How — and why — Canada and the U.S. kept their border deal secret for a year

One year ago, a major piece of political news was sitting in a courier package being shipped across the continent.

Its contents remained widely unknown until last week — when President Joe Biden visited Ottawa and, together with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, announced an updated Safe Third Country Agreement.

In fact, the deal to change the rules on irregular migration was hatched a year ago — even though the news media, provincial governments and almost all federal politicians knew nothing about it.

Here's how it happened.

Almost a year ago to the day, bureaucrats from both countries finished negotiating an expanded Safe Third Country Agreement in response to years of Canadian demands.

Officials had been cutting back on travel due to the pandemic. They relied on courier services to ship the agreement between capitals.

The new deal was signed in Ottawa by Immigration Minister Sean Fraser on March 29, 2022, and in Washington on April 15 by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Irregular cross-border migration had become a top political issue in both countries — particularly in Quebec, home of the irregular crossing at Roxham Road. The Trudeau Liberals had been taking a drubbing over the issue in Quebec, a province critical to their re-election chances.

Still, nobody talked for an entire year. The agreement's existence was withheld even from provincial governments.

"We were kept completely in the dark," said one provincial official. Quebec's immigration minister found out a few minutes before the news first appeared in the media last Thursday.

Government officials kept the agreement under wraps until the official announcement because they were worried about triggering a stampede at the border.

News of the year-old agreement's existence was first reported Friday morning by an eagle-eyed immigration expert in Washington.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick was poring over new U.S. federal regulations that will implement the agreement. He tweeted what he found, calling it stunning.

"I was just surprised," Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, told CBC News. "Like everyone else, I had seen extensive reports that this was not a done deal."