INTERNET SITES

• "Thinking the Unthinkable: Security Threats, Cross-Border Implications, and Canada's Long-Term Strategies" - 19 page PDF paper released 13 January 2004: [http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/backgrounder_77.pdf]

• United States-Canada Border Drug Threat Assessment [http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs07/794/]

Environment:

• United States and Canada Unveil Joint Border Air Quality Strategy (January 6, 2003)[http://www.epa.gov/newsroom/headline_010703.htm]

• Canada-United States Border Air Quality Strategy Website [http://www.ec.gc.ca/canada_us/air/index_e.htm]

• Cascadia Times

General:

• "Rethinking the Line: The Canada-US Border" [policyresearch.gc.ca/doclib/Final_v3_sunset_E.pdf]
  The conference Rethinking the Line: The Canada-US Border, held in Vancouver from October 22 to 25, 2000, was organized with a view to furthering our understanding of North American linkages by providing an overview of changing national borders at a time characterized by free trade, new security and public safety needs, global information flows and pressures to harmonize national policies and standards. This special issue of Horizons summarizes the main points raised during the conference.

• Canada-United States Relations Site [http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/can-am/menu-en.asp]

Clippings:

• Cascadia: where Canadians live better than we knew By PAUL SULLIVAN GLOBE & MAIL, Tuesday, March 16, 2004 - Page A19 ... I wrote about the effort of a small environmental organization based in Seattle to create a quality-of-life index that will rival, or at least act as an alternative to, economic indexes such as the gross domestic product (GDP) and the Dow Jones industrial average. ... they've done it. Called the Cascadia Scorecard, it measures seven trends in British Columbia and the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, the historic Oregon Territory -- a region often called Cascadia by cross-border visionaries.

• Layton's energy ideas rankle businessmen Globe and Mail, Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - Page A5 By PATRICK BRETHOUR, STEVEN CHASE Mr. Layton recently floated the idea of taxing southbound energy exports in order to force the United States to abandon its campaign against Canadian softwood lumber, as well as reopening the border to shipments of Canadian live cattle, barred after the discovery of a case of mad-cow disease in Alberta last May.

• Halt high-speed cross-border chases, MPs urge Ottawa: Niagara Falls woman struck and killed last week by suspect fleeing U.S. police By GLORIA GALLOWAY Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - Page A7 Globe and Mail OTTAWA -- The federal government is being urged by MPs in border communities to make it clear to American police that car chases into Canada will not be tolerated after the second such incident in less than a year turned deadly.

• PM looks at tightening Ottawa's ties with U.S.: Blueprint calls for policy co-ordination Globe and Mail, Tuesday, February 24, 2004 - Page A1 By DREW FAGAN OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF The Martin government is moving toward major new steps to co-ordinate economic and security policy more closely with the United States in an initiative that likely would not get under way until after a federal election.

• Seattle out of movie-making picture: City looks for ways to compete with Canada and other countries SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER, January 26, 2004 By KATHY MULADY

• FDA finds animal proteins in feed grain: 20 shipments from Canada were tainted. Seattle PI, January 21, 2004; By CHRIS McGANN Federal inspectors rejected at least 20 shipments of Canadian feed grain last year because spot tests revealed feathers, animal muscle fiber and hair inexplicably contaminating truckloads of canola, oats and other grain.
  The findings are particularly worrisome because neither U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigators nor the Canadian grain producers know how the animal proteins entered the system. Mad cow disease is believed to spread through cattle feed supplemented by contaminated beef byproducts.

• NEB, Whatcom County: Different views on 230,000-volt power lines The Abbotsford News 20 January 2004. By TRUDY BEYAK Whatcom County won't allow the controversial Sumas Energy 2 (SE2) transmission power lines to be built south of the border because of potential health hazards and fears of lowering property values. In contrast, the Canadian National Energy Board (NEB) ruled last month that SE2's controversial 230,000-volt power line will likely not have any environmental effects to residents in Canada nor cause depreciation in Abbotsford property values.

• Neighbors to north say things are going south: Fed-up Canada is standing firm amid long list of perceived slights from U.S. Seattle PI, January 17, 2004; By CLAUDIA ROWE In the past 18 months, between the perceived snubs and political sniping, relations between Canada and the United States have devolved to their lowest point in decades, government officials and academics on both sides of the border agree.

• Canada draws the line over obligations for river cleanup Seattle Times, January 16, 2004; By Christopher Schwarzen Canada's ambassador to the United States has entered the fray over cleanup of the upper reaches of the Columbia River, insisting by letter that the Environmental Protection Agency lacks the jurisdiction to enforce U.S. pollution laws against a Canadian smelter.

• Americans shouldn't have a beef with Canada Seattle Times, January 13, 2004; By Marvin Wodinsky, Guest columnist In the short period since the case of a single Holstein cow infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) became known around the world, Americans and Canadians have learned just how seamlessly interconnected the beef industry is between our two countries.

• "Teck Cominco says EPA jurisdiction does not apply to Canadian operation Company stands by offer to fund $13 million research study" Canada NewsWire, VANCOUVER, Jan. 13 /CNW/ - Teck Cominco Metals Ltd. has responded to the Environmental Protection Agency stating that the EPA does not have jurisdiction over its Canadian lead zinc smelter located in Trail, B.C. The response follows a deadline imposed by the EPA after it had terminated negotiations on Teck Cominco's offer to address the potential impact of metals in sediments in Lake Roosevelt.

• Write to NEB, prime minister Abbotsford News; 13 January 2004 Residents are asked to embark on a massive letter-writing campaign to the National Energy Board (NEB) and the Prime Minister Paul Martin. People in the Fraser Valley should immediately start writing letters, by the thousands, to the prime minister of Canada to ask him to stop Sumas Energy 2 (SE2), said Art Martens, spokesman of the SE2 Action Group.

• Master map of U.S. planned: Canadian firms hope project for highly detailed map will have cross-border benefits; by Gerry Bellett [Vancouver Sun; CanWest News Service] Monday, January 12, 2004 Canadian digital mapping companies are hoping a U.S. intelligence agency's plans to produce a master map of every square metre of the United States will produce some spinoff benefits for the industry here.

• People smugglers seek weak links in U.S.-Canadian border Seattle PI, January 12, 2004; THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VANCOUVER, B.C. -- As the United States continues to toughen its border security, authorities are concerned that people smugglers are moving into remote areas of British Columbia's interior in search of weak links in the border.

• Like density? Imagine our home with 50 million people Seattle Times, November 23, 2003, 12:00 A.M. James Vesely / Times editorial page editor ... I've lately expanded the region in my own, internal map to stretch across several boundaries. I'd say the greater region now reaches from Eugene, Ore., north to Whistler, B.C., and is edging east of the Cascades to Kittitas County and the pleasant town of Ellensburg, a pivot point that soon will be linked by jobs closer to Puget Sound than to Eastern Washington.

• Yet another collapse in U.S.-Canada fish talks, Seattle Times,Sunday, May 25, 1997.