“It is a real border, and we need to address it as a real border.”

That’s what U.S. Homeland Security Janet Napolitano insisted about the U.S.-Canadian border at a Washington, D.C. conference on border issues this week.

CBC News quoted Napolitano as saying, “People are used to going back and forth, and the hockey teams go back and forth…. People just don’t think of it as two different countries. But the reality exists that there’s a border there.”

In a Globe & Mail article about the event, headlined “Obama’s message: Glory days of open border are gone,” columnist John Ibbitson wrote that Napolitano’s goal was “…to throw a bucket of reality on anyone who hoped that the arrival of Barack Obama’s new administration would herald a loosening of new restrictions on cross-border traffic.”

Ibbitson went on to say that “Canadian politicians, and industry leaders on both sides of the border, hoped that the arrival of a new, Democratic administration would lessen the emphasis on security that Mr. Napolitano’s predecessor, Michael Chertoff, placed on border relations.”

According to the CBC, Napolitano “…also said there would be no further delay of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which as of June 1 will require adults entering the United States from Canada, the Caribbean, Bermuda or Mexico to present a passport. That phase of the initiative has been delayed several times.”

Photo by Kenneth Lu (flickr)