It’s 9:00 p.m. and I’ve just returned from supper at a Moroccan restaurant three doors down from our hotel. I’m staying at the Palomar Hotel on P Street, about a mile north of the White House. Washington D.C. has a reputation for violence but this area around the hotel seems clean and safe.
Before supper, a member of our group — Stephanie Trudeau, who works with the liquor control board in Quebec — organized a visit to the Canadian Embassy. Her friend Jonathan Sauve is deputy spokesperson with the embassy’s media relations office. The embassy is on Pennsylvania Avenue within sight of the Capitol Building. It has this neat echo chamber just off the sidewalk. It’s like a concrete bandstand with a domed room. A whisper inside this chamber amplifies to a loud voice. The embassy could use this technique to get its message across more forcefully. Sauve says the biggest issue for the embassy right now is the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which is the U.S. policy that requires passports to enter the country. Air travelers already need one, and the requirement for land and sea travelers has been bumped back to June 1, 2009 at the earliest. Not only would Canadians need a passport to get in, but American travelers who visit Canada would need a passport to come home. The hope is that the U.S. will accept an enhanced drivers’ licence as an alternative, so the one-year delay gives us time to develop one that meets U.S. approval. The travel initiative is one part of a general “thickening” of the border between Canada and the U.S. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security now says “security trumps trade” and this is “worrying,” Sauve says. This thinking threatens the $561 billion per year in Canada-U.S. bilateral trade. It also reduces competition of North American industries built around an integrated economy. As Sauve notes, a North American-made car crosses the border seven times before it’s finished. Restrictions on this movement will add costs to North American-built cars, while Asian-made cars come into the U.S. only once. Sauve also notes that Canada is America’s No.1 energy supplier. One of the embassy’s jobs is to constantly remind U.S. elected officials and media of these facts. But with 170 other embassies in Washington and with a federal election going on, getting the message through is a challenge. Time to turbocharge the echo chamber.
Earlier in the day, we heard a presentation by Alan Levine. The associate professor with American University in D.C. gave a 90-minute introduction to the American republic system of government. I could have listened to Levine all day. He took a potentially dry topic and made it interesting with an animated and enthusiastic style. Every so often he raised his voice to a Jerry Seinfeld falsetto to make a key point. Levine talked about three tenets of the U.S. government system: separation of power, checks and balances, and federalism. I’ll give a brief summary of each:
—Separation of power. There are three key bodies in U.S. government: legislative (which is Congress, made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate), executive (the president) and judicial (the Supreme Court). In short, the House and Senate pass laws, the president and his cabinet carry out laws, and the Supreme Court provides a fair and impartial body to settle disputes.
—Checks and balances. Though Congress, the president and the Supreme Court have their separate duties, the spheres overlap to keep checks on each other. For example, the president can veto congressional decisions; Congress can override the president’s veto with two-thirds support in each chamber; the Supreme Court can deem laws passed by Congress to be unconstitutional; Congress can impeach the president; the Senate has to approve all treaties signed by the president; the Senate has to approve key appointments by the president; and while the president can take the country to war, Congress alone can declare war and Congress approves the war budget.
—Federalism. The federal government only performs those duties outlined in the constitution. States control welfare payments, speed limits, whether to have the death penalty, etc. (Most states governments are also set up with much the same system of separation of power and checks and balances.) Local governments are responsible for zoning, education and police. There are 17,600 independent police forces in the U.S.
Levine’s most interesting comments:
1. Since the constitution was first drawn up, in secret, and then passed in 1787, there have only been 27 amendments. All other changes have come through reinterpretation of the constitution by the Supreme Court.
2. Supreme Court judges are appointed for life. That is by design so judges can maintain their “moral authority” without having to fight — and make compromising promises — to get reelected.
3. Elected officials in Washington vote against their party 25 per cent of the time, on average.
4. There are over 87,000 local governments in the U.S., including counties, cities, townships, school boards and “special government districts” (such as water authorities). With federal, state and local government combined, the U.S. has 521,000 government offices. “This system of government was set up to prevent tyranny,” Levine says. “In doing so, it guaranteed that we will not have an efficient government, but given the alternative, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
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