It's Our Airspace This Time

Another piece of lefty logic from up north. Once again, people who are outside the country (there's that nasty border concept again...it's called sovereignty) trying to tell Americans how to run their business. This from a government that was oh so worried about their own precious airspace when it came to missle defense.

If an American anti-terrorist proposal becomes reality, the air space over Northwestern Ontario will see new flight patterns and more white contrails lining the skies.

The proposal, in the works for two months, would require any Canadian domestic flight that heads south of the border to provide U.S. authorities with its list of passengers. The names would be checked against a “no-fly” list compiled in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on American soil. Canadian diplomats have been vocal and assertive in response, warning that the proposed measures would force domestic airlines to fly new routes far north of the American border, a costly and inconvenient prospect.

“It’s going too far for incidental overflights to be caught up in this increased level of security,” Frank McKenna, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., was quoted as saying last weekend.

Bert Baumann, chairman of the local airport authority, “a humongous mess” would result if the U.S. insisted on its plan.

“The Americans are being contacted on various fronts to reconsider because it would be so inconvenient, not very cost-effective and difficult for airlines to appease them,” Baumann said, listing the Air Canada Pilots Association and Canadian Airports Council as two of many Canadian lobbies.

“Whoever proposed this didn’t look at the consequences from our point of view,” he said. “It just doesn’t make sense — the rest of the world is eliminating borders and the U.S. is trying to put up borders.”

From The Chronicle-Journal.