Globe and Mail - August 7, 2009
By Colin Kenny
In Sarnia, home of the famous Bluewater Bridge connecting Canada to the United States, some citizens are planning to “Moon the Balloon” on August 15th in protest over invasion of their privacy from the sky. It seems that an American company is testing an airborne camera over the St. Clair River that can apparently read the name on a ship from 14 kilometres away.
The United States is obviously getting serious about policing the porous Canadian-U.S. border. U.S. Homeland Security already has armed ships and helicopters patrolling the Great Lakes, and are planning to have a web of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) funneling information on the movement of vessels in several Great Lakes locations.
Canada should be participating in the creation of that web.
I fully understand that the Sarnia mooning is a light-hearted way of protesting invasion of privacy. One would think that even a grumpy member of that august body, the Canadian Senate, should be able to muster a smile. So I’m smiling.
But this is a serious issue. The Canadian government should be showing much greater vision in terms of cooperating with the Americans on policing this border. We have as much interest in cracking down on smuggling and potential terrorist attacks as the Americans do, and a cooperative approach to this file will help us on other files – political and economic.
The Great Lakes are notorious for the amount of smuggling of cigarettes, guns and people that goes on – most of the guns that are showing up in big Canadian cities are illegal weapons emanating from the United States.
As for terrorists, I am not expecting some Al-Qaeda cell based in Chicago or Detroit to come storming at Canadian shores anytime soon. But if any terrorist organization operating out of Canada were ever to strike at the United States across our joint border, you could say goodbye to the Canadian economy as we know it. We should be doing everything in our power to prevent that from happening.
Right now, Canada is developing pretty good surveillance on our East and West Coasts – something just short of a real-time picture of what’s going on out there, and a limited capacity to identify ships that haven’t reported in or are behaving in a suspicious manner.
Not so on the Great Lakes. We have 21 Mounties trying to do the job that 2,200 members of the U.S. Coast Guard and various other America security agencies are doing.
I visited Canada’s Marine Operations Security Centre on the shore of Lake Ontario recently, and despite the fact that it was rolled out in 2005, it is still at a perfunctory stage. At the time of my visit it only had access to a portable radar machine, which by itself is incapable of providing a picture of what is happening on much of the lake.
Radar is an important starting point for electronic surveillance. When the Toronto Police Department experimented with radar on Lake Ontario, it found out that there is a lot going on out there that we need to know about.
Like a pattern of boats running from Oshawa to Syracuse in the very early hours of the morning. Like a boat leaving Oakville at 3 a.m., visiting a ship on Lake Ontario, and returning a few hours later. Delivering a pizza? Maybe. But you’d really like to know a bit more.
We need complete radar coverage of the four Great Lakes we share with the Americans. That will identify anomalies in ship movements. After that, we need to identify those vessels and move toward interdiction.
Surveillance by UAVs could help do that – they can pinpoint a device the size of a breadbox from 60,000 feet in the air. Unlike helicopters, they can loiter for a long time. They’re also cheaper than helicopters and other types of aircraft.
I anticipate my critics on this issue, and presume that their arguments against Canada getting involved in this kind of Great Lakes surveillance will choose one of two arguments:
(a) Let the Americans do it. They’ve got the money.
(b) Don’t let anybody do it. It’s an invasion of privacy.
To group (a), I say that as a moral issue, it is a Canadian as well as American responsibility to defend North America. As a practical issue, the Great Lakes represent an essential part of the transportation system of both countries. Beyond that, it is in Canada’s interests to step up and show that it cares about what Americans care very much about – security – or we’re in for a lot more rough treatment on other issues, many of them economic.
Before the Americans set any border security plan in place that will create the image that they see Canada as hostile territory, we should be stepping in and saying “How can we be part of this? How can we do this as partners?”
To group (b), I say get yourselves fig leaves. I value privacy as much as the next person, but our governments are facing asymmetrical threats in the 21st century, and they need to be much more aware than they ever were before. Our borders represent the best place to say: “Stop, who goes there?”
A government protecting its citizens has to be watchful. You can do it with binoculars, and nobody will moon you. Or you can do it with more sophisticated equipment, and some of them will.
Turning the other cheek is a profound religious concept. It doesn’t work with the bad guys. Smiling is a worthy Canadian tradition, but every now and then we need to show we’re serious.
[Colin Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. Kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca]