Trade Bustling, But Slow Going on New York-Canada Border

Every year Canada and New York State exchange over $34 billion in goods, maintaining more than 500,000 jobs in New York alone—but troubling environmental and national security issues, along with simpler matters like passport processing, continue to slow down this otherwise happy friendship.

Political leaders from both countries met to discuss how to resolve these problems Thursday as City & State hosted the first panel discussion of its New York-Canada Summit on international trade at Buffalo’s Hyatt Regency hotel.

Jim Dickmeyer, the consul general of the United States in Toronto, led off the opening remarks, taking care to praise the fruitful relationship between the two countries, but acknowledging that it is also “full of minor irritants,” including how to secure the border in the wake of 9/11 and dealing with the issue of Americans crossing the border to buy cheap prescription drugs. Nevertheless, he said, “Let’s not die a death of a thousand cuts.”

Canadian Consul General in New York John Prato also struck a hopeful tone, but when the first panel about bridges and trade across the Great Lakes began, panelists began to be more granular in their analyses of the border issue. Bryan Roth, the manager of regional development for the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, argued that New York State needs critical reforms to maintain the level of U.S.-Canadian trade, including ensuring the tax on gasoline is dedicated to fund infrastructure projects and expanding the plaza of on-ramps and off-ramps along the Peace Bridge, which connects Buffalo to Canada.

“You really need to talk about the $100 billion of products that crosses the border, whether it stays in New York or not,” Roth said. “Because that leads to jobs.”

James Weakley, the president of the Lake Carriers’ Association, was particularly pointed about the problems confronting the future of a healthy trade relationship between the two countries. “Despite the inspirational remarks of both consul generals, I’m kind of the Debbie Downer here today,” he said. “Because things are not working.”

Weakley’s main complaint was that the Canadian government has unilaterally demanded that freight ships from both countries install state-of-the-art systems to sanitize ballast water before they dump them into the lakes, even in cases where freight ships don’t actually dump ballast water. Weakley went so far as to complain that much of the sanitizing technology that Canada is demanding doesn’t actually exist. Moreover, he said, this represents a fundamental abrogation of American sovereignty in the name of an unattainable ideal. “They’re intentionally implementing something they know it’s impossible for us to comply with,” he said.

During the second panel, the talk turned to commercial traffic on the bridges of Western New York. Lew Holloway, the general manager of the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, warned that delays along the region’s bridges were “extremely costly to trade and extremely frustrating.”

Roth, of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, argued that the NEXUS alternative inspection system, which is designed to expedite the cross-border inspection process for pre-screened travelers, is dysfunctional at times and needs improvement. Sam Hoyt, Western New York’s regional president for the Empire State Development Corporation, warned that New York’s side of the Peace Bridge had an alarmingly small capacity for off-ramps, often forcing diesel trucks to drive through the dense and impoverished community of West Buffalo—although he touted a major project underway to ease traffic jams and bottlenecks.

Nevertheless, everyone took great pains to stress that these are the sorts of issues that arise when two countries have such a fruitful, amicable and lucrative relationship. There may well be, panelists repeated, no more friendly international relationship in the world than that between Canada and America. There are real problems, everyone agreed, but these are problems between very close friends.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article said that Bryan Roth of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership advocated reducing the tax on gasoline. In fact, Roth wants to ensure that gas tax revenue is dedicated to infrastructure projects.