Posted on Sunday, March 23, 2008 - 1:10 pm:

quote:

TRAVERSE CITY -- Bottlenecks along the U.S.-Canadian border resulting from the terrorism scare are hampering economic growth in the Great Lakes region and should be a front-burner issue in the presidential campaign, says a report being released Sunday.

It urges the two nations to develop a "border of the future," using advanced technology to quicken the movement of people, goods and services without sacrificing needed security measures. They also should upgrade border-area infrastructure such as bridges, rail lines and ports, says the analysis by the Brookings Institution, a policy research organization based in Washington, D.C.

The report argues that a broad swath of territory -- reaching from upstate New York to Minnesota, and across the southern tier of Quebec and Ontario -- is a single economic region linked by the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system.

Its future prosperity depends on businesses and governments overcoming provincialism and thinking regionally, said John Austin, director of Brookings' Great Lakes Economic Initiative and one of the report's writers. They should work more cooperatively on research and innovation, environmental protection and promoting renewable energy development and trade, the report says.