Profiling at the Canadian Border: An Economist’s Viewpoint

Scrutiny at the Canadian border to heighten security and simultaneously reduce type one (false positives) and type two (false negatives) errors utilize substantial resources as well as imposing opportunity costs on Canada in terms of time and trade diversion. One maligned strategy to minimize these costs at the border has been group or racial profiling. This essay develops a pedigree system for Canadian border security which simultaneously reduces both type I and II errors while avoiding the more egregious costs inherent in racial or group profiling.