WASHINGTON-
The dispute between Canada and the United States over the Nexus trusted traveler program should be resolved well before the president and prime minister meet in December, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Friday.
Champagne, who was in Washington, D.C., to meet Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, said he raised the issue with his U.S. counterpart as an example of a situation that would be in both countries’ interests to resolve. rapidly.
“If I look at the challenges we’re facing, I would say it should be easy to solve, because after all, it’s about making sure the border is as smooth as possible,” he said during of a press conference.
“I certainly hope we can resolve this long before the President and the Prime Minister (meet). I think there is an understanding on both sides that what we want right now is the fluidity.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to sit down with President Joe Biden when the two leaders meet Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the so-called Three Amigos summit in Mexico City in December.
A face-off between Trudeau and Biden, however, could come sooner than that: Biden has yet to make his long-promised and often-delayed first visit to Canada since becoming president. White House officials declined to say when that trip might take place.
While Nexus enrollment centers in the United States have been open since April, all 13 centers in Canada have remained closed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Indeed, Customs and Border Protection will not send U.S. agents to staff them unless they get the same measure of legal protection that agents currently have at ports of entry like airports and the Canada-US border.
Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the US, raised her eyebrows last week when she said the Nexus program was ‘held hostage’ as part of a unilateral US effort to renegotiate the terms of the deal .
She went further, calling the US tactics “brutal” and contrary to what has otherwise been a cordial and cooperative relationship with Canada.
Champagne declined to say whether Raimondo was receptive to his concerns about the Nexus program.
“We want to be competitive, we are in a period of high inflation,” he said.
“It is incumbent on us to make sure that we resolve this issue, as we always do with our American friends, to ensure that agents return to their offices so that these Nexus cards can be issued.”
The dispute is likely minor in the context of Canada’s efforts over the past year to persuade the United States to drop its electric vehicle tax incentive plans that would have excluded Canadian-made cars and trucks. .
Those efforts paid off in August when Biden signed into law the Cutting Inflation Act, a multibillion-dollar tax, climate, and health spending package that not only encourages Canadian-made electric vehicles, but also those whose batteries are made with essential minerals from trade-friendly countries, including Canada.
Canada should also benefit from CHIPS, a new U.S. law designed to help develop a more resilient supply chain and manufacturing base for semiconductors and wean the world off its dependence on China.
These incentives have already helped launch critical mineral and battery manufacturing projects in Canada, Champagne said.
“It’s in the United States’ interest to make sure that Canada and the United States remain competitive, because if you want resilience in the supply chain, you need Canada to be part of it. equation – there’s no getting around it,” he said. .
“In everyone’s mind, Canada is part of the equation.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on October 21, 2022