The new Canada-U.S. border deal is a classic of its kind. America gets more say in how Canada handles its affairs. Canada gets — well, Canada gets not much.

The deal announced on Wednesday in Washington by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama will soon see U.S. customs officials operating in Canadian ports and more armed U.S. agents operating on the Canadian side of the border.

Canadian airlines will be required to set up U.S.-style security systems to gather information on travellers entering or leaving Canada — and then pass the information along to the U.S.

The U.S. will be given an effective veto over who enters Canada. In the bureaucratic language of the accord, this is referred to as a “shared responsibility between Canada and the United States concerning those entering the perimeter.”

Canada will be required to give more information about its citizens and residents to the U.S. By 2013, the countries promise to put in place a “systematic and automated biographical information-sharing capability” and by 2014 a “biometric information-sharing capability.”

The two countries will also “coordinate and share resources on how people become radicalized and turn to violence.”

A new exit-control system will be put in place for those crossing the land border between Canada and the U.S. in order to “exchange biographical information on travellers.”

And in return?

In return there are promises. Both sides promise to spend more on border infrastructure such as bridges. But that requires money. And in the U.S., the federal purse strings are controlled by Congress, which had no part in this deal.

Tellingly, one of Canada’s priority border infrastructure projects — a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit — received no mention.

Similarly, there are promises to launch pilot projects that will speed up truck traffic across the border — a longstanding Canadian demand.

Such promises have been made before by the U.S., but with little effect.

On Wednesday, Harper said the new pact will make it easier for “legitimate” Canadian travellers to cross the border.

In fact, the deal could do the reverse. Business people who cross into the U.S. frequently are being encouraged to submit to a pre-screening procedure that would allow them to avoid most border hassles.

But tourists and other travellers who don’t take this route are likely to find the new border regime even less hospitable.

In fact, the quantum increase in shared information is likely to lead to more of those mistakes that have come to characterize America’s flawed no-fly regime.

It’s hard to blame the U.S. for the one-sided nature of this deal. Under both the Liberals and the Conservatives, Canada’s federal government has been a most willing patsy.

It was a Liberal government that ordered its security services to pass on every unsubstantiated rumour to the U.S., a practice that resulted in the arrest, jailing and torture of Canadian citizen Maher Arar.

And it was a Liberal government that, after 9/11, allowed America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation to vastly expand its operations in Canada.

By 2006, agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were also operating here.

In 2007, the Harper Tories went one step further by permitting American agents working in Canada to freely carry arms. Before that, foreign operatives — such as U.S. secret security agents accompanying the president — needed special one-time permits.

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On Wednesday, Harper lauded the new border deal as the most-important Canada-U.S. pact since the North American Free Trade Agreement.

He was right — but not because this deal will do much for trade.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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