Abstract
This chapter considers to what extent there is still something we can meaningfully refer to as the Canadian border. Rather than suggest we have arrived at a neoliberal borderless dreamscape, I ask whether the Canadian border has become more analogous to the prolific interior checkpoints that exist within 100 miles of the US border. Examining the adoption of US-led mass surveillance, intensified information-sharing with the USA (official and unofficial) and the uncritical embrace of identification and surveillance technologies such as biometrics and UAVs by the Government of Canada over the past decade, I consider to what extent the Canada/US border has simply become an additional checkpoint in a series of nodes for pre-assessment and pre-clearance found throughout the USA.
Many thanks for the careful and engaged readings and comments of earlier drafts of this chapter from Randy K. Lippert, Darren Palmer, Kevin Walby and Ian Warner, all of whom helped enrich this argument. I also wish to express thanks to Thomas N. Cooke for his careful reading and suggestions on an earlier draft of this chapter. Also, special thanks to Javier Duran and the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry at the University of Arizona, for essential research support and the necessary time and space to see this project through.
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Notes
- 1.
In aviation security the American Transportation Security Authority (TSA) and the Canada Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) took different approaches to security. The TSA placed greater emphasis on individuals, relying on profiling and pre-screening, whereas CATSA placed greater emphasis on objects. For an engaging critical discussion of this, see Salter 2009.
- 2.
Among other things, Senate Bill 1070 created in spring 2010 allowed for racial profiling by State law enforcement, challenging federal jurisdiction, not to mention other aspects of the US Constitution. See also Muller 2013.
- 3.
It is important to refer specifically to the southern Canadian border, as the northern border throughout the Arctic involves a range of international interests and various states, and it is arguably more contested and undergoing a retrenchment markedly different from the trends along the Canada–US border.
- 4.
As part of the Operation Sovereign Borders, the Government of Australia released a controversial advertising campaign “No Way.”
- 5.
As part of my work as visiting research fellow at the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University in 2008, I enrolled in the NEXUS programme, paying close attention to the differential roles of the US and Canadian officials in the process, tracking the time and the daily experience of crossing the border four to five times per week over five months.
- 6.
For a particularly persuasive and instructive example of the commonalities of identification technologies, norms and best practices, and the role of similar individuals and interests globally, the comparative account of national identity card strategies is apt, see Bennett and Lyon 2008.
- 7.
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Muller, B.J. (2016). The Day the Border Died? The Canadian Border as Checkpoint in an Age of Hemispheric Security and Surveillance. In: Lippert, R., Walby, K., Warren, I., Palmer, D. (eds) National Security, Surveillance and Terror. Crime Prevention and Security Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43243-4_13
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