Analysis and discussion of issues that impact business

Friends are friends - until the bottom line is affected. Our neighbors to the North are not too happy.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture plan to levy new fees on air travelers and commercial shipments from Canada is a nonsensical, self-serving measure that could clog the border and discourage air travel, the Canadian airline and trucking industries warned Friday.

So, are our concerns warranted? How about our solution?

So, here are the stated reasons for this new policy.

The U.S. government said it intends to tighten agricultural inspections at the Canada-U.S. border in an effort to guard against the perceived threat of pests, disease and even bioterrorism.

Here are the specifics.

Commercial aircraft arriving in the U.S. from Canada will have to pay $70.25, trucks $5.25 per crossing or $105 for the year, loaded rail cars $7.50 and commercial vessels $488. Many of the fees will increase slightly in the next fiscal year.

Here are the complaints.

“It’s unnecessary and I think it has more to do with revenue generation than anything else,” said Fred Gaspar, spokesman for the Air Transport Association of Canada.

“This is ostensibly to pay for an agricultural inspection program, but it’s going to be universally applicable to every passenger and every airline.”

“It would appear that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is intending to apply a user fee on all trucks that cross the border irrespective of whether they are carrying fruits and vegetables or machine parts,”  Cooper (Graham Cooper, senior vice president of the Canadian Trucking Association) said.

Not that it's surprising, but whenever you have laws, you have lawbreakers.

During three recent inspection blitzes, inspectors discovered many fruits and vegetables from third world countries coming into the U.S. from Canada despite labels that indicated they had originated in Canada.

Oops.

But with increased trade and the continuing threat of terrorism of various kinds, it's a fairly predictable response. But our Canadian friends are one of the last "invited" to the party.

Melissa O’Dell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Agriculture Department’s animal and plant health inspection service noted that the surcharges have been in place since the early 1990s, and Canada has been exempt until now.

So at least our government is an equal opportunity offender.