New Brunswick Telegraph Journal - March 28, 2007
By Colin Kenny
No society can preoccupy itself with eliminating danger to all of its citizens, all the time. Life throws too many hazards at us humans to defend against all of them. Most of us accept that.
Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of any national government to place a priority doing what makes sense to protect the physical well being of its citizens. That is, after all, the main reason the modern state was invented.
So what makes sense when it comes to defending Canadians at our ports?
Last week the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence issued an update on security at Canada’s ports.
The main theme of the report was not that billions of dollars should be spent to assure that every security gap at every Canadian port is sealed so that terrorists cannot use shipping containers the way they used passenger airliners to blow holes in our society.
Members of the Committee know that every security gap will never be filled at our ports, or anywhere else in Canada.
We also know that it the odds are probably against terrorists packing any one of the four million containers that enter Canadian ports every year with chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive devices that would lay waste to a large Canadian or U.S. target.
Or at least we hope the odds are against that. But then the odds were against a bunch of terrorists hijacking four United Airways airliners on September 11, 2001 and flying them into buildings, weren’t they?
All the Committee is asking is that the government take reasonable measures to upgrade security at Canadian ports, which several witnesses have told us are inundated with organized crime. We would not be asking that the government take reasonable measures if we thought they were already taking them.
Why is the presence of organized crime at our ports a factor in this discussion? Because criminals like security holes – they wouldn’t be able to siphon money from the system if such holes didn’t exist. And security holes that create opportunities for criminals also provide opportunities for terrorists.
We heard testimony from both Canada Border Services Agency and CEUDA (the customs and excise union) sources that on any given container ship there will be up about half a dozen undeclared containers, called “ghost cans”. No one knows where they came from, or what is inside these containers.
While CBSA assures us that no container leaves a port without them knowing about it, CEUDA is more forthright about the fact that these "ghost cans" all too often make their way into the port and out of the port without anyone every scrutinizing them.
Officials admit that our ports only screen about two percent of the containers that enter Canada (remember, about 30 percent of these containers are trans-shipped to the United States).
I agree with the comments made last week by Pat Riley, president of Local 273 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, about the port of Saint John – it is true that container scanning isn’t as big a problem in Saint John as it is at larger ports. Saint John doesn’t handle nearly as many containers as a port like Halifax, and has more time to scan them.
Riley also said “more enforcement and tighter security measures” are needed to combat organized crime at ports, and I agree with that too.
But the Committee believes that all containers should be scanned, and we think there are ways to do that.
The Committee was told during hearings that the Hong Kong Terminal, run by Hutchison Port Holdings the searches every container coming into the port while it passes at an average rate of 16 kilometers per hour.
Inexpensive light sensors are used to determine whether a container has been tampered with. Inexpensive radiation portal monitors are used to scan for nuclear devices. X-ray scanners are used to determine whether there is anything abnormal in the container that doesn’t jibe with the manifest. They photograph the container number and the license number of the truck that brought the container into the port.
Hutchison figures that this fused approach – bringing all the electronically gathered physical information together with the paper information about contents, origin, destination and shippers – ends up providing about 99 percent certainty that any container is not dangerous. Physical searches are possible if there is any suspicion about the other 1 percent.
Hutchison estimates that the average value of the contents of a container is US$65,000-$70,000, and that the most it would cost to do their five-layer screening in North America would be $US20. Spending $US20 to thoroughly inspect a container that costs about $2,000 to ship would appear to be an incredible bargain. Shippers would be unlikely to complain about such a miniscule addition to costs.
So why wouldn’t the Canadian government be giving urgent consideration to implementing this kind of screening system?
There are other problems with port security. Inadequate policing. Non-existent waterside surveillance. Inadequate background checks on port workers. Lack of scrutiny of people entering restricted areas.
Delays in training workers using new surveillance equipment. Anyone interested in assessing these problems can read the report at www.sen-sec.ca.
The Committee’s last report on Canada’s Ports was issued in 2003. It recommended that the government of the day initiate a public inquiry under the Inquiries Act into security at Canada’s ports. No such inquiry was ever initiated.
We don’t see ship owners, port authorities or unions pushing for such an inquiry. One wonders why. Is it that as long as all parties are making good money at our ports, they will shrug off crime as the cost of doing business?
Canada’s ports need a shift in culture, away from various fiefdoms acting in their own interests toward owners, shippers, unions and shipping companies acting in the Canadian public’s interest.
Colin Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca