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 Canadians fleeced on NEXUS pass
October 16, 2007
Posted by Stuart Trew
What? Canadians are getting a bum deal on yet another SPP-related security initiative? Can't be.
Yes, according to The Canadian Press today, "An audit has found that the Canada Border Services Agency has been inadvertently giving American travellers a big price break over Canadian travellers for a special card that speeds their passage across the Canada-U.S. border."
The now five-year old NEXUS pass for expedited cross-border travel actually costs $30 more here than it does down south. American "trusted travellers" pay only $50 for a biometric id card that costs Canadians $80. The price may have made sense when our dollar wasn't on par with the greenback but the security measure itself has never been a good idea.
As explained in the Council of Canadians' document Behind Closed Doors, NEXUS is kind of like the opposite of Passenger Protect, Canada's no-fly list, in that NEXUS grants privileged access across the Canada-U.S. border, by air, land or sea, to "low-risk" or "trusted" travellers who have passed a Canadian and a U.S. security check. Once you get the green light from both governments, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) snaps your photo, scans your iris, and takes all 10 fingerprints to better identify you in the future. NEXUS is essentially a biometric passport for VIP North Americans while more "risky" travellers can either get stuck in long airport security lines, be pulled aside for questioning in some cases, or be denied the right to travel by air.
According to CBSA's NEXUS website, applications, which must include your places of residence and employment from the past five years, take from six to eight weeks to process. Successful applicants are apparently fingerprinted before being accepted into the NEXUS program, and there is no information online about what happens to applicants who are denied a pass. Do the Canadian and U.S. governments hold onto your personal information and for how long? Do they send an agent to your door for further questioning?
A 2006 audit of CBSA, in which the Privacy Commissioner reported that, "the CBSA’s trans-border data flows are not accounted for in meaningful detail" and that, "more transparency is needed to better inform Parliament and the Canadian public about activities in this area," nonetheless failed to scrutinize the NEXUS program on the grounds that it "involves extensive background screening to facilitate accelerated entry into Canada and the United States for approved travellers." Enrolment in the NEXUS program is voluntary, said the commissioner. "Moreover, the collection, use and disclosure of personal information under the program occur with the expressed consent of the participant."
But an Embassy magazine article from May 16, 2007, shed some interesting light on the future of NEXUS as a "voluntary" program. James D. Phillips, president and CEO of the Canadian/American Border Trade Alliance, which holds bi-annual meetings focused on North American integration that are well attended by senior government security officials in both countries, said that NEXUS was the key to facilitating travel across the Canada-U.S. border. "Mr. Phillips predicted that the U.S. State Department would soon announce that NEXUS cards will be given the same status as passports for land border crossings," wrote Embassy. Phillips added the following eerie prediction: "In cases of orange alerts, only NEXUS card holders will be allowed to cross the border."
Essentially, if Phillips' predictions wind up coming true, it won't even take a "Red Alert" at Homeland Security to close the Canada-U.S. border to everyone except "trusted" NEXUS pass holders. Even if CBSA eventually knocks the price of a NEXUS pass down to $50 instead of $80, the cost to privacy and mobility is just too high.
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