Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06MONTREAL1063
2006-10-05 20:01:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Consulate Montreal
Cable title:  

SNAPSHOT OF A BORDER COMMUNITY: MONTREAL WHTI

Tags:  CA CASC CMGT CPAS ECON KPAO PREL KTRD 
pdf how-to read a cable
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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MONTREAL 001063 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

WHA/CAN (ERVITI)

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/04/2016
TAGS: CA CASC CMGT CPAS ECON KPAO PREL KTRD
SUBJECT: SNAPSHOT OF A BORDER COMMUNITY: MONTREAL WHTI
OUTREACH

Classified By: CG Mary B Marshall for reasons 1.4b/d

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MONTREAL 001063

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

WHA/CAN (ERVITI)

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/04/2016
TAGS: CA CASC CMGT CPAS ECON KPAO PREL KTRD
SUBJECT: SNAPSHOT OF A BORDER COMMUNITY: MONTREAL WHTI
OUTREACH

Classified By: CG Mary B Marshall for reasons 1.4b/d


1. (SBU) Recently, as part of an ongoing WHTI outreach
program, Consul General Montreal and Econoff visited small
towns along the Quebec/US border to view how integrated the
border communities are, and discuss the impact of WHTI. An
example of completely integrated towns is the Stanstead,
Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont dynamic. The discussions with
border officials, school principals, mayors, police, media
representatives, and the business community offered insights
into community concerns over WHTI, the challenges posed by
unmanned border crossings to border security, and the scope
of US-Canadian law enforcement cooperation at the border.
This visit occurred before Congress passed legislation
amending WHTI requirements and allowing a delay up to June 1,
2009 if the Department of Homeland Security and the
Department of State are not ready to implement the program
sooner.

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Cross-border field trips and hockey practice
--------------


2. (SBU) Community life on both sides of the border is
closely integrated. On the south side of the border, the
communities are close-knit, but are economically depressed.
The Derby Line area itself is a Federally-designated poverty
area. The Derby Line Elementary school, which has 50% of its
students on a free or reduced-cost lunch program, is
considered one of the wealthier school districts in the area
(where some other schools have up to 80% of their students on
such lunch programs). The 400 students at Derby Elementary
school routinely take field trips across the border to
destinations in Quebec Province, such as the Granby zoo and
Montreal's Biodome and museums. Just as public schools have
to finance instruments for economically disadvantaged
students in order to offer a music program, Derby Elementary
would have to foot the bill for passport cards for students

whose parents could not afford the travel document.
According to the school's principal, a passport (or passport
card) requirement for students crossing the border would
force the school to cancel all such trips. "We can't exclude
five kids from a field trip for sixty because they can't
pay," the principal explained, adding that their budget
wouldn't cover paying for those students unable to afford the
card. The exception granted for school groups in the recent
legislation is a welcome reprieve for the schools along the
border.


3. (SBU) Border crossings in Derby Line/Stanstead have never
involved much fanfare, but are rather a routine part of life
in the area. Students from Derby Line have their "home"
hockey court in Quebec, and cross the border four or five
times a week to compete in games and to attend practice.
Children from Stanstead play basketball at the Derby Line
community center. Girls from Derby Line high schools rush to
the local mall in Sherbrooke, Quebec to buy prom dresses.
Fifth graders from Derby go swimming at Stanstead College
facilities. Children cross the border every day just to play
with their friends who happen to live on the other side of
the border.

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Unmanned crossings and border security
--------------


4. (C/NF) Stanstead has long held the dubious legacy of
serving as a hotbed for smugglers, especially during the
prohibition years; local urban folklore is replete with tales
of whisky being piped across the border in garden hoses.
Even today, the existence of three unmanned border crossings
in the area lends itself to smuggling and other illegal
activities, though, according to law enforcement agents at
the border, today's smuggling now tends to involve drugs and
human trafficking rings. With two manned border crossings
within 700 meters of one another, many have questioned the
need for these three additional unmanned crossings in the
vicinity. These unmanned border crossings are located on
residential roads, and are marked with only a sign stating
that individuals crossing must report to U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (CBP). Although it is not illegal to cross
the border at an unmanned entrance, it is illegal to do so
without reporting to CBP after entering. An example
traditionally cited in books and travel articles on Canada
and the U.S. is the Haskell Library and Opera House -- the
only library with its front door in the United States and its
books in Canada, with the border running right down the
center of its reading room, and the audience in the U.S. and
the stage in Canada upstairs in the opera house. In Beebe

MONTREAL 00001063 002 OF 003


Plain, Vermont, one side of the street has houses in the
U.S., while the other side is in Canada, creating an awkward
CBP reporting requirement for those wishing to visit their
neighbors.


5. (C/NF) Monitors in the U.S. CBP station view each
unmanned crossing. If border officials see a car that passes
through the crossing and does not report to CBP, they send a
car out to pursue the vehicle. Tourists unfamiliar with the
area have been known to end up crossing the border
inadvertently, and then have to explain themselves to the CBP
officer. The CBP officers can read the license number and get
the make of the car during the day, but at night the unmanned
crossings become significantly more difficult to control. At
night they might only see two headlights approaching, making
it difficult (if not impossible) to track down cars that do
not report to CBP. Cars crossing into Canada at these
unmanned ports, are "not well-monitored," according to one
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Derby
Line.


6. (C/NF) Until this summer, U.S. and Canadian citizens
sometimes passed through the border in Derby Line without
even a photo I.D. That changed in June 2006, when U.S.
border officials began to require a photo ID of all those
entering the U.S. Although border officials expected
resistance to the new procedures, they found that people
"soon fell in line" with the requirement, and by August,
"everyone had one."


7. (C/NF) The Integrated Border Enforcement Team (IBET)
located in Stanstead includes law enforcement officials from
both sides of the border (provincial and state police,
municipal police, and federal police, as well as border
officials) and meets regularly to address issues of mutual
importance, analyzing intelligence, identifying trends, and
developing ways to work together to solve problems at the
border. Although the head of the IBET team in Stanstead
acknowledged that most of the intelligence they have received
thus far has dealt with drug smuggling, the team hopes that
one day the informants will also pass on information relating
to more serious security/terrorist threats.

--------------
Shared cross-border emergency services
--------------


8. (SBU) Towns close to the U.S.-Canadian border in the
Derby Line area frequently have mutual aid agreements between
emergency services providers, and many residents worry about
the impact of a passport or passport-card requirement at the
border on the ability to cross the border in an emergency.
The chief of the Stanstead fire department told us that the
situation of emergency services providers crossing the border
is further complicated by the fact that not all firefighters
proceed to the scene of a fire in a fire truck. Frequently,
volunteer fire fighters will follow in their personal cars if
they are unable to make it to the station in time to go on
the fire truck. These border communities also tend to share
snow removal services and even their water supply.

--------------
Economic impacts
--------------


9. (SBU) According to U.S. border officials, many Canadians
cross the border in Derby Line in order to fill up their
tanks with cheaper U.S. gas. But the gas stations in Vermont
are not the only institutions to benefit from Canadian
visitor dollars. Jay Peak, a popular ski resort in Northern
Vermont, has a sizable percentage of its clientele from
Canada, and advertises aggressively in Montreal. Tourist
businesses, such as Jay Peak and restaurants, worry they will
suffer a real economic impact if potential customers are
scared off by the requirement of a passport/passport card.
Many of the export business contacts with whom we have
spoken, most of which do 90% or more of their business south
of the border, note that potential exporters will do
"whatever it takes" to remain in compliance with U.S. border
regulations in order to have continued access to the U.S.
market. But although large companies have significant
economic resources to devote to staying abreast of new border
crossing requirements and programs such as C-TPAT, small and
medium-sized enterprises have significantly less financial
margin for absorbing costs and making errors, and less
manpower to devote to border regulations. Companies in
Quebec, large and small, have a strong interest in
maintaining their access to the U.S. market, and request both
more information about the Western Hemisphere Travel

MONTREAL 00001063 003 OF 003


Initiative and on programs such as C-TPAT.

--------------
Comment
--------------


10. (SBU) We are planning more trips along the border and to
follow-up with our contacts to emphasize the timeline and
certification requirements recently enacted by the U.S.
Congress only delay, but do not dismiss, the requirements for
secure documentation at the border. The comments made by our
interlocutors during this trip have echoed those made during
the public comment period at meetings in Plattsburgh, NY and
Burlington, VT.
MARSHALL