BTB 2.0? Stakeholders Crowdsourcing Site Promises Increased Collaboration and New Ideas for BtB and RCC

From BtBObserver, who reports on the new BtB crowdsourcing site Idea Scale: 

Have an idea to make the Canada-U.S. economic and border relationship run smoother? Crossborder stakeholders want to hear your ideas. And they may just shape the work of the Beyond the Border (BtB) Initiative and the Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC).

Pacific Northwest Economic Region (PNWER), Canadian American Business Council, U.S. Chamber and other US-Canada partnering organizations have launched Idea Scale, a crowdsharing website where crossborder enthusiasts can post and comment on ideas to improve the Canada-U.S. regulatory relationship.

Check out Idea Scale here.  Whether sharing ideas or just monitoring the mystical art of crossborder regulatory transformation, the site is definitely worth regular visits.

Why Reading Reports Is Clutch: GAO’s Important Report on the National Critical Infrastructure Prioritization, and the Underwhelming Press Release

By Keith Edmund White

Editor-in-Chief

GAO releases a report, which by a press release, seems like a simple 'turn in your homework' admonition regarding the U.S. federal program that prioritizes sites in the U.S. where we really don't want bad things to happen.  But, as Keith White shows, when the report it read, you might be a little worried about how well DHS is handling this list, and the resulting federal funds and programs that accompany it.  And yes, Canada factors in too.

  

GAO releases a report on the National Critical Infrastructure Prioritization Program (NCIPP).  This report lists places where the U.S. government would really not want bad things to happen.

I got the report through a third-party information gatherer I'll keep unnamed, who summarized it as such:

“In a new report, GAO finds that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not sufficiently met statutory requirements to report annually to congressional committees. Specifically, DHS needs to work on how it identifies critical infrastructure such that it is consistent with the National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP). GAO recommends the DHS commission an external peer review to develop an approach to verify the quality and timing of annual reports.”

Sounds like a not too consequential, and likely dull, report.

Then I read the report.

DHS has made several changes to its criteria for including assets on the NCIPP list. These changes initially focused on introducing criteria to make the lists entirely consequence based, with subsequent changes intended to introduce specialized criteria for some sectors and assets. DHS’s changes to the NCIPP criteria have changed the composition of the NCIPP list, which has had an impact on users of the list. However, DHS does not have a process to identify the impact of these changes on users nor has it validated its approach for developing the list.

And who are these affected users?

Oh, just FEMA when it’s doling out Urban Area Security Initiative grants. And the Protective Security Advisor Program, you know the department that conducts actual site visits and vulnerability assessments to owners of critical infrastructure.

Our analysis shows that changes to the NCIPP list can have an impact on users of the list, specifically, FEMA’s allocation of UASI grant funds and PSAs’ ability to prioritize outreach and conduct site visits for its protection programs. Our analysis of the FEMA risk formula shows that a change in the number of NCIPP-listed assets located in a city has an impact on a city’s relative risk score. Our analysis also shows that current UASI grant allocations are strongly associated with a city’s current relative risk score. Therefore, a change in the number of NCIPP-listed assets located in a city can have an impact on the level of grant funding it receives. For example, in fiscal year 2012, FEMA allocated approximately $490 million in UASI grant funds to the 31 cities with the highest relative risk scores out of 102 eligible cities nationwide. Our analysis of FEMA’s risk formula showed that, at the minimum, if the number of level 2 assets is increased or decreased by as few as two for each city, it would change the relative risk score for 5 of the 31 cities that received fiscal year 2012 UASI grant funding. Such a change could result in increased or decreased grant funding allocations for the affected cities. The changes in the relative risk scores tend to affect cities in the middle to the bottom of the top 31 list because there is generally a larger gap between the relative risk scores of those cities at the top of the list than those in the middle to bottom of the list. However, even a small change in grant funding could have an impact on a city, especially if that city does not traditionally receive other federal assistance as compared with cities with higher risk scores.

And yeah, this might have a significant impact:

While the change to an entirely consequence-based list created a common approach to identify infrastructure and align the program with the statute and NIPP, recent and planned criteria changes to accommodate certain sectors and assets represent a departure from this common approach, which could hinder DHS’s ability to compare infrastructure across sectors.

Go intra-agency coordination!  NCIPP, FEMA, and PSA are all housed in one federal department, the Dept. of Homeland Security, and information-sharing problems seem to linger.

But let's not get too snarky.  DHS is taking on the arduous task of changing the, at times politicized, NCIPP list.  Getting more Congressional oversight on this hot-bottom item will bring, whatever its numerous benefits, will bring increased political pressures on a program--especially in the lean (or not so lean) times of sequestration.

WaPo Misses a Tree for the Forest: Is Canada the Biggest Sequester Winner?

By Keith Edmund White
Editor-in-Chief

WaPo misses the mark, and Canada may be the sequestration-avoidance winner.

Today the Washington Post (WaPo) reports on how one federal program 'beat' the sequester, highlighting Department of Agricultural's ability to snag meat inspectors funding. WaPo's take on the strategy: If one Agricultural program could win, so can others; ergo, sequester isn't playing out the way we want.

Well, the conclusion's sound: Sequestration isn't playing out the way some commentators said it would. But seeing as sequestration really starts today, it seems a little early to be writing sequester's post-script. And sequester 2.0, i.e. next year's cuts called for in the 10-year cost-cutting plan, still have to be played out.
But, less impressive, is WaPo's omission that the FY13 continuing resolution that enshrines sequester in the final six months of the current fiscal year (FY), which one Agr. program avoided, came along with four new FY13 appropriation packages.
So, really, Defense, Homeland Security (DHS), Commerce/Justice/State, Veterans Affairs/Military Construction all 'beat' sequestration to varying extents. In fact, DHS got roughly the same agency-wide funding as it did last budget cycle.
I doubt these agencies will be asking Agr. Secretary Tom Vislack for sequester advice any time soon.
To sum-up: WaPo mistakes a tree for the forest, and--in so doing--misses the gravity of sequestration's interesting FY13 implementation. And then WaPo gets tree myopia, and doesn't really illuminate sequestration's 10-year 'loop'.

But, perhaps more interesting to readers, is figuring out what country has benefited the most from FY13's unusual sequestration implementation.Given the extensive military acquisition, trade, and border security relationship between Canada and the United States, maybe WaPo should cast Canada as sequestration's Biggest Winner.

Healthcare: The Canadian Fiscal Crisis that America Would Love to Have

By Keith Edmund White

Editor-in-Chief

Canada's provinces are beginning to rein in healthcare spending, which means they are putting the breaks on near-double digit percent annual increases.  Sure, this is the beginning of a decade-delayed 'new reality' regarding raising healthcare spending.  But, as Keith White reports, if Canadian spending on healthcare constitutes a crisis, it's a crisis the United States would love to catch.

Jeffrey Simpson at The Globe & Mail highlights a big shift in how provinces are dealing with healthcare spending, and the possibility that provinces may need to start coming to gripes with containing healthcare spending.

After a decade allowing healthcare budgets to increase, all provinces, save one (i.e. Quebec), are holding back on healthcare spending.  Why?   Budgets are shrinking; healthcare costs are raising; and, after years of avoidance, provincial debts have to be reckoned with.

But the lurking sense of 'doom and gloom' in Simpson's article could easily bemuse an American observer.

BTBObserver Highlights Evolving Canada-U.S. Economic Relationship

The Canada-U.S. trade relationship is still going strong, it's just changing.

From Woodrow Wilson's Beyond the Border Observer, highlighting a profound take-away from a Financial Post article detailing a still-strong Canada-U.S. trading relationship:

Wednesday’s Financial Post has a fascinating piece on the importance and changing nature the Canada-U.S. economic relationship.  With so much attention paid to diversifying Canada’s trade portfolio, its importance to emphasis the unique and lasting value a close Canada-U.S. economic partnership has for both nations.

The driving question in Canada-U.S. trade isn’t whether Canada and the United States look for new traders partners.  Rather, it’s whether they harness their relationship in order to succeed in the 21st century global marketplace.

Can You Be Pro-Free Trade and Increase 1,000+ Tariffs? Sure, Just Ask Canada

Nailing down a nation’s trade policy can be tricky. 

 Just look at the trade policies of Canada under conservative Prime Minster Stephen Harper. 

Sure, Canada’s Conservative government is pushing regional and bi-national trade pacts.

But, in Canada’s latest federal budget, there are 1,253 tariffs increases. The fiscal impact: adding $300 million to Canada’s ~$5 billion in existing tariff revenues.

Read all of Stephen Gordon’s excoriation in Maclean’s here. (Note: Terence Corcoran’s Financial Post article earlier this week makes the same point). Below are some highlights:

...Yes, there were those 37 tariff reductions, but there was also the measure to ‘modernize’ Canada’s General Preferential Tariff (GPT) regime by ‘graduating’ 72 countries from the GPT; imports from these countries will now face higher tariffs. Mike Moffatt estimates those 37 tariff reductions will be accompanied by 1,290 tariff increases. By my count, there are 84 GPT countries, but I still haven’t been able to track down a list of which countries will be removed from the GPT (Update: Mike Moffatt informs me 12 of these already have separate agreements with Canada, so that brings it to 72). The budget does name some examples: Korea, China (second-most important source of imports to Canada), Korea (seventh) and Brazil (twelfth), and the GPT countries as a group account for more than 20 per cent of imports. This measure is expected to generate some $300 million in extra revenues, on top of about $5 billion in existing excise duty revenues.

So instead of a unilateral reduction in tariffs, the government is planning a unilateral increase. This is not how a pro-trade government behaves. (Imports from the countries with which the Conservatives have negotiated free trade agreements are dwarfed by those from China alone.)


…

I still can’t get my head around the truly bizarre notion that low tariffs are a subsidy to other countries on the part of Canadian taxpayers, especially since raising tariffs requires Canadian taxpayers to cough up an additional $300 million a year to the government. But if we needed any more evidence that this government is not serious about free trade, here it is. Instead of viewing cheaper imports as a way of increasing consumers’ purchasing power, the Conservative government views them as a problem to be solved.

After seven years in power, the Conservative trade legacy consists of higher tariffs and more obstacles to foreign investment. The Council of Canadians must be thrilled.

More on DHS's New FY13 Budget

By Keith Edmund White
Editor-in-Chief

More resources on just what DHS's budget, which became official yesterday when President Obama's signed the Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 Continuing Resolution appropriations bill.

(Note:  Author appreciates readers bringing the documents cited below to his attention.)

Readers will find three primary documents below outlining the DHS budget for the remaining 6 months of Fiscal Year (YR) 2013.