Automated border post being tested

Quebec crossing operated from Hamilton

OTTAWA • First there were automated drive-through car washes. Then automated drive-through banks. Now, the government is experimenting with an automated drive-through border crossing.

While the fate of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border promised by president-elect Donald Trump remains uncertain, the federal government is carrying out a pilot project with an opposite aim: to use the latest technology to ease the flow of traffic across the border with the U.S.

If you drive into Quebec via the crossing at Morses Line, Vt., after 4 p.m. on any day, no live customs agent will stop and interrogate you. Instead, a gate opens and you drive into a large, garage-like building. There, under the gaze of several TV cameras, you are invited by a customs officer to insert your passport or other border ID into a document reader and are asked the usual questions put to visitors seeking to enter Canada.

The customs officer addressing you over a microphone is located at a service centre operated by the Canadian Border Services Agency in Hamilton, Ont.

“So far, it’s going very well. We’ve seen an increase in the use of the border crossing,” said Dominique McNeely, a spokesman for the agency. The experiment’s budget is $16 million, most of which has been spent on the new building and its high-tech equipment. The yearlong pilot program ends in a couple of months, at which time it will be decided whether to expand it to include other small crossings.

A total of 117 crossings dot the U.S.-Canada border from B.C. to New Brunswick. The bulk of the traffic uses a dozen crossings near big Canadian cities, but there are many secondary crossings, like Morses Line, that mostly serve local populations whose economic and family ties across the border date back generations.

“It’s tough to shut them down, but they’re expensive to staff,” said Bill Andersen, director of the Cross-Border Initiative at the University of Windsor. “You have small towns that depend on them being open.”

Morses Line has been eyed by government costcutters on both sides of the border for years. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security proposed closing its border point there, noting that as few as 40 vehicles a day used it. Local residents lobbied hard to have the decision overturned, only to find the Canadian government cutting back hours of operation on its side. Instead of operating from 8 a.m. to midnight, the Canadian border point began closing at 4 p.m., and travellers were told to head to a much larger crossing 13 km away at Highgate Springs, Vt.

The union representing 10,000 border guards thinks the automated-crossing experiment is a waste of money and a threat to security. “To cut two jobs, they’ve invested $16 million,” said Jean-Pierre Fortin, the union president. “We are the first line of defence for this country. Technology should be there to assist us, not to replace us.”

Fortin said that if criminals were to be flagged they could easily abandon their cars and escape on foot, with no guard around to stop them. Also, he says, there is no way a camera can determine whether a driver has been drinking and driving.

CBSA says that no jobs have been lost, since the alternative was a border closed 16 hours a day, and that the automated post is more secure than simply having a gate across the highway.

CANADA BORDER SERVICES AGENCY The Canadian border crossing at Morses Line, Vt., is unstaffed after 4 p.m. for the duration of a yearlong experiment designed to ease traffic flow. Would-be visitors to Canada speak instead to a customs officer working remotely.