Canada strikes back against new U.S. agro-terror fees

Last week we reported that American agriculture authorities were poised to implement new fees for Canadians crossing into the United States. The measure was adopted in response to fears that a NAFTA-inspired 80 percent increase in agricultural imports from Canada had inadvertently encouraged a large amount of illegal smuggling. Canadian importation rules are more relaxed than in the United States because its cooler climate is not amenable to foreign crop invasion. “Among Canadian air passengers, the number of quarantined materials intercepted by U.S. inspectors rose to 1,520 in 2004 from 358 in 2001,” Canada.com reported at the time.

There can be no doubt about it: the Canadian government is extremely unhappy. Seamless travel between the U.S. and Canada is critical to both countries’ economies — initiatives to require more stringent identification for border crossers is another similar sticking point — and Canada is worried that Washington’s concerns about crop invasion and agroterrorism are being solved at the expense of innocent Canadian citizens. At a meeting this week with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, Canadian Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl argued that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency believes it already has the security measures in place to deal with American concerns, and expressed outrage that he first learned of the new fee program in the newspapers.

The fees, scheduled to be in place by Nov. 24, range from $5 per air passenger to $488 per maritime vessel. Truckers would have to pay $5.25 per border crossing. Passenger cars, the most likely source of agroterror smuggling, will not be charged. The fees, expected to total $77 million, will pay for at least 220 more border inspectors.

-read more in Tim Harper’s Toronto Star report