Canada-U.S. Nexus dispute ‘should be an easy one to resolve’: industry minister

"I would say this should be an easy one to resolve, because after all, this is about making sure that the border is as fluid as possible," he said.

Canada‘s clash with the United States over the Nexus trusted-traveller program should be resolved well before the president and prime minister meet in December, Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said Friday.

Champagne, who was in Washington, D.C., to meet with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, said he raised the issue with his U.S. counterpart as an example of a situation that would be in the interest of both countries to solve promptly.

“If I look at the challenges that we’re facing, I would say this should be an easy one to resolve, because after all, this is about making sure that the border is as fluid as possible,” he told a news conference.

“I certainly hope that we can resolve this issue way before the president and the prime minister (meet). I think there’s an understanding on both sides that what we want at this time is fluidity.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to sit down with President Joe Biden when the two leaders meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the so-called Three Amigos summit in Mexico City in December.

A face-to-face between Trudeau and Biden could come sooner than that, however: Biden has yet to make his long-promised, oft-delayed first visit to Canada since becoming president. White House officials have refused to say when that trip might take place.

While Nexus enrolment centres in the U.S. have been open since April, the 13 centres in Canada have remained closed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

That’s because Customs and Border Protection won’t send U.S. agents to staff them unless they get the same measure of legal protection agents currently have at ports of entry like airports and the Canada-U.S. border.