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Coastal Security Too Watered Down Say Canadian Lawmakers
Ottawa (AFP) March 28, 2007 Canadians should fret about poor coastal security, said a report Wednesday, which called Canada's Coast Guard "toothless" in defending the world's longest national coastline. "Canada's security perimeter features thousands of kilometers of coastline and hundreds of harbors that for the most part go unwatched" making it easier to for criminals or terrorists to enter, said a report by the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defense. "One of Canada's most obvious vulnerabilities is the sheer size of the perimeter," which is 243,000 kilometers (150,000 miles) long. The senators called Canada's Coast Guard "toothless" and lacking the experience, the equipment or the mandate to defend the country's shoreline. New high-frequency radar touted by the military was proven "unreliable" and even interferes with a licensed frequency, the report said. The Great Lakes are patrolled by just one federal police boat and two Coast Guard vessels, leaving the bulk of the waterway's surveillance to local police, the senators lamented. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper's plan to boost Canada's Arctic claims by sending more patrols to its northern frontier was deemed a waste of the navy's limited resources. "The committee finds it unfathomable that the government has announced its intention to get the Canadian Navy much more involved in Canada's northern waters, where little or no threat exists to the security of Canadians," the report said. "Sovereignty in the north is not going to be defended by force -- can anyone imagine Canadian guns firing on US or British vessels going through the Northwest Passage?" Ottawa and Washington are at odds over the famed Northwest Passage and the resource-rich Beaufort Sea. Russia, Denmark and Norway have also refuted Canada's Arctic claims. The dispute has heightened as scientists say that global warming could open the Northwest Passage to year-round cargo shipping by 2050, and open the north to oil and gas exploration. "Disagreements over Canada's sovereignty in these waters are not going to be settled through the use of gunboats. They will be settled through the use of diplomacy or in the courts," the report said. Last week, the committee also warned that inept security at Canada's 19 ports, which handle almost four million containers each year, leave this country and its biggest trading partner, the United States, vulnerable to terrorist attack. They also found security at Canada's 89 major airports to be dangerously lax, despite billions of dollars in upgrades since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Source: Agence France-Presse Email This Article
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