GE members who hold a U.S. passport can use SmartGate in Australia and a dedicated immigration queue in New Zealand.

I'm certainly no expert in this, but my understanding is that this only applied to GE members who hold US passports as Smartgate requires an e-passport, which Canada only started producing within the last couple of months. Even with a Canadian e-passport, my guess is Canada would need a separate agreement with Australia for their citizens who have Nexus/GE to be able to use their program.

Quite true. I should have mentioned the U.S. passport requirement in my post.

Renewal application submitted: June 17, 2013
Conditional approval: Aug 14, 2013
First available interview in YEG: Oct 30, 2013

I'll keep looking for cancellations because that's a long way out.

Not quite reassured by my first call, I contacted the Trudeau enrollment center again today and spoke with a different, very helpful, agent. She said that after the interview, the gathered fingerprints are sent for analysis to determine whether the person is eligible for membership. She said typically 2 weeks up to 8 weeks of wait time is required for this step. She also warned that full approval is not given until the fingerprint check comes back clean.

This explains why I still haven't received my full approval 5 days after the interview. It would appear that either this is a new step in the process or that there is something special about me (Canadian citizen living in the US with H-1B) that would call for additional scrutiny.

pm234,

That's odd. I wonder if there was something that came up during a background check that made them think there is some criminal activity in your past and are using the fingerprints to rule this out. That's the only possible thing I can think of.

Out of curiosity, how long did it take to get conditionally approved?

Applied: May 5, 2013
Conditional approval: June 19, 2013

That's actually pretty quick.

Keep us posted on when you get fully approved. That stinks that you're not getting your card right away, but hopefully you don't have any immediate travel plans.

My flight is tomorrow from Vancouver to the USA. Anyone know what the exact procedure is for using the NEXUS at the Vancouver airport? Where do I use the NEXUS red kiosk machines? Do I use the machine in the departure terminal before security or at the customs area after I go through security? Does using the NEXUS red kiosk machine mean that I don't need to speak with a US customs guard?

Thanks!

Go through security, and when you enter customs, take an immediate right, following the signs for NEXUS/GE. There were two of each machines last time I was there.

You're better off using GE than NEXUS if you can. You will still need to speak with an officer, but how much they ask you can really vary.

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Unless things have changed fairly recently, doesn't have anything to do with being a Canadian citizen living in the US on an H1B. That's exactly my wife's situation, and her approval notification was given very shortly after her interview - same day. This was in March 2012, IIRC.

NEXUS - Iris scan
 

Again, a question that probably has been answered before.

The iris scan.
It's necessary to use NEXUS pass for air travel. But it's irrelevant for vehicle land crossings, am I right?

But they don't do iris scans for baby... does that mean that, when travelling by air, the parent(s) won't be able to use NEXUS since their kid did not do the iris scan?

If you are using Nexus, be sure to fill out a 'blue customs card' before you step up to the machine.

With GE it's not necessary.