It has been over one year since COVID-19 ripped through the region, causing turmoil for both businesses and individuals.
On March 18, the Wilson Center hosted their webinar: Measuring the Regional impacts of the Canada-U.S. Border Restrictions to talk to experts about the impacts the border closure has had.
In November of 2020, The Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center announced the creation of a The Wilson Task Force on Public Health and the US-Canadian Border.
The task force includes members that represent the political, economic, and regional diversity of the Canada-U.S. border: Former Quebec Premier Jean Charest, Former Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, Former Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, and Former Vermont Governor James Douglas.
Members of the Task Force meet virtually with various public-private sector stakeholders to understand the challenges of health screening and border security, as well as the impact of the border restrictions on communities, public health and economic recovery.
The panel of experts and political figures from both the U.S. and Canada dove into the work that needs to be done in order to reopen the border.
It was brought up by both parties that time is running out before there is permanent damage to businesses and towns that rely on cross border travel.
It was brought up that this is the same urgency of border engagement between Canada and the U.S. since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but has fallen on deaf ears at the higher political levels.
Task force member, McLellan said after 9/11, there was a degree of panic on both sides of the border that the COVID-19 pandemic has not seen.
“We lack the sense of urgency, we lack the powerful visuals that motivated people after 9/11,” McLellan said. “We have to figure out how we inject the urgency at the highest political levels.”
On March 20, 2020, Canada and the United States announced restrictions on non-essential travel between the two countries as a temporary, but necessary, measure to slow the spread of COVID-19. These restrictions have been renewed every 30 days for the past year.
Alan Bersin, senior fellow with the Belfer Centre at Harvard University and a former assistant commissioner of U.S customs and assistant secretary of homeland security for policy, said the border opening must be done in four steps.
The first is that the data must be science-based. Second, the resumption of safe travel has to be done in a manner that fosters public confidence. Third, trusted travellers in a public health sense have to be determined according to a risk management framework that is generally accepted and is administered in a fair and impartial manner. And fourth, safe border crosses must be adequately documented and cannot be an inspection function accomplished only at the port of entry.
He adds that implementing new tools at the border such as screening procedures, vaccine certification or health passports have to be done by both the U.S. and Canada, adding that both countries should start slow and build on success to foster public confidence.
Kathryn Bryk Friedman at the University of Buffalo regional institute echoed the importance of the two countries working together on the reopening of the border, adding if there is one without the other, there will only be more of a decline in the economy.
Marta Leardi-Anderson executive director of the cross border institute at the University of Windsor, said they are finding that not only the industries that were doing well and had market share are being severely impacted by the restriction of the movement of people. But the areas in the economy that could have grown, are now being stunted.
Along with the economic consequences caused by the border closure, particularly for those along the border, there was also mention of the less documented mental and emotional exhaustion that people have felt.
“I think some of the biggest impacts are the social costs that we just can’t monetize like missing the birth of a child or the death of a loved one,” said Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham. “I think that part of the impacts which are experienced across regions in the U.S. and Canada are really overshadowed by the impacts that we can monetize.”
