The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

port movements of nationals from all over the world on these teams and the teams they play, as well as assisting foreign fans who want to see baseball, NFL, NHL or NBA games in Detroit or Buffalo. Toronto and several other Ontario municipalities also send their trash across the border to Michigan landfills under contract with private companies, a longstanding thorn in the side of the state’s residents. On a recent trip to the border, in a span of 10 minutes we counted 16 empty container trucks returning from Michigan. Restricting the flow of this kind of politically sensitive commerce may not be consistent with U.S. free-trade obligations under NAFTA and to the World Trade Organization, however. In addition, any attempt to impose controls might prompt reciprocal restrictions on the export of hazardous waste for destruction in Canada by Canadian specialty waste-management firms. Finally, land claims and border-crossing rights by First Nations (the Canadian term for the country’s many indigenous peoples) present unique challenges for tradi- tional bilateral diplomacy — and perhaps nowhere more so than in Ontario. The territory of one First Nation, the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, actually straddles the U.S.-Canada border, including portions of New York, Ontario and Quebec. Treaties dating back to the Revolutionary War–era grant these groups the right to cross freely between the United States and Canada. Canadian First Nations members generally use their offi- cial status cards as identification when crossing into the U.S., as many are reluctant to acknowledge Canadian government sovereignty by using a passport. Current sta- tus cards do not meet the new DHS requirements for secure documentation, however, so First Nations mem- bers hope a new secure status card can be issued and will be accepted. These are but a few examples of why some academics are using the term “intermestic” to refer to the way these international issues become heated, politicized domestic issues. Ontario is certainly a case study for that type of bilateral relations. F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37