Mr. Chair, let us review just momentarily what we are looking at here. This is something entitled the “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative”. It is an initiative that comes out of Congress in the United States. I appreciate the fact that there has been some comment here that it came within the context of a larger legislative framework and that perhaps the people in Congress did not fully comprehend what they were passing.
I do not know if I want to accept that or not; it means accepting the fact that legislators do not read all the material that comes in front of them. Certainly I would dare to say that would not be the case, because it suggests that problems like this could arise.
This Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, this travel document initiative, is going to affect all United States citizens travelling within the western hemisphere and means that they will now be required to carry a passport. That is not where it ends. It also is going to affect foreign nationals who currently are not required to present a passport to travel to the United States. That refers, obviously, to Canadian citizens, and also to citizens of the British overseas territory of Bermuda. It also will affect Mexican citizens.
In terms of when it will be initiated and implemented, according to the legislation laid out in the United States, by December 31, 2006, the requirement will be applied to all air and sea travel to or from Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda. By December 31, 2007, the requirement is going to be extended to all land border crossings as well as all air and sea travel. That is huge in terms of the effect this is going to have. Specifically, we are obviously concerned about Canada-U.S. cross-border commerce, trade and tourism.
We are asking that a number of things move into place and that they happen immediately. First of all, the government has to get very aggressive on this. I appreciate the fact that it was members of this House who requested a take note debate on this matter to raise the level of urgency.
As for my hon. friend across the way, I believe he is concerned about it. Frankly, we would have liked to see the government take the initiative on this the first day it became evident, because, as we all know, in areas of government and politics when there is a delay it could suggest that there is a lack of interest. Or it could send a message that the people being affected really do not think it is that important. Delays can be critical. In this case, they have been. Those delays could hurt this cause.
Therefore, first of all we are asking that the government aggressively move this onto its agenda in every meeting, and including in that the initiating of meetings with our American counterparts. Certainly we hope that the various ministers who are meeting right now with Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, are impressing upon her the urgency of this case.
There are a number of things we would like to suggest. We do not just want to criticize. We want to bring forward alternatives and options. We are asking that options be considered. First of all, in regard to the photo ID that is available now and which people have been using for decades in the United States, we are asking that the U.S. government agree to that ID as acceptable.
We understand that the U.S. administration has some concerns regarding the standards of some of the processes of individual states and the efficacy of their driver's licence photo ID, for instance. If that is a problem, the U.S. administration can simply set the appropriate standards and require each individual state where it is a problem to rise and meet those standards.
Bringing in this blanket application of passports for all is an overburdening way of addressing this problem. We understand the legal concerns and the legitimate concerns of the administration related to some of the these states, but that could be dealt with by implementing proper standards.
The U.S. administration has worked with Canada, and Canada with it, in terms of adopting a number of other ways of identifying individuals crossing the border, which have resulted in rapid access to and from the border. The so-called century program, the NEXUS program and the FAST program all have been shown to be effective in terms of moving people and commerce rapidly back and forth across the border with a high level of security. This can be done.
The order of magnitude of the problem is huge. There are 300,000 crossings per day. Of those 300,000 crossings, if we accept the stats which I believe are close to being correct, barely a third of Americans even have passports. At 300,000 crossings a day we are looking at probably 200,000 people a day who would not be able to cross the border as they do now. That is gigantic. The effect of that would be huge.
The Canadian Tourism Commission conducted a study in July 2005. That is how many months this issue has been out there. We wonder why the Liberal government has been so slow in moving on this. The Canada Tourism Commission estimated that by 2008 when the program is fully implemented the economic losses would amount to nearly $1 billion a year. We cannot afford that. We would go head to head with the Americans on trade any day of the week, but we cannot afford to have their citizens, and to a degree ours, affected by this passport regulation.
There are other costs that are not even being considered. These are the tourism costs and the business costs which would be huge. Think of the costs to families alone. Most of the kids of Canadian families who cross the border do not have passports. They cross with their parents who use a driver's licence as identification.
If the cost of a standard Canadian passport stayed at $87 for the next few years, we would be looking at a cost of $350 for a family of four, a cost that the family did not have to bear before. We could flip that to the U.S. side, where American passports cost $97, although theirs are good for 10 years and not just 5, and calculate those costs. Everywhere we look, somebody is getting hit in a negative way. It is simply unacceptable.
I wonder if Congress even considered the unintended security risk that is going to result on families, especially those living close to the border in some of the larger cities and smaller towns on either side of the border. Think about it. If families that now cross routinely every day want to go to the effort of getting passports, every car that goes across the border will probably have four, five or six passports in the glove compartment because they have to be there every day. That is an unintended security that Congress probably never even contemplated. How many of those passports are going to be lost, stolen or misplaced?
The whole situation has evolved somewhat rapidly. We decried the lack of initial attention to this by the Liberal government. We are glad that the parliamentary secretary appears to be on the case now, but we implore our government and speak directly to those in Congress in the United States and to the U.S. administration to please abandon this plan. It is a sledgehammer that is going to result in unnecessary costs, costs that are going to cripple the economies of many provinces and regions. It will certainly hurt the economy of our nation, many businesses and certainly tourism and there is no evidence that it is going to bring any increased sense of security, either explicitly or implicitly.
We are asking for that reconsideration and for the Liberal government to pull out all the stops and get on this right away. We have provided some positive suggestions and constructive approaches for other ways of maintaining security. We want to work with our American counterparts to make sure that the border is secure, but this is not the way to do it. Security will not be enhanced. Freedom will definitely be restricted and the economy will be hurt.