National Affairs
Licence plan 'aggressive stupidity'?
Claire Hoy
Goethe, the great 18th century German writer and philosopher, put it best, saying: "There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." Which brings us, of course, to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty requiring passports need for Canadian passports to travel in the United States.

At the moment, you only need a passport if you're heading to the States by air. But by June 2009 - or maybe even as early as January 2008 - you'll also need a Canadian passport if you're arriving by ground transportation as well. It is true that except for a short period during the U.S. Civil War in the 1860s - where Abraham Lincoln's administration was angered by what they saw as Canada's support for the Confederates and therefore imposed a shortterm rule requiring passports - Canadians have been free to travel to the U.S. without a passport, requiring nothing more than a driver's licence, often less than that.

But 9/11 changed all that. The Americans, as part of their ongoing plans to tighten up security, made it clear two years earlier that they would soon be demanding that their Canadian visitors have passports.

So what has the response been from Canada?

For the most part, howls of outrage and screams of protest.

Hence, McGuinty's latest trip to Washington, where on Monday he opened three days of talks with officials seeking an alternative to the Bush administration requirement for passports for Canadians arriving in the U.S. by land.

McGuinty's plan is an upgraded driver's licence scheme which the Americans have already said won't do the trick. For one thing, you can have driver's licence and not be a citizen, a rather significant loophole.

Still, McGuinty boasts that he already has Manitoba Premier Gary Doer and New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham on side - they too will be meeting some of the 50 American governors gathered in Washington for their annual meeting - along with meetings with various U.S. congressional pals. McGuinty says that British Columbia has also signed on to his upgraded driver's licence scheme.

He claims our new driver's licence would lead North America in providing "cutting edge" security features, and he plans to work with the federal government to seek a way to have citizenship encoded in the licence.

Which brings us back to Goethe's comment about "aggressive stupidity." To wit: what's the point or wasting money on a new document when people simply need to get off their butts, quit complaining, and go get a passport?

That was essentially the message published in the Toronto Star from former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Paul Frazer - now a consultant in Washington - who pointed out that it's fine to lobby for alternative documents if you want, but "the law is coming down the track and border communities have to be protected."

His suggestion is that instead of fighting about the inconvenience of obtaining passports - and really, how inconvenient is it? - both Canada and the U.S. would be better served by aggressively marketing the need for passports jointly and making moves to make obtaining passports cheaper and faster.

Exactly.

Any Canadian who has ever traveled anywhere else in the world outside of Canada and the U.S. already knows that at the very least you need an up-to-date passport. For many countries, you also have to go to the extra trouble and expense to get a visa as well.

This issue about requiring passports has been around now for about two years. Recently our media was full of Canadians whining and sniveling because they couldn't get their passports in time for their planned Spring break vacations. Why couldn't they? Because of the enormous backlog. And why is there an enormous backlog? Because so many of these Canadians were too lazy and/or too stupid to do what has to be done to either renew their passports or get their first one.

It's not exactly an onerous process you know. You just have to fill out some forms, get a picture taken, write a cheque, and send it off.

If you waited until the last minute - or even the last couple of months, knowing that the new rules were coming into place - then it's your own damn fault.

Wouldn't it be nice for McGuinty, rather than traipsing around at public expense playing the big shot - as if anybody in Washington really cares what he thinks - to stand up in the public arena and say, 'sorry folks, if you didn't get your passport, you're out of luck. But you can still get one in time for the next set of rules.'

But then, that would be putting the blame where it belongs. And that's not what politicians do, is it?