The ongoing saga about our recently-sacked Minister of Foreign Affairs and his former girlfriend of dubious connections, who together have managed to bust national security, is the kind of thing the international media eats up. Like a pit bull with lockjaw that won’t let go, the story goes on and on with new revelations. Indeed, imagine if Maxime Bernier was Prime Minister of Canada with Julie Couillard as his wife. Why, the Pierre-and-Maggie show would have seemed like Ozzie and Harriet by comparison.
But did this couple really reveal Canadian security for the joke that it is? No. The security of our country was already a slice of Swiss cheese with holes galore.
A few years ago I was involved with an Ontario government task force that was looking at the correctional system. We were doing hearings around the province, and one day we had to fly to Sault Ste. Marie. Our group of eight, including a former deputy minister who was leading the task force, met at the Avitat Skyservice terminal immediately west of Pearson International Airport. We had our own pilot and our own plane. There was no wait. We were in the air 20 minutes after arriving at the terminal.
I had never been to this place before. I followed the directions and drove into the parking lot past a security gate. To my surprise, it was unmanned. I parked my car and all those 747’s at Pearson were in clear unobstructed view, no more than a quarter-mile away. I could easily have driven up in a pickup truck with a rocket launcher in the back, set the thing up, and blasted away at the main terminal and any aircraft I chose. There was no security. None whatsoever. And this well after 9/11, a stone’s throw from the country’s busiest airport.
I was awestruck. In dismay, I wrote to Senator Colin Kenny, who is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security & Defence, and told him about my experience. He replied and said this is how Canada does things.
Indeed. Just how lax are we in defending ourselves and keeping the nation safe? Well, for starters, we are the only country I know of in the West that has no national security police keeping tabs on our ports. We did at one time, mind you. The Canada Ports Police were disbanded in 1997, a federal-government decision that was based on economics; the feds thought the agency was slowing down commercial trade in ports in the Atlantic provinces. And so, ever since then there has been no federal police service committed to protecting Canada’s 19 ports. Halifax? Nope. St. John’s, Newfoundland? Uh-uh. Montreal? Nada. Vancouver? Afraid not.
In the U.S., especially since 9/11, they say security always trumps economics. Not so in this country. Here it’s the reverse, that is, if there is any security at all.
Do you know of any other country, barring Afghanistan perhaps, that doesn’t require people to fill out an exit form when they leave? Canada doesn’t. You come here and fill out a customs form which tells authorities how much liquor and tobacco you brought with you. But when you leave? Nothing. This means the authorities have no idea what happened to you. Just about every country – at least, those that take national security seriously – requires newcomers to fill out a form upon arrival and another form when leaving. There is good reason for this. It allows a country to keep track of people who come through their borders. But not Canada. We allow them in and then let them get lost, and it doesn’t matter who they are. Once you’re in, you’re in. No surprise then that we’re very good at losing people.
Federal Auditor-General Sheila Fraser knows about this. She recently announced that the Canada Border Services Agency doesn’t collect enough data to “properly manage detentions and removals,” which is why the agency has lost track of 41,000 people who were ordered to leave. She said many of the missing deportees were failed refugee claimaints, and that the agency doesn’t keep up with the thousands of illegal immigrants who enter this country, including criminal types who remain on the lam.
Orillia is a beautiful town north of Toronto. It has 41,000 people. Imagine losing the population of Orillia. Or Truro, Nova Scotia. Or Rimouski, Quebec. Or Penticton, B.C. They’re all about the same size.
Last Friday morning I was on the 401 passing Pearson International Airport when I decided to check out that same Avitat Skyservice terminal that I had visited before. I got out at the Dixie Road exit, went north to Britannia, then east to Midfield and through the so-called security gate. As before, there was no one in it. Is anyone ever in it? Is it only for show, like a Neighbourhood Watch sign when, in fact, no one is really observing anything? I don’t know the answer to these questions. But at 8 a.m. on a Friday, at a terminal adjacent to the biggest airport in Canada, one might think there would be some form of security on the grounds. There wasn’t. Not even Maxime or Julie were guarding the premises. Only in Canada, you say? Pity.
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