A proposed U.S. “land border crossing fee” for those travelling into that country from Canada, has drawn opposition on both sides of the border.

The tax on Canadians travelling south, proposed in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s 2014 budget called for a study on the costs to collect a fee from vehicles and pedestrians into the U.S., and to be completed within nine months.

In Canada, the levy has been called “misguided” and “exactly the wrong way to go.” But it went relatively unnoticed until U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.) first sounded the alarm late last week.

“I was shocked to see a proposal for a new toll at the northern border and I will fight to put the brakes on this short-sighted fee,” Higgins said.

“Putting up barriers to regional and bi-national commerce is the absolute last thing we should be doing if we want to grow the economies of Western New York and the U.S.”

In Ottawa, Conservative Calgary MP Deepak Obhrai promised to fight any new fee that would impact the $1.6 billion in daily cross-border trade with the U.S., and Canadian Chamber of Commerce president Perrin Beatty slammed the proposal.

“It’s exactly the wrong way to go,” Beatty said. “It flies in the face of the intention of the joint border accord.

“The purpose there was to make the border more transparent to legitimate trade, and legitimate travellers; and what this does is to bureaucratize the border, make it stickier, more costly and thicker.”

In Feb. 2013, Canadians made 2.8 million same-day car trips into the U.S. — the fourth consecutive monthly increase according to Statistics Canada.

In testimony two weeks ago to a Homeland Security Committee, department Janet Napolitano said fees that support processing more than 350 million travellers a year have not been adjusted, in many cases, for more than a decade.

“As the complexity of our operations continues to expand, the gap between fee collections and the operations they support is growing, and the number of workforce-hours fees support decreases each year,” Napolitano said.

The budget proposal, she said, would call for hiring more customs and immigration officers “through adjustments in immigration and customs- inspections user fees to recover more of the costs associated with providing services.”

Canadians pay roughly $50 in fees to fly into the U.S., including a recently reinstated a $5.50 feerecently reinstated a $5.50 fee to enter the U.S. by air or sea two years ago.

Canada and Mexico had been exempt from the fee through a North American Free Trade Agreement provision, passed in 1997.

Drivers and pedestrians do not pay a specific entry fee, although bridges spanning the border charge tolls that go to the bridge authorities.

“There’s one fee after another,” Beatty said.

Michael MacKenzie, executive director of the 70,000-member Canadian Snowbird Association, said Monday that Washington is trying to ease its “desperate financial situation” on the backs of Canadian travellers.

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Evan Rachkovsky, a research office with snowbirds association, said if the U.S. was looking to dig out of their fiscal problems, “they should be looking at ways to boost their economy through tourism.”

“It’s definitely a misguided proposal,” Rachkovsky said.