The Hill Times - March 21, 2005
Waterloo Region Record - March 23, 2005
The Charlottetown Gaurdian - March 24, 2005
By Colin Kenny
Turn your mind to targets in Canada. If terrorists really wanted to bring Canada to its knees, where would they hit? Where could they ratchet up the greatest devastation?
The Parliament buildings? The Pickering nuclear reactor? The big buildings of Bay Street? Pearson International Airport?
If someone really wanted to lay waste to Canada’s political and economic future – and wound the Americans at the same time – the best target would be the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario.
That would be the plum. But any of our major border crossings into the United States would serve the purpose.
Blowing one up would be optimal. But even if terrorists were able to transport across those borders either people or devices capable of causing serious damage to the Americans, that would pretty well shut down the Canada-U.S. border for a long, long time.
Eighty seven per cent of our exports go the U.S. Forget softwood lumber. Forget beef cattle. Think about the whole Canadian economy grinding to a halt.
So what’s happening to make this scenario less likely? A lot of good things, including some measures included in February’s federal budget. But not enough, and certainly not with the urgency this issue demands.
The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence has been studying the border situation for several months now, and we’ll be issuing a report this spring as to what we’ve discovered, and what we recommend to make 119 Canada-U.S. border crossings less vulnerable to both intentional hits and accidental disasters.
The committee has addressed vulnerabilities at Canada’s airports and sea ports and along our coastlines, but no vulnerabilities stand out like our border crossings.
Here are a few facts to ponder:
Approximately 45 per cent of Canadian jobs are either directly or indirectly dependent on trade with the U.S.: two-way trade between Canada and the United States is worth $500 billion a year.
Canada-U.S. trade has more than doubled since 1994 and no new major crossings have been built during that time.
Plans for a new span for the Peace Bridge at Fort Erie-Buffalo have been in the works for well over a decade, but no new structures are expected to be in place for at least another 10 years.
Nearly 80 per cent of Canada-U.S. truck trade tavels across just six major crossings, so each of these crossings is vital. Yet there is no redundancy if any of the six were to be rendered inoperable.
The Ambassador Bridge is owned by one family’s corporation based in Detroit, and that corporation has repeatedly resisted control by either local or federal authorities.
Gerry Fedchun, president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association of Canada, says his members have lost contracts and some plants have been closed because of delays at border crossings: “9/11 was almost three years ago, and we still don’t have any construction (for improving crossing facilities) or even a set of drawings.”
These kinds of impacts on the Canadian economy have pressured authorities to try to move traffic more quickly, but this may well be diluting security vigilance at borders. Union officials have claimed they have been scolded when their scrutiny causes line delays, plus the Auditor General has pointed out that programs such as FAST and NEXUS (providing quick clearance for companies and drivers with proven track records) were introduced without any compliance verification regimes in place. No random checks to prevent abuse.
The 9/11 attackers didn’t come from Canada, but let’s face it – they could have. We need better-trained border guards. And yet training has been cut back from 12 weeks to 8 ½ weeks. Students who do much of the guarding during the summer receive only 3 weeks training. Authorities say the students never operate unsupervised or on secondary search lines; witnesses have told us otherwise.
The Canadian Border Services Agency estimates that in 2004 there were approximately 1,600 instances of drivers running borders or failing to report.
Border guards are unarmed: as Ron Moran, national president, Customs Excise Union, points out, “They give us bulletproof vests to get shot at, but not guns to shoot back.”
We heard testimony that even at major crossings, such as Windsor, some customs officers have given up on calling police when someone crashes the border, because of slow response, or no response at all.
Not only do border guards have no capacity to pursue and no adequate police backup, in many cases they don’t even have the capacity to identify vehicles through video or other electronic devices.
There are 139 locations across Canada where border guards must work alone, either for full or partial shifts. There have been several reports of officers being asleep when people try to cross, victims of extended shifts.
The February federal budget promised $433 million over the next 5 years for increased border security and infrastructure. That’s a start, but if the last three years are any indication, the money will dribble in slowly and the desperate need for better security and provision of redundancy at our borders will continue to be treated as back burner issues.
Canada’s response to 9/11 continues to unfold in slow motion. If it had taken us this long to respond to the outbreak of World War II, it would have been over before we got our act together. If a few of our allies had been equally slow, who knows who would have won?
Senator Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca