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 Americas & Beyond | April 2008 
Major Border Crossing on Agenda as Three Amigos Meet
 Dalson Chen & Chris Thompson - Canwest News Service
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| | Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President George Bush | | |
The Detroit-Windsor border crossing will be a priority topic at the North American Leaders' Summit taking place Monday and Tuesday, according to a senior U.S. government official.
U.S. President George Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are scheduled to meet in New Orleans.
In announcing the summit, U.S. National Security Council member Dan Fisk specifically mentioned the Detroit-Windsor border crossing as a discussion topic for the leaders.
"We do want to look at what more we can do at the Detroit-Windsor crossing," Fisk said from Washington D.C. on Friday.
After pointing to the magnitude of U.S.-Canada trade that depends on the crossing, Fisk noted that the Ambassador Bridge opened in 1929.
"It's four lanes and was built for traffic in the 1930s. The traffic has increased threefold since then," said Fisk, who is the NSC Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs.
"If you're a businessman, or frankly for all of us who are consumers, it has a potential impact because if we can't get those crossings to be more effective and efficient, we all pay."
A binational group of government officials is supposed to be announcing the location and route to a new border crossing between Windsor and Detroit later this spring.
Fisk said "trusted traveller programs" will also be a focus point for the leaders' discussion. "That is, how you give people identification and you give cargo some kind of security screening so that it can move more quickly across the border."
The Detroit-Windsor crossing will be a part of a discussion on "smart and secure borders," which was ranked second amongst five priorities listed by Fisk for the summit.
In the first priority, enhancing global competitiveness, Fisk said one of the things the leaders will talk about will be "the regulatory structure that impacts the automobile sector."
"And this gets to, frankly, a dollars and cents impact for the average consumer in terms of buying automobiles," Fisk said.
The summit will be the fourth time the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico have met to discuss the common challenges the three nations face as the continent.
On Saturday, about two dozen protesters marched through downtown Windsor in a mock funeral procession to mark the so-called death of Canadian sovereignty.
The demonstration, organized by the Council of Canadians, was one of several held across the country in advance of the New Orleans leaders gathering, popularly referred to as the Amigos Summit.
The council believes the meetings on the Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP) are paving the way for a North American union and undermining Canadian sovereignty.
"They are signing away the rights to our resources," said Council of Canadians Windsor chair Doug Hayes. |
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