Saint John Telegraph-Journal - June 18, 2005
The Hill Times - June 20, 2005
Sarnia Observer - June 21, 2005
Welland Tribune - June 21, 2005
Peterborough Examiner - June 21, 2005
Sudbury Star - July 5, 2005
By Colin Kenny
FIREARMS
Consider this little vignette, which illustrates how Canadian inspectors at Canada-U.S. border crossings sometimes spend their evenings:
“I found a handgun in the filter of a vehicle referred to secondary. My back was turned to the individual when I found the gun. When I frisked him, I found a knife. Had the individual had another gun, or decided he didn’t want to be arrested and used his knife, I could have been killed. That was the same night that a vehicle ran the port through a truck lane, completely circumventing the customs procedure.”
Granted, not every night on the border is like that. But it’s time to get serious about treating Canada’s land border crossings as what they should be: guard posts. Friendly guard posts. But guard posts nonetheless.
Canada-U.S. land border crossings are vital to the Canadian economy. If a major bridge or tunnel went down, through terrorism or natural disaster, our economy would be devastated for years. Even now, uncertainty about Canadian-U.S. borders is prompting at least some investors to build production facilities in the United States rather than Canada.
Canada was the place to be right up until Sept. 11, 2001, because Canada had a cost advantage, partially based on the currency exchange rate, and commercial traffic flowed smoothly and securely between the two countries. Now there are doubts. Border uncertainty has been reported to have been a factor in the decisions of some companies who have chosen to invest south of the border.
The government needs to do two things to dispel doubts: (a) create infrastructure and systems that move innocent traffic smoothly, and (b) place a new emphasis on security to assure crossings aren’t going to be disabled. The federal government knows it has a problem here. Unfortunately, this hasn’t led to the focus on security at border crossings that one would have expected in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.
For a start, it is time to give the inspectors who are supposed to act as peace officers at our crossings the same tools that our regular police officers use to deter violence our streets. That’s right. Firearms.
Unless the government is willing to provide a police presence at our border posts, inspectors need firearms to defend themselves and to deter violent and/or criminal activity. The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence so recommends in its latest report, Borderline Insecurity.
Firearms send off alarm bells in many Canadians’ minds. That’s good – we’re not a nation of cowboys. But we’re not talking John Wayne and Clint Eastwood defending our borders here. There is no reason that our border inspectors wouldn’t be just as circumspect as our police officers in the use of weapons. The Criminal Code of Canada is very careful to outline the restraint with which people in authority should use weapons in Canada.
Our border inspectors currently carry batons and pepper spray. They can’t protect themselves from a violent assault. They are supposed to call the RCMP or local police if they have a problem, but testimony before our committee suggests that police responses are often slow and sometimes non-existent. The Canadian government has a duty of care to allow these people to protect themselves. It also has a duty to Canadians to strengthen security at our borders – to stand on guard so that people and goods that we don’t want entering the country don’t get in.
Border inspectors need more than guns to effect a decent level of border security. They need time. They need a new culture that would allow them to focus on people who may be up to no good. Right now, most of their attention is focused on the clerking duties that go with their roles as customs and food inspectors.
They spend so much of their time trying extract duties and taxes from travellers who have exceeded their exemption limits for purchases in the United States that they don’t have time to focus on the most useful role a border between friendly countries can play: checking out the bad guys.
Before income tax was introduced in World War I, the customs duties collected at borders accounted for a major part of government revenues. But customs duties now collected from individual travellers account for a miniscule one-tenth of one per cent of federal revenues. The government should be willing to forego some of these revenues by greatly expanding personal exemptions for individual travellers. That would allow border inspectors get on with what should be their real jobs.
American authorities say they’re determined to keep terrorists from using Canada as a launching pad into the United States. So they should. On the other side of the coin, guns have started showing up in large quantities on the streets of Canadian cities. They’re mainly imported from the United States, and many Canadians would like their government to show more determination to keep them out. So we should.
Both sides would like to prevent drug running between the two countries. And both would like to do everything in their power to prevent vehicles with explosives on board from knocking out of border crossings.
All these desires are important national priorities, both in Canada and the United States. Why then, the lethargy with which both governments have approached security at border crossings?
New infrastructure is badly needed, both to permit inspectors more room to operate in more efficient ways, and to provide redundancy at major crossings that are vital to our economy. Nearly a quarter of the trade between Canada and the United States crosses at Windsor-Detroit. But progress toward a new crossing there has been painstakingly slow. No new structure is even targeted before 2013. There seems to be a blithe assumption that nothing bad will happen between now and then,
It will only take the killing of one unarmed border inspector to spark a national outcry, asking why people in such vulnerable positions are not protected, or at least allowed to defend themselves. It will take only one major shutdown of a border crossing to show just how economically vulnerable Canadians really are.
We need better infrastructure, new systems, and a whole a new border culture focused on security. But most of all, we need politicians and bureaucrats to show more urgency.
Fix these crossings, before it’s too late.
Senator Colin Kenny is Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca