National Affairs
Let's all get a grip, shall we?
Claire Hoy

Here's the thing. Having just returned from a trip to Europe and Iran, I can tell you that it wouldn't have been possible without my good old Canadian passport. Indeed, to get into Iran - and countless other countries around the world - a passport isn't enough. You need to get a visa as well.

And so it goes.

Almost anywhere you go in the world demands a passport. It's one of the best - and safest - travel documents we have, so it's not surprising that most countries want you to produce one before you put your feet on their soil.

Which brings us, of course, to all the hullaballoo over the U.S. decision that beginning this week, Canadian visitors will need a passport to enter the States. Former Tory MP Garth Turner - still pouting as an independent because he didn't get into cabinet - was, once again, mouthing off late last week about the apparent horrors of many of this constituents who were about to miss out on their holidays and/or business trips because they didn't have a passport.

There are two words to say about these people: too bad.

For Turner or anybody else to take the approach that their lack of a passport is anybody's fault but their own is yet another symptom of the modern-day malady which posits that people are never responsible for themselves.

The controversy over the changing passport regulations has been raging for well over a year.

Where have these knuckleheads been?

It's not as if getting a passport is that difficult or expensive or time consuming. All you've got to do is fill out a few forms, get a picture, get official signatures, write a cheque, and, presto, a few weeks later you'll have your very own passport.

As long as you're able to spell your own name and address, you should be able to pull it off.

The United States - and Canada, and every country in the world - is completely entitled to say to visitors that if you're going to visit our country you need a valid, recognized passport. Period. End of story.

Yet to hear some Canadians carping on about this administrative change by the Americans, you'd think the world is about to end.

According to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, 94 per cent of Americans and 96 per cent of Canadians were already carrying passports when they arrived in the U.S. by air earlier this month.

The new U.S. rules - called the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative - dictates that from now on, all air travelers entering the U.S. MUST have a passport.

Only about 28 per cent of all Americans already carry passports - and they've been getting them at a pace of a million a month since the changes were announced many months ago - and the second part of the U.S. plan is that beginning in June, 2009, Americans who cross into Canada by land will need a passport of PASS card. Canadians will also need some sort of secure card to go to the U.S. by land, but the precise nature of the card is still being negotiated by U.S. and Canadian officials.

This is the area which has Canadian officials worried. After all, if Americans stop coming to Canada because they don't have the necessary pass to get by the border, the Conference Board of Canada says it could cost Canada 14 million U.S. visitors and $3.6 billion in lost tourism revenues over five years ending in 2010.

Maybe. Maybe not. Such catastrophic prognostications, of course, are based on the notions that just because most Americans now don't have passports - likely because they haven't needed them - they won't be inclined to follow the new rules and get one, but will opt to stay home instead.

No doubt some will. But we're not talking about onerous expenses and bureaucratic nightmares here.

I can't imagine, for example, all those thousands upon thousands of Americans who come north every summer to their cottages in Muskoka, Haliburton and elsewhere, will suddenly throw up their hands and let their cottages gather dust because they might have to have a passport.

So let's simply get a grip, shall we?

If you don't have a passport and you want to travel somewhere, get a passport. It's as simple as that.

And if you don't have one when you get to the airport - or, later on, to the borders - well then, it's your problem.

Stay home.