What she said is now mostly a reference to access to CATSA expedited screening, as showing the card gets members access to CATSA expedited sceeening. Otherwise, the GE card is barely useful at any airports other than as a form of ID mostly for the ID checking screeners.

I think, thankfully, the situation is now much improved over the experience you had in 2014.

It looks like GE, SENTRI, and NEXUS enrollees consistently don't need to present a card to access the GE kiosks at YVR preclearance (a plus for non-US national members of GE and people who left the card at home) and those that do have a GE or NEXUS card can optionally get the expedited lane.

Still sucks for UK nationals who don't get access to the expedited CATSA lanes, but that was never a promised benefit of the GE program anyway.

TBH I am a little surprised that the UK and Canada do not have a mutual trusted traveler problem or at least allow UK nationals into NEXUS.

It does indeed sound like the experience is improved at YVR over what it was even at near year-end in 2014 when it comes to GE card demands.

UK nationals of some sorts who are LPRs in the US or Canada can get NEXUS, but other UK nationals are broadly out of luck with regard to the expedited CATSA screening.

Thanks for clearing up the confusion!

CATSA do however officially advertise that benefit:

http://www.catsa.gc.ca/trusted-travellers

(I've emailed them about it and they told me tough luck, but it's all a bit naff of them to officially claim that all GE members are eligible.)

Until very late in 2014, YVR had no expedited CATSA screening for GE members; and so a bunch of those 2014 "you need your GE card" demands at YVR weren't related to CATSA expedited screening. In other words, the demand for the GE card at YVR has not always related to the existence of expedited CATSA screening, since those demands started before CATSA expedited screening started at YVR. Understood now?

Now, it seems like the GE card demand at YVR is about CATSA expedited screening. The demand for the card at YVR wasn't always about that.

And one shows their card to access the priority lane. No card = no benefit. It's the only way to keep everybody from clogging up the lines.

Yes, but GE is a program run entirely by US CBP/DHS and CBP never made any promise or claim that GE would give that benefit. It is solely by the generosity of CATSA, an entirely separate organization, to grant GE members access to these NEXUS lanes as a bonus perk.

I agree they should make clearer where the card is required and why (and acknowledge that not all GE members get a card) but we should be very thankful they don't limit access to NEXUS only, lest they decide that allowing GE members is too much of a mess.

And FWIW, I think they would be more than happy to allow all GE members (regardless of citizenship) into the expedited line, if there was a feasible mechanism to verify their membership. The problem is that there's no reliable way besides presenting the card.

There are multiple ways I can think of, although some of them would require coordinating with CBP:
- Showing GE confirmation letter (potentially fakeable, but a card is too)
- Move GE kiosks before security - let's GE members positively identify themselves using a GE receipt (kiosks won't accept non-GE members): that creates the risk of people losing their receipts, but we are trusted travellers after all so they can trust us not to lose the receipt.
- Ask CBP to start issuing the stickers again.
- Ask CBP to issue non-RFID-activated GE cards (possibly with special markings/text on the card to clarify that they are not eligible for land crossings).

(Note: the old setup of security after CBP isn't too helpful - if you're foreign and use GE you'd usually get a second receipt, in place of a passport stamp, that you can show to CATSA, however if you get X'd you only get the primary receipt which is collected by CATSA, plus the usual passport stamp.)

Frankly I don't really care if they restrict the lane to Nexus seeing as that would make no difference to me. At the moment, eligibility for expedited screening for GE members seems to be based on US citizenship/LPR status which doesn't strike me as particularly fair...

Agreed, though I don't think it was at all intentional to limit to US citizens/LPR; I think it is the unintended consequence of setting up a NEXUS expedited security lane, deciding to allow GE members in it as well, and then needing to have a mechanism for deciding who is allowed in the lane.

Of course the easiest thing would be for CBP to issue real GE cards to everyone, but I would also lobby for UK citizens to be able to apply for NEXUS, if traveling to Canada is frequent enough for it to matter (unless, of course, you won't get a NEXUS card as well)

I don't think tilting at CATSA will get anywhere, other than maybe making the rules clearer, there is little they can do on their own.

I doubt that any of the other solutions would happen. There's no way CBP will allow the kiosks out of the preclearance area, and issuing special cards/stickers for this rather niche case of non-US citizen GE members flying out of canada seems unlikely given the extra expense to do so. The entire existence of GE cards is already solving the niche problem of giving expedited land crossing to US citizen GE members.

I don't see a cost issue here: all GE members pay the same fees, so there's no huge issue with regards to the cost of a card (they just need to print some extra text on it, and not put any data on the chip when issuing the card). Likewise with stickers: we're already paying the fees, and CBP get to save the money used for printing and mailing a card, handing out stickers at interview time would be incredibly cheap (the stickers are nothing special).

I realise we're a niche case (and GE is already a niche concept), but these are extremely low effort changes.

She stated for Trans border flights. This refers to flights between Canada and the US. You need the card to get access to the Canadian TT security lane. You don't need it to use the GE kiosks.

BA doesn't participate in Precheck so their BPs will never give you access to PreCheck. Showing the card does nothing toward getting PreCheck. Unless your BP says you get it, you don't.

Thanks everyone. OP here and all went just as explained. CATSA Fast Lane line is to the left of the normal line and marked as NEXUS/GE. My flight was Monday morning so I bypassed a decent lineup. After security you are dumped out in an area where you could use either GE or Normal US CBP lines, stay left for GE.

Thanks again everyone.

Moderator's Action:
 

When in a US Airport, I use my GE card as ID, I don't like using my DL as it has my address on it.