What Port Security?

If Canada had an eight-member agency looking after national security at our ports, and those agents were Curly, Larry and Moe, with the others belonging to one family — Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Gummo — we’d be better off than we are now. That’s because we don’t have an agency looking after national security at our ports. Canada stands alone in the G8 and is one of the few industrialized countries in the world without a special police force dedicated to the protection and security of ports, which is why those in the know weren’t surprised with what happened in Halifax the other day. Four stowaways climbed off a container ship in the Port of Halifax and no one blinked an eye. Were our security forces on lunch? No. We don’t have a security force.

It wasn’t always this way. In 1997, the federal government disbanded the Canada Ports Police, the on-site, 24/7 agency dedicated to policing our ports. The reasoning was that the agency slowed down commercial trade, especially in the Atlantic provinces. The 40,000-member Canadian Police Association protested vehemently, but it didn’t matter.

Consider New York City, the biggest port in the United States. Canada’s decision would be like shutting down the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, and replacing them with nothing. That’s what happened here, and right across the country. In Vancouver, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, St. John’s, you name it.

The International Association of Airport and Seaport Police (IAASP) consists of police and law enforcement agencies that protect airports and seaports around the world. Mike Toddington used to be chief officer of the Vancouver detachment of the Canada Ports Police and is now executive director of the IAASP. He once reported that $1.2-billion in illicit drugs were seized at the Port of Vancouver over a seven-year period. Interception rates are said to be only 5% of the total traffic at such places. Do the

math and Vancouver would have been more than a $3-billion-a-year operation. That means illicit drugs were the #1 business at the port. However, this was before the Canada Ports Police was disbanded. I asked Toddington how the international community regards our ports security. “Canada does not have a lot of credibility,” he said with the utmost of generosity.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department is dedicated to protecting the port of New York City. In Asian cities like Singapore, auxiliary police are employed by the ports, along with regular police permanently assigned to the ports. Hong Kong has a division of port police exclusively responsible for the port. States in Australia have their own dedicated harbour police or marine divisions patrolling the waterways. The United Kingdom has river police, which are absorbed into the London Metropolitan Police, and also the federal government Home Office, which has a special division of the national police dedicated to the ports. Holland has the port police in Rotterdam as a special division of its national police service. Canada has local police who may or may not respond to calls. There is no one on the ground around the clock at our ports.

In 2006, former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli told the Senate national security committee that he had 124 officers stationed at our three biggest airports and only 30 officers at our 19 ports. He said: “Our assessment is that the marine ports are the greatest single threat in terms of organized crime and national security.”

The Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers were comedians, but no one would have called either group a laughingstock. That word is used to describe an object of ridicule. Like us.

Published in the National Post, April 1, 2008