By: Jeff Lee
Vancouver Sun
July 17, 2008
Link to original article
VANCOUVER - Canada and the U.S. will face traffic gridlock and massive delays at the border during the 2010 Winter Games unless the two countries move quickly to reduce barriers, the head of a cross-border government-funded advocacy group said Thursday.
But with only 18 months to go before the Olympics, time is quickly running out on attempts to get the two to take measures to expedite travellers crossing B.C.'s land border with Washington state.
"We're really worried about that border," said Matt Morrison, the executive director of the Pacific North West Economic Region (PNWER). "I am anxious that we are down to a year and a half and we still don't have anybody focusing on this problem."
Morrison said he has tried to convince both countries' governments to implement an expedited border clearance system for 2010 and to open the Abbotsford-Sumas crossing on a 24-hour basis for the Games, but so far to no avail.
PNWER, a joint U.S.-Canada group of legislators and business groups from eight provinces, states and territories in the northwest, is holding its annual conference in Vancouver next week. The issue of cross-border travel during the Olympics will be a central theme.
B.C. Public Safety Minister John van Dongen, who next week will take over as president of PNWER, said the group has watched with alarm as cross-border trade and traffic has slowed because of a zero-tolerance border security agenda.
"The members of PNWER are concerned about this at two levels," van Dongen said. "One is the level of preparedness at the border crossings for the Olympics. That is a key concern, but also the day-to-day management of the border is, we believe, unnecessarily impeding the legitimate flow of trade and travel across that border every day."
Morrison said he's expecting that the attendance of federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, Premier Gordon Campbell and U.S. state legislators at the conference may help unblock the issue.
Attempts to start a high-speed ferry service between Bellingham and Vancouver for the Games failed because of heavy security concerns, he said. And an attempt at a bus service in Washington State to feed American spectators into the 2010 transportation grid in Vancouver has also fallen on deaf ears.
"No one actually sees it as their job to work out a common-sense system for people to leave their cars," Morrison said. "We want Americans to leave their cars in Bellingham, but how can they do that? Nobody is addressing that issue."
Morrison said the main target of next week's conference is the U.S. federal government.
"What we're really about is trying to inform the next American administration that the border is not working right and we have to take this seriously," he said.
"We think there is a very important window in the next 12 months, to get Washington, D.C., to take a serious look at how this border works and to recognize that competitiveness is being lost daily as this border thickens."
