Letters to the Editor
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This Sounds Good To Me
"America's Northern states would fit more amicably into a union with Ontario and Nova Scotia than the one with Arizona and Texas."
Can we get a vote on this? I'd love to secede from Jesusland.
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I Feel Safer Already!
How long will it be before we need passports to go to Hawaii and Alaska? How long before going from Michigan to Illinois? Ridiculous, you say? I say you can't ever be too safe from terrorists looking to kill us and destroy our way of life, and why do you hate America so much?
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DHS Are Idiots
Every summer I vacation in Sauble Beach, Ontario (I am from Michigan), in Cottage Country. Last year the crossing from Somba, Ont. to Marine City, Mich, a 5 minute ferry ride, took me 2 hours. That was before I had to empty my entire car. Why? Because I was alone and carrying all my family's gear. The genius customs inspector took my ID (passport), disappeared for 15 minutes, all the while cars were lined up behind me as it is a single booth crossing. Which meant the next ferry could not unload. And so forth.
I have my reservation for this summer and will enjoy my Canadian neighbors' hospitality as always.
The trip back to the USA, I dread.
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Of course that greasy 30% THC Vancouver Hydro couldn't have anything to do with it?
Could it?
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Let's cut to the quick
When you're scared enough to begin treating friends like enemies, the terrorists have won.
You cannot stop a determined terrorist, but you can act like you're not continually afraid.
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SueNJ
To confirm what another poster tried to clarify, under the old system you had to have two signatures from someone from a long list of professions considered to have some kind of authority - a doctor, dentist, school principal, etc.
Now two signatures from any other Canadian with a valid passport who will vouch for you is enough.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6m2gbn
As for the guy who claims our health care system is in a state of total collapse, I can only echo another poster's curiosity about why Americans are threatened to the point of aggression by our health care system - even to the point of dragging criticism of it into every discussion of Canada. Even discussions that have nothing whatsoever to do with health care. Like this one.
Curious.
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The EU is NOT a single country
Umm, sorry to break it to those of you who think the European Union is one country, but it ain't quite (yet) so. If it were, you'd have one EU passport rather than 27.
It's true that you can travel throughout most of the Union reasonably freely (but then again, try entering the UK -- an EU country, no less -- without a passport), and that you can even (theoretically, and sometimes practically) work in other EU countries. However, even EU citizens need valid residence permits to live in other EU countries.
It's also true that some laws and regulations passed in Brussels do have to be "implemented" throughout the union, yet there are still a lot of differences (divorce and child support rules being one example that I'm having to deal with right now, for instance).
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Afraid of the U.S. Border
After 9/11, I stopped going to the United States, and I still don't go, even though from Montreal going to NYC or Boston is easier, and has more to offer, than going to Toronto. It's far less of a hassle to fly to Paris from Montreal than it is to chance the U.S. border.
I am afraid of American border guards. They wield far too much power with impunity, they're equipped with an intimidating amoung of hardware, and they seem quite often to actively dislike Canadians. There isn't a Canadian to have crossed the border who doesn't have a horror story of border guards having a bad day.
Moreover, U.S. border guards do not have to permit entry to Canadians who have been granted full federal pardons for criminal convictions older than seven years. You can travel anywhere in the world with a Canadian pardon, but U.S. border guards refuse to remove pardoned Canadians from their data bases, and so may choose, on a whim, to turn away anyone with convictions from any era, no matter that the country in which these convictions occurred -- a friendly ally -- has granted full legal clemency.
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Israelis are not required to register as agents of a foreign power in the US
Remember those five Mossad agents arrested on 9/11/01 after being witnessed high-fiving one another and dancing as they videotaped the WTC towers collapsing? Not Iraqi intelligence agents, not Iranian intelligence agents, Israeli intelligence agents.
Yeah, check those papers at the Canadian border. Squeeze my grandma's boobs at the airport.
Jonathan Pollard to the white courtesy phone... dual citizenship / split loyalty not questioned here...
All of Bush43's evils need to be hammered back out again, one by one. This country ought to be restored to what it once was.
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McClelland is a bigot.
Proof: "Mastronardi is Italian, first of all, so he's more verbose than most of his countrymen."
Since he's Italian can I assume, that on top of being 'verbose', he sings Opera while puttering around the kitchen making Mama's ravioli?
Also, I know plenty of 'verbose', and down right loud ass Canadians of non Italian extraction.
Geez. Stop thinking in cliches dude then re-write your article accordingly.
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RFID
It's nice to see the problems with the RFID system being mentioned. I despaired of ever seeing it mentioned anywhere other than The Saint Albans Messenger, my local paper. You should also be aware that because of the DHS's One Face at the Border the waiting lines at the border are only going to get longer aas one border guard now gets to do the job of three. I know I don't feel any safer.
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Welcome to Vermont! (we wish)
Edward McClelland should have stretched his trip a little farther east. Vermont and Quebec are so joined at the hip that most of the families in the northern tier of counties have French (or formerly French) names. Last week a friend of mine was appearing in a play in the historic opera house in Derby Line. The seats are in the US, the stage in Canada. In the town library, the line runs between the reference room and the circulation desk. Some people's houses are built on the line; in theory, they can't go to the bathroom without a passport.
Will sanity ever return to this country, or should we just all move to Canada?