Canada and the U.S. must work together as a cohesive economic unit to fight global challenges over the next 50 years, a senior U.S. Homeland Security official said Thursday.

Alan Bersin, the current assistant secretary of international affairs and chief diplomatic officer of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, met with Matt Marchand, president and CEO of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, during the lunch hour Thursday.

“The story of the next 50 years, as we get this right and the president and the prime minister see it, we will be able to compete with East Asia, with the Indian subcontinent, with Brazil, and that will be to the benefit of the Canadian and American peoples together,” said Bersin, a former commissioner of customs and border protection who is attending a Canada-U.S. border conference in Detroit.

“Specifically we need to knock down the transaction costs. We need to specifically be able to make it more economical to move goods back and forth across our border. Finished goods, and goods in process. Those are the kinds of issues I took up with the chamber and I look forward to continuing to work on the issues that affect the quality of life of our two nations.”

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