Travel to the United States by road, rail and sea could undergo a major revamp as a result of an agreement set to be announced today between Canada and the U.S.
A U.S. government advisory says Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will announce a pre-clearance customs agreement at a ceremony in Washington.
The governments have been negotiating a legal arrangement that would allow customs agents into each other's countries — so that they can screen passengers away from the border, and ease bottlenecks there.
That process already exists in air travel, at eight airports.
People can clear U.S. customs in cities like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal and then, when they land, skip lines in U.S. airports.
The countries had signaled their intention to do the same for land and sea travel as part of the 2011 Beyond the Border deal between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama.
But they blew past a late-2012 deadline to reach a legal agreement that would allow law-enforcement officials to perform customs operations inside the neighbouring country. A little more than two years later, they may have finally reached that deal.
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