But the question is: How can the Canadian Border Guards tell if a "letter from mom" is genuine? Major protocol failure. DCF
CANADA
[John McCaslin, columnist for the Washington Times just returned from vacation]
U.S. passports are not required for entry into Canada, but as my 13-year-old daughter and I rudely discovered during our northbound journey to climb British Columbia's Mount Serendipity, a letter from "mom" is all but mandatory. Upon our arrival at the Toronto airport, a female immigration officer inquired if we carried a letter from my daughter's mother, giving permission for her to travel with her dad. (I immediately wondered if mothers are similarly expected to carry letters from fathers when traveling with their children. I expect not.) When I replied that no such letter was required under U.S. or Canadian law, my daughter was abruptly asked: "Does your mother know you are on this trip?" Despite our mutual assurances that mom all but packed bologna sandwiches for our much-anticipated mountain trek, we were led to a special holding area where a second woman interrogator soon launched an emotionally draining 15-minute cross-examination that left my daughter in tears. "Is your mother aware that you are on this trip?" my daughter was quizzed again. Yes. "Do you want to be here?" Yes. "Are you sure?" Yes. "Is this your father?" Yes. Objecting, for a second time, to the high degree of personal probing, I was warned that such outbursts could land me in the Canadian gulag. "For all I know you could be from Turkey," the woman said (I'm half Norwegian, half Scotch-Irish). "Fortunately for you, you have an accent. Do you have any criminal record?" At that point, seeing the tears well in my daughter's eyes, I reached into my carry-on pack and retrieved my White House correspondent's credentials, telling the officer to call George W. Bush if she didn't believe me. "You don't have to get rude," she snapped. "For your daughter's sake, you should be thanking me. Now you'll know next time."