The Province
OTTAWA — The Obama administration wants Canadians to pay to enter the United States to help ease that country’s desperate financial crunch.
A proposed “passenger inspection” fee is outlined in the draft 2012 U.S. federal budget that has been sent to Congress. If adopted, the charge is expected to be levied against millions of commercial air and marine travelers from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, the only nations now exempt from the fee, and generate $110 million annually.
The fee would not apply to automobile traffic.
It’s a good step in closing the revenue and spending gap but it’s mice nuts. Still, rid the exemption is a good idea.
However, the real change is chopping (1) defense spending and (2) entitlement spending.
The GOP Congress and Obama are playing “you go first” nonsense. It needs to stop.
Cut defense by 30% , cut entitlements by 20%
$5.50 to GROPE YOUR CROTCH ??? Does it come with a “Happy Ending” ?
I’m all for it – as long as it is done honestly.
At US customs there should be a uniformed TSA guard with a Tim Hortons cup asking Canadians if they can spare a few $ for a country down on it’s luck.
JimD – that’s $5.50 Canadian. So the best you can hope for is a “happy Meal”.
Five and a half bucks? That’s not even a scratch on what we owe. So, let’s piss off the few friends we have left.
On the other hand, a couple dozen a day should cover the salaries of all the TSA fast-food rejects.
Forget it.
Based on a cursory Value-For-Money evaluation, it simply isn’t worth it, Canucks.
$5.50 is nothing. Go to Argentina. Americans are charged $138 for entering the country, and upwards of $30 to LEAVE the country.
$5.50? Please.
#7 – yes but Argentina (like Chile) is a proper 3rd world nation with rampant inflation and a struggling democracy after years of military dictatorships.
The US is new to all this – they have to start somewhere.
It sounds the same as the Visa Waiver program a number of European countries are part of, where we have to pay $14 and register ourselves in the ESTA system to be able to get on a flight to the US, which is basically a security tax as well.
Canada should charge a $100 departure tax to Canadians. See how the towns on the other side of the US border survive without Canadian shoppers. How Miami and Fort Lauderdale deal with less Canadians. And finally how US airlines deal with the loss of through traffic on their International flights.
This kind of stuff always creates quid pro quo. When tourism by Canadians to the US accounts for over $3 billion dollars for Florida, $1 billion for California and over $900 million to New York and Nevada, I wonder where that extra $5.50 is really going to be coming from…. wrong place to tax.
Costs that much to go to Starbucks in the mornin’.
I guess it would be much harder to cut some of the pork that is rampant in the budget.
And, yes, I can see how five bucks each, totaling $110,000.000.00 would “ease [the} financial crunch”.
One hundred ten million dollars. Isn’t that about half what Obama’s India vacation cost???
You want to start easing the crunch, make the sock monkey and his bitch stay home.
Really?
I gave up on travel to the US some time ago (unless “forced to” for work).
Do you people want to have ANY friends at all?
Your foreign policies have put you in this position (TSA, DHS, Trillions of dollars spent) and this ain’t helping.
I’ve said this numerous times …
I’ve never met an individual American I didn’t like.
But, as a group, you guys are frickin’ scary.
Signed,
A friendly but increasingly nervous Northern neighbour*.
/T.
* Don’t start! that’s how we spell it up here.
I’m Canadian and I am more than willing to pay $5.50 to enter the USA. I imagine that it will take a year or two to implement this idea… by then, $5.50 USD should be worth about a toonie. I can spare a toonie to help a brother out.
All nations should impose these fees. It does “cost money” to provide entrance “services” and why should the poor of one country provide those fees for the rich of another country?
#1–Dallas==stop eating the PUKE lies. -or- ok, eat what you wish, but don’t regurgitate their, now your, garbage here: “ENTITLEMENT PAYMENTS” as can be variously defined are not the problem. IT’S THE LACK OF TAX REVENUE that is the main issue. Medicare/ciad as a health delivery system can be controlled by Single Payer System and Death Panels while Soc Sec has zero negative budget impact==not a little as Obama has said, he’s eating the same shit you are. ((SS deficit is “definitional” too as the money has all been looted and will have to be paid back–in reality, yes, a TOTAL deficit.))
No important serious issue can be “solved” by blindly or pig-headedly ignoring half the equation. Pay attention.
Many Canadians go down to the US fairly regularly for no other reason then things are generally cheaper in your country.
Encouraging Canadians to come down as often as possible to spend their money might be a better idea.
I’ll agree with JCD on this one. You don’t charge an entry fee, you let them come in then hit them with a exit fee to GTFO.
The Monster’s Lawyer said in #4, “JimD – that’s $5.50 Canadian. So the best you can hope for is a “happy Meal”.”
You haven’t seen the exchange rate lately.
My Canadian assets are worth more and earning more up there than my US assets are worth and earning down here.
If it was $5.50 US I could just laugh it off. $5.50 CDN is real money…
I’d have thought the guys grabbing your nuts, the retina scans, and the finger printing would have been enough to turn anyone off visiting “The land of the free”… frankly, if anyone is dumb enough to visit in the first place they are dumb enough to pay $5.50 ….
Is this another example of “Trains good, planes (and boats,) bad?
Thank heavens I take the AmTrack Adirondak between NY Grand Central and Montréal Central.
I don’t have to care…
”The fee would not apply to automobile traffic.”
Really? Just more “Trains good, planes bad” meme?
#11 1873 Colt
It doesn’t seem to bother anyone else around here, so I guess I’m elected to say you, sir, are racist, traitorous scum.
I understand racism is pretty much accepted as normal by JCD when it comes to this particular President but doesn’t anyone else think traitorous scum should be tried and hanged – without delay?
Although $5.50 sounds like nothing and other countries do indeed have higher fees, we should put this into perspective:
Canada is the US’s largest trading partner by a long shot and the #1 source of foreign air traffic. Charging even a small entrance fee could be detrimental to cross border trade. 35 of 50 states call Canada their #1 trading partner, not each other state. Business and pleasure travel is a good part of that.
So please, don’t piss off the over-taxed Canadians. We need their money 😉
#21 – Cut him some slack Reagan. Hes clearly still dealing with the culture shock of time traveling from 1873. He didn’t like the Escher “devil machine” either.
His racism would be quaint if it weren’t so dangerous.
#20 – I think it’s more the cost of fitting a row of turnstiles 5500 miles long.
$5.50 isn’t going to fix the US federal deficit.
Do all Canadians a favour, make it $55,000.00.
Sorry, the US has many, many nice people. But crossing the border is just no longer worth it.
stupid idea that will cost border cities like Buffalo and Detroit more than it will make for uncle O. How about hitting up the guys with the real money for a proportionate share to support the country that make their wealth possible. Just a thought.
The Canadians will pay, but how do you collect from the tunneling Mexicans, oh yea just planes and boats get taxed…no more canoeing on the Columbia.
Apparently a few MP’s from a couple of parties like the Obama Tax as it allows them to present a reciprocal arrangement to the US ambassador at their next meeting. Canada will charge $11.00 for Americans to come here and since there are roughly three times as many of them that visit Canada any given year, we will be ahead about $660 M. The guy in the previous comment figured that $5.50 should be worth @ a toonie so you do the numbers. Bonus. And I disagree with many of my American friends who are positive Obama is a synonym for TWIT. There are more descriptive approaches.
It’s outrageous to charge Canadian tourists anything to enter the U.S. considering the amount of money we spent while visiting. Perhaps $5.50 is but a token fee, but if we stayed home to protest the mere principle of it, the U.S. would stand to lose far more money in lost Canadian tourism because we are the most frequent visitors.
It simply isn’t good economic policy to drive away the tourism business of their nearest neighbour and largest trading partner when they desperately need it because their economy is an absolute wreck.
I thought the world of Obama at first but he’s made a lot of stupid mistakes. God forbid any of those psycho Republicans should get elected, however. I imagine the U.S. becoming something akin to Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead if one of those religious zealots took over.