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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MONTREAL 001063 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
WHA/CAN (ERVITI) 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/04/2016 
TAGS: CA CASC CMGT CPAS ECON KPAO PREL KTRD
SUBJECT: SNAPSHOT OF A BORDER COMMUNITY: MONTREAL WHTI 
OUTREACH 
 
Classified By: CG Mary B Marshall for reasons 1.4b/d 
 
¶1. (SBU) Recently, as part of an ongoing WHTI outreach 
program, Consul General Montreal and Econoff visited small 
towns along the Quebec/US border to view how integrated the 
border communities are, and discuss the impact of WHTI.  An 
example of completely integrated towns is the Stanstead, 
Quebec and Derby Line, Vermont dynamic.  The discussions with 
border officials, school principals, mayors, police, media 
representatives, and the business community offered insights 
into community concerns over WHTI, the challenges posed by 
unmanned border crossings to border security, and the scope 
of US-Canadian law enforcement cooperation at the border. 
This visit occurred before Congress passed legislation 
amending WHTI requirements and allowing a delay up to June 1, 
2009 if the Department of Homeland Security and the 
Department of State are not ready to implement the program 
sooner. 
 
-------------------------------------------- 
Cross-border field trips and hockey practice 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU)  Community life on both sides of the border is 
closely integrated. On the south side of the border, the 
communities are close-knit, but are economically depressed. 
The Derby Line area itself is a Federally-designated poverty 
area.  The Derby Line Elementary school, which has 50% of its 
students on a free or reduced-cost lunch program, is 
considered one of the wealthier school districts in the area 
(where some other schools have up to 80% of their students on 
such lunch programs).  The 400 students at Derby Elementary 
school routinely take field trips across the border to 
destinations in Quebec Province, such as the Granby zoo and 
Montreal's Biodome and museums.  Just as public schools have 
to finance instruments for economically disadvantaged 
students in order to offer a music program, Derby Elementary 
would have to foot the bill for passport cards for students 
whose parents could not afford the travel document. 
According to the school's principal, a passport (or passport 
card) requirement for students crossing the border would 
force the school to cancel all such trips.  "We can't exclude 
five kids from a field trip for sixty because they can't 
pay," the principal explained, adding that their budget 
wouldn't cover paying for those students unable to afford the 
card. The exception granted for school groups in the recent 
legislation is a welcome reprieve for the schools along the 
border. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Border crossings in Derby Line/Stanstead have never 
involved much fanfare, but are rather a routine part of life 
in the area.  Students from Derby Line have their "home" 
hockey court in Quebec, and cross the border four or five 
times a week to compete in games and to attend practice. 
Children from Stanstead play basketball at the Derby Line 
community center. Girls from Derby Line high schools rush to 
the local mall in Sherbrooke, Quebec to buy prom dresses. 
Fifth graders from Derby go swimming at Stanstead College 
facilities. Children cross the border every day just to play 
with their friends who happen to live on the other side of 
the border. 
 
-------------------------------------- 
Unmanned crossings and border security 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶4.  (C/NF) Stanstead has long held the dubious legacy of 
serving as a hotbed for smugglers, especially during the 
prohibition years; local urban folklore is replete with tales 
of whisky being piped across the border in garden hoses. 
Even today, the existence of three unmanned border crossings 
in the area lends itself to smuggling and other illegal 
activities, though, according to law enforcement agents at 
the border, today's smuggling now tends to involve drugs and 
human trafficking rings.  With two manned border crossings 
within 700 meters of one another, many have questioned the 
need for these three additional unmanned crossings in the 
vicinity.  These unmanned border crossings are located on 
residential roads, and are marked with only a sign stating 
that individuals crossing must report to U.S. Customs and 
Border Protection (CBP).  Although it is not illegal to cross 
the border at an unmanned entrance, it is illegal to do so 
without reporting to CBP after entering.  An example 
traditionally cited in books and travel articles on Canada 
and the U.S. is the Haskell Library and Opera House -- the 
only library with its front door in the United States and its 
books in Canada, with the border running right down the 
center of its reading room, and the audience in the U.S. and 
the stage in Canada upstairs in the opera house. In Beebe 
 
MONTREAL 00001063  002 OF 003 
 
 
Plain, Vermont, one side of the street has houses in the 
U.S., while the other side is in Canada, creating an awkward 
CBP reporting requirement for those wishing to visit their 
neighbors. 
 
¶5.  (C/NF)  Monitors in the U.S. CBP station view each 
unmanned crossing.  If border officials see a car that passes 
through the crossing and does not report to CBP, they send a 
car out to pursue the vehicle.  Tourists unfamiliar with the 
area have been known to end up crossing the border 
inadvertently, and then have to explain themselves to the CBP 
officer. The CBP officers can read the license number and get 
the make of the car during the day, but at night the unmanned 
crossings become significantly more difficult to control. At 
night they might only see two headlights approaching, making 
it difficult (if not impossible) to track down cars that do 
not report to CBP.  Cars crossing into Canada at these 
unmanned ports, are "not well-monitored," according to one 
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Derby 
Line. 
 
¶6.  (C/NF)  Until this summer, U.S. and Canadian citizens 
sometimes passed through the border in Derby Line without 
even a photo I.D.  That changed in June 2006, when U.S. 
border officials began to require a photo ID of all those 
entering the U.S.  Although border officials expected 
resistance to the new procedures, they found that people 
"soon fell in line" with the requirement, and by August, 
"everyone had one." 
 
¶7.  (C/NF)  The Integrated Border Enforcement Team (IBET) 
located in Stanstead includes law enforcement officials from 
both sides of the border (provincial and state police, 
municipal police, and federal police, as well as border 
officials) and meets regularly to address issues of mutual 
importance, analyzing intelligence, identifying trends, and 
developing ways to work together to solve problems at the 
border.  Although the head of the IBET team in Stanstead 
acknowledged that most of the intelligence they have received 
thus far has dealt with drug smuggling, the team hopes that 
one day the informants will also pass on information relating 
to more serious security/terrorist threats. 
 
-------------------------------------- 
Shared cross-border emergency services 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  Towns close to the U.S.-Canadian border in the 
Derby Line area frequently have mutual aid agreements between 
emergency services providers, and many residents worry about 
the impact of a passport or passport-card requirement at the 
border on the ability to cross the border in an emergency. 
The chief of the Stanstead fire department told us that the 
situation of emergency services providers crossing the border 
is further complicated by the fact that not all firefighters 
proceed to the scene of a fire in a fire truck.  Frequently, 
volunteer fire fighters will follow in their personal cars if 
they are unable to make it to the station in time to go on 
the fire truck.  These border communities also tend to share 
snow removal services and even their water supply. 
 
---------------- 
Economic impacts 
---------------- 
 
¶9.  (SBU)  According to U.S. border officials, many Canadians 
cross the border in Derby Line in order to fill up their 
tanks with cheaper U.S. gas. But the gas stations in Vermont 
are not the only institutions to benefit from Canadian 
visitor dollars.  Jay Peak, a popular ski resort in Northern 
Vermont, has a sizable percentage of its clientele from 
Canada, and advertises aggressively in Montreal.  Tourist 
businesses, such as Jay Peak and restaurants, worry they will 
suffer a real economic impact if potential customers are 
scared off by the requirement of a passport/passport card. 
Many of the export business contacts with whom we have 
spoken, most of which do 90% or more of their business south 
of the border, note that potential exporters will do 
"whatever it takes" to remain in compliance with U.S. border 
regulations in order to have continued access to the U.S. 
market.  But although large companies have significant 
economic resources to devote to staying abreast of new border 
crossing requirements and programs such as C-TPAT, small and 
medium-sized enterprises have significantly less financial 
margin for absorbing costs and making errors, and less 
manpower to devote to border regulations.  Companies in 
Quebec, large and small, have a strong interest in 
maintaining their access to the U.S. market, and request both 
more information about the Western Hemisphere Travel 
 
MONTREAL 00001063  003 OF 003 
 
 
Initiative and on programs such as C-TPAT. 
 
------- 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶10. (SBU)  We are planning more trips along the border and to 
follow-up with our contacts to emphasize the timeline and 
certification requirements recently enacted by the U.S. 
Congress only delay, but do not dismiss, the requirements for 
secure documentation at the border.  The comments made by our 
interlocutors during this trip have echoed those made during 
the public comment period at meetings in Plattsburgh, NY and 
Burlington, VT. 
MARSHALL