Proposal of U.S. Border Crossing Fee from Canadians Receives Disapproval from Both

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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A proposal of a “land border crossing fee” exclusively for the Canadians travelling into the U.S. has received resistance from both sides of the border. The 2014 budget of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security proposed a tax on Canadians travelling south. It presented a study on the costs to collect funds from vehicles and pedestrians making their way into the U.S.

The Canadians against the levy have labeled the proposal as completely “misguided” and “exactly the wrong way to go.” Whereas, it was relatively unnoticed in the U.S. until Congressman, Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), expressed great surprise upon hearing of it late last week. He alleged that “putting up barriers to regional and binational commerce is the absolute last thing we should be doing if we want to grow the economies of Western New York and the U.S.” Higgins added that “I was shocked to see a proposal for a new toll at the Northern Border and I will fight to put the brakes on this short-sighted fee.”

The president of Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Perrin Beatty, expressively condemned the proposal on Monday morning, stating that “it flies in the face of the intention of the joint border accord.” Beatty alleged that the “the purpose there was to make the border more transparent to legitimate trade, and legitimate travellers; and what this does is to bureaucratize the border, make it stickier, more costly and thicker.” He further pointed out that “it’s exactly the wrong way to go.”