Unfinished Business: Canada-US Border and Regulatory Cooperation

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Excerpted from Inside Policy February-March 2013 MacDonald Laurier Institute

Launched a year ago the Regulatory Cooperation and Beyond the Border Initiatives are making progress even if they are not generating headlines. The re-election of the Obama Administration, with its commitment to create jobs through doubling trade, offers the promise of more to come.  It is easier for people and goods to cross the border and we should see more improvements. While the regulatory thicket remains, its growth is curbed and, in time, we may even see some trimming of the ‘tyranny of small differences’ that frustrates business and undermines North American competitiveness. While process is often a placebo for real progress, in these initiatives process is progress but for it to take hold we need to see attitudinal change on the part of those who mind the border…