Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has frustrated the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association over border administratoin fees. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

The Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association is frustrated with its attempts to lobby the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to ease the crippling costs of border administration fees.

Peter Nelson, executive director of the association, said it's costing too much for truckers in the region to cross the American border, and he spent two days in Washington pleading his case

Nelson said the U.S. government maintains that Canada should assume the administrative costs of managing the border instead of U.S. taxpayers.

"The Americans are also beneficiaries of the trade with Canada," he said.

"We are their largest trading partner. [It is not appropriate] that we should bear this $1-billion fee which is also subsidizing all of the law enforcement drug enforcement illegal immigration enforcement in the southern border as well."

Nelson said truckers first started seeing an increase in border administration fees after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

'You know this increase in fees will see Atlantic Canadians paying $8 for a head of lettuce in the near future if the Department of Homeland Security continues on its path of heaping fee upon fee.'— Peter Nelson, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association

He said it cost the Canadian trucking industry about a $100 million a year back then, but that has now risen to about a billion dollars a year.

Nelson said those increases will have a devastating effect on the industry and consumers.

"Certainly when you think about Atlantic Canada, all of our fresh produce and fruit comes from Florida, U.S. desert southwest, southern California and Mexico," he said.

"You know this increase in fees will see Atlantic Canadians paying $8 for a head of lettuce in the near future if the Department of Homeland Security continues on its path of heaping fee upon fee."

Nelson said now is the time for the federal government and the Atlantic premiers to get involved in this issue.

Napolitano creates controversy over terrorist comments

Nelson isn't the only Canadian who is growing frustrated with Napolitano's musings on the border.

Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, had to set the record straight after the U.S. homeland security secretary told the CBC's Neil Macdonald that terrorists have routinely entered the United States through Canada, and they include the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Wilson told reporters at the Border Trade Alliance meeting in Washington, where he was keynote speaker, that he is "frustrated" that the 9/11 myth has surfaced yet again.

In response to Wilson, Napolitano's handlers said she had misunderstood Macdonald's question and was referring to Ahmed Ressam, the would-be bomber referred to as "the millennium bomber."

Ressam was arrested in December 1999 at Port Angeles, Wash., with homemade explosives in his rental car. He was later convicted of plotting to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport.