“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)