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BORDER TROUBLES * Canada/USA - Move faster to fix border delays, van Dongen urges
Lineups for truckers and tourists a concern
Vancouver,BC,Canada -The Vancouver Sun, by Derrick Penner -July 22, 2008: -- The Canadian and U.S. federal governments need to move faster to fix the delays truckers face at border crossings, according to John van Dongen, B.C.'s minister of public safety and solicitor-general... Kelly Johnston, vice-president of government affairs for the food conglomerate Campbell's Soup Co., said the big problems, where trucks could face eight- hour delays at the border, are gone... The Canada Border Services Agency is in the midst of implementing a $396-million pre-arrival notification program aimed at streamlining truck and rail shipments coming into Canada. It's called eManifest... Under the program, shippers will be required to notify Canada Border Services electronically that they are sending trucks or rail cars to the border, tell them what freight is in the containers, who the driver or crew is and how they will be crossing at least an hour before the containers arrive at the crossing... Feniak said it will be an extension of the pre-arrival notification programs that shipborne and airborne cargo is subjected to now... The idea is to give border officials time to review documentation for shipments, conduct risk assessments and make decisions about clearing shipments or flagging them for secondary inspection before vehicles arrive... Feniak added that it should reduce the time it takes for a truck to get past the crossing to about 30 seconds from the one to three minutes it takes now, which should help reduce border lineups... He added that the program will be phased in over three years... Van Dongen said anything, like e-Manifest, that moves checking loads or decisions on which shipments need secondary inspection away from the border point are good strategies, but they just need to be put in place faster... (Photo by Ian Lindsay, The Vancouver Sun - A busy Friday morning lineup at the Pacific Highway crossing of the Canada-U.S. border)Labels: border troubles
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