adding a second daily train to Vancouver. Amtrak is ready to put a second train on, but CBSA (Canadian Border Services Agency) has said that they'll charge Amtrak $1500 to inspect each additional train coming over the border. I've heard that a weak compromise has been finally reached that will allow the second train, but only for the two weeks of the Olympics next year. I'd like to see another train running every day. I read on a blog a while back that there used to be three "Internationals" running between Seattle in Vancouver back in the day. What's the problem with CBSA?
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Lots to admire about Canada - Vancouver BC is a paragon of forward-looking city planning, for instance - but what a bunch of !@#$% and excuses about tars sands oil production.
Given that recent science shows we can only use about half of the current proven fossil fuel reserves before we push the climate out of control, why would it make any sense at all to exploit oil sands - at a higher cost of carbon, water, and habitat destruction?
A current survey of climate research in the leading scientific journal Nature ( http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2009/04/the_wheel_of_climate_fortune.html ) makes this important finding:
"It's clear, if we want a reasonably good chance of staying beyond 2°C warming, we cannot afford burning all the oil, gas and coal buried in the ground. We can’t actually afford burning more than half the proven reserves. If we continue burning fossil fuels at current rates we will leave the ‘safety zone’ in less than 20 years."
These refined projections of the capacity of the global system to absorb carbon dioxide pollution have several interesting implications. One is an increasing likelihood that further investment in fossil fuel exploration will be stranded before production returns can be realized.
Ambassadors, as well as savvy investors and corporate moguls, should take note.
If we can only use half of what's already know to be there, it only makes sense to use the cleanest half - which probably doesn't include oil sands.
As long as carbon capture and sequestration remain a pipe dream - as they are now, with not even a demonstration project in operation - there's no basis for referencing it as a real part of the solution.
Clearcutting of the primeval forests of northern British Columbia is similarly unconscionable. There is no such thing as "replanting" of a thousand year old forest once it's complex ecological webs have been destroyed.
We need our dear neighbor Canada to be a real leader in environmental stewardship - not just another resource extraction country that hides vast ongoing environmental destruction in its great distances.
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As an Alaskan, now living in Oregon, I question the need for a passport for transiting through Canada to reach another part of the US. Also one needs to go through Canada to drive from the Southeast Panhandle to "mainland' Alaska. I have no plan to get a passport but there is always the possibility of an impromptu trip north, especially since this "misplaced Alaskan" recently go laid off and may opt to return home.
Am wondering what accomidations there might be for road travel to Alaska and will one will be refused at the border without a passport.
Thank you.
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I have visited the Alberta oil sands. The area is completely devastated. it is worse then coal, worse than industrial areas in India and China. And it is the fastest growing source of global warming gases. The Ambassador is misleading the listeners here in implying that this is just slightly more polluting than conventional oil and that they are trying to clean it up. Unfortunately, that is nonsense.
Just take a look at the photos in National Geographic from MArch. Photos don't lie.
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I sell handmade products online, and have to say Canadian buyers have sadly become my biggest nightmare. Anything over 20$ sent to Canada lands my customers with duty fees, which often makes them come back and blame ME as though I had anything to do with it. I can ship twice that value to countries overseas without such concerns.
(Ironically, I purchase supplies from Canada not subjected to such tarrifs when sent to me, which then go back into those pieces that I sell, but find Canadians reluctant to purchase them or angry because I wont lie and call them "gifts" in order to avoid those duty fees)
Additionally, Canadian customs has become the most problematic of all the countries I regularly ship to. I do not understand why it takes sometimes 3 weeks, sometimes as long as 2 months , for items I ship to Canada to get to their final destination. One customer in Ottowa paid for Priority International mail so that she could add insurance to the package because, she said "Canadian customs is terrible", which was very expensive given the little item she was purchasing, and she also purchased an item for her friend in the Netherlands to be shipped regular first class mail - the package got to Netherlands 4 days before her package did. Similarly, mail sent to Australia takes 5 days, whereas a package sent to someplace I could drive to in 8 hours on average takes about 15 days. Why, if the borders between our countries are so great, does trade take so long? Businesses won't buy larger amounts for resale from me because of all the duty tarrifs - I have more luck with wholesale orders overseas than I do with our neighbors.
Why is the customs and duty fees so difficult for items made in the USA?
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I am about to publish my first book, and I've chosen a printer in Manitoba because they beat the US printers on price and they come highly recommended by friends who have used them.
I could've saved even more on price by printing in Asia, but I opted to keep my dollars in North America. Even though I'm not keeping them in the US, I know that the Canadian workers at the printer have fair pay and benefits, unlike in Asia. I consider Canada to be pretty much on par with the US (if not better) as far as knowing that the goods I buy are not going to be made more cheaply because of a high non-monetary human cost.
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The tar sands sales pitch coming from Canada seems very similar to that of American "clean coal". The energy industry wants to get these sources developed, while taxpayers pour money into what appears to be an expensive and unproven technology. I'm all for research, but when carbon capture and sequestration is presented as a near-term solution, depite storage, liability, and commercial scaling issues, I have to ask if this is just another delay tactic. If not, the industry should be able to show significant private investment in the technology. So far, American coal companies and utilities have not show much faith in it. Even the Senator of Big Coal Virginia doesn't seem to think it's ready for prime time.
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Currently, Portland-to-Vancouver BC train travel requires an overnight layover in Seattle in order to make a 7:40 AM connection to Vancouver. (There are several other Portland-to-Seattle runs each day but they require transfer to an AMTRAK bus for the Seattle-to-Vancouver leg of the trip.)
Track upgrades were finally completed a year ago that will allow several direct Portland-to-Vancouver trains per day. When the new runs are added to the daily schedule, it will be possible, for the first time, to board a train at Union Station in Portland and get off 6.5 hours later at Pacific Central Station in downtown Vancouver.
However, bureaucratic foot-dragging within the Canada Border Services Agency [CBSA] has prevented additional Seattle-Vancouver trains from being added to the daily Cascades schedule. According to the Canadian paper, 'The Province' all of the necessary track upgrades were completed a year ago, but the CBSA has demanded additional staff and funding, supposedly needed to cope with the increased border-inspection workload.
Why has it taken a year to work out this bureaucratic squabble? When will this be resolved? -
Funny story:
I was living in Seattle in 2002 and was driving north on I-5, when, out of nowhere, I saw tanks...Military tanks, cruising southbound. My first thought was, oh now we are going to host a war on the Pacific!
Then I saw a maple leaf flying... Canadian flags, one after another. There were about 5 Canadian tanks rolling south on I-5 and then I thought, what did we do to have Canada invade?
Seriously, I'm upset that we need passports to visit Canada. I have enjoyed for years, ferrying from Port Angeles or Anacortes to Victoria and having a day to explore the museums, gardens and local forest areas. I think that as bordered neighbors we have cultivated a healthy respect and trust for one another. I hope that the passport requirement doesn't sully the relationship between us.
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I think that many of these border crossing issues are related to the security of Canada and, specifically, a response to what happened on 9-11. While I'm sure that Canada trusts 99.9% of U.S. citizens, they just don't want to risk allowing terrorists to penetrate their borders.
It's interesting that so many commentators here have "simple" solutions to most of these problems, but seem to miss the big picture. The problems they are describing are caused--and need to be cured--by political decisions in Canada, and politics is rarely simple, especially on a nationwide scale.
Ultimately, the citizens of Canada (the business people who rely on trade, tourism, etc) will need to take action if they want things to be easier. In the meantime, for those of us who wish to visit, a passport is probably a reasonable requirement. It's not very difficult to obtain and it lasts for 10 years. Some states even have a special kind of drivers license that is sufficient for ground travel to Canada.
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The Canadian Tar Sands represent a giant step backwards at precisely the moment when the US is ready to make a concerted effort ot move beyond fossil fuels. Increasing our dependence on the Tar Sands, whick take the environmental problems of other fossil fuels and multiply them, will severely undercut our efforts to cut CO2 emissions.
And the local effects of Tar Sands mining is horrific. We cannot let that toxic wasteland reach the size of Florida, which current plans project.
Canada needs to seel us their crappy product more than we need to buy it. It's weird that they've all of a sudden become the climate pariah of North America, but the US can't bail them out. We're moving on.
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I have great respect for Canada and its citizens, but Michael Wilson is part of Prime Minister Harper's spin machine. The Ambassador has it wrong on sustainability and imports from Canada to the US. The Obama administration will hopefully move America towards a low-carbon future and that won't include tar sands oil or unsustainable logging practices across Canada's boreal region. The timber and oil industries are reeling from recent bad press, including a full expose in National Geographic. They try to blame beetles, but as long as the forests are standing, most of the carbon is still in the bank. Clear cutting forests and tar sands oil extraction are not the solutions to decreasing Canada's carbon footprint. I'd hoped to hear a balanced discussion of the full global impact of these unsustainable resource extraction practices, but Wilson only provided statements that show how far the Federal government in Canada is lagging behind both scientific knowledge and true leadership on these issues.
Dina, Vancouver, Washington
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I am a citizen of both U.S. and Canada and lived in Canada for the past 11 of the past 14 years (back in Oregon now). The most important thing I have taken away from my experiences in Canada is the ability to see the U.S. through different eyes. It's incredible how much Canadians know about U.S. politics, culture, and society, while generally Americans know almost nothing about our neighbors. Canadians are very well aware of this imbalance, while most Americans don't give it a thought. I feel very lucky that I have gained this perspective; it has helped me gain some humility and ability to think of the U.S. as one player on the world stage rather than thee superior country as I was raised to see the U.S. as a child growing up here. Humility is an important attribute for dealing with global issues like climate change, and that is one thing about which I believe we could learn a lot from Canada.
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I'll say this for Canada, the NASA US guys just went up and fixed Hubble and they could not have done it without the Canada Robotic Arm, which worked flawlessly.
And that Canada Arm placed Hubble in space the first time too, so when you see one of Hubbles great photos, think of Canada and their contribution.
Well heck, Canada Arm was/is essential to putting ISS together too.
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I always say that Niagra Fall is being the best entity to describe Canada US relationships and it is said that 300,000 people cross the shared border of US and Canada every day!!
I commit their relation as Brothers and Sisters in my opinion which I had earlier seen in a very famous realtionship tv show Brothers and Sisters.
Thanks
Brothers and Sisters
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Comments are now closed.
I almost bought Canada once when it was for sale on Ebay but better judgment prevailed. LOL!
Nothing I do has anything to do with Canada, never been there.
Know many, MANY people from Canada that come HERE for Health Care because they can not get, or get timely care in Canada.