US-Canada Border Relations:
We share the longest unguarded border in the world. We are each other's respective largest trading partner. Our economies are tied together like nobody's business. Whether we want to believe it or not, our culture is about 90% in-line with each other. So yeah, we care about how things are going south of the 49th quite a bit.
So what's happened in the past decade or so?
Well, it's been pushed back plenty of times, but at some point passports are going to be mandatory for crossing the border, whether by land or by air. This is pretty much par for the course on a global scale - the whole "only need proof of citizenship" thing was relatively unique for us, but at the same time it really spoke to how close our two nations really were. Now I already have my passport so I'm good to go and aside from slightly longer border line-ups I really don't care that much. But it can't be ignored that this whole passport requirement is sitting raw with a lot of people, whether it be out of practicality or principle.
Outside of passports, that beautiful gigantic trade treaty of ours has gotten smashed with a few hitches here and there. NAFTA on the whole has been really good to all of us, and the whole idea of a "free trade agreement" certainly doesn't sound bad at all.
So naturally, in Canada we always hear about the "Softwood Lumber Dispute" in the news, and how the US had placed a ton of tariffs on one of Canada's largest exports into its southern neighbour. You wanna know all the facts, Google it, but the gist is that the US trade people feel we're charging too much for our lumber (it's a discrepancy on how costs are measured that's been years in the works), so they're hitting Canada with tariffs to offset that cost.
Alright, trade dispute. Not the first time something like this has ever happened, not the last. Really, softwood lumber has been an issue since the '80s. But when considering that British Columbia (my province) is the main source of this trade lumber, well . . . we're seeing the squeeze. 15,000 forestry workers have been fired because the forestry industry can't support them anymore; several sawmills have closed down. Now in 2006 Canada and the US reached a tentative agreement to lower tariffs and pay back some long-owed money (5 billion dollars, about). It's a nice step in a better direction.
So that's trade and border-crossings. Just a couple of the many points where Canada's been getting the rub.
