Show Us Your Cards, Mr. Harper!

A full house? A flush? A border harmonization agreement with the U.S.?

This column in the Globe and Mail makes the argument that Stephen Harper is being too secretive in his negotiations to harmonize Canada’s border with the U.S. It’s nothing new, except it’s written by Michael Ignatieff so we suppose we have to pay attention. “A negotiation of this magnitude demands transparency,” says Iggy. “Instead, despite months of leaks, news stories and questions in Parliament, Mr. Harper has yet to utter the words ‘perimeter security’ in the House of Commons … The Conservatives seem ready to provide the U.S. government with unprecedented amounts of private information about Canadian travelers.” Sure, Harper’s silence on the issue is grating, but it’s a bit much to say he’s about to hand over our private data to Washington. As long as the prime minister remains huddled in his cone of silence, there’s not much indication of what he’ll do.

The Toronto Star’s James Travers writes that U.S. presidents have many more checks on their power than do Canadian prime ministers, and as such Barack Obama has limited ability to make concessions to Harper’s demands without the approval of security-conscious Congress. The upshot of Travers’s point is that Harper make more concessions than his U.S. counterpart, which given the economic inequality between the U.S. and Canada sort of seems obvious. Travers does make the very good point that Canadians will give Harper a lot of slack in negotiating a border agreement with the current president because they “trust and admire Obama.” Just imagine if these secretive talks were going on with George W. Bush. Iggy would be picking out curtains for the prime minister’s office.

In the Telegraph-Journal, Charles W. Moore says he hopes the Liberals will rethink their opposition to border harmonization, just as Jean Chretien reversed his anti-free trade stance once he got elected in 1993. To us in The Newsroom it’s not even clear the Liberals do oppose harmonization. If you read Igantieff’s column carefully, all he does is raise “concerns” and “questions” about Harper’s secrecy, a favourite talking point in Liberals’ efforts to depict the prime minister as an undemocratic despot.