Pubdate: Tue, 14 Feb 2006
Source: Ottawa Citizen (CN ON)
Copyright: 2006 The Ottawa Citizen
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/326
Author: Colin Kenny
Note: Colin Kenny was chair of the Senate committee on national 
security and defence over the past five years. The committee has 
published 14 reports on Canadian security during that period.

SEND IN THE MOUNTIES

The State Of Security In Canada Is Pathetic; Stephen Harper Should 
Dramatically Increase The Number Of RCMP Officers, And Soon

I want to present a challenge to Stephen Harper and his new 
government: Make better use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The 
security of Canadians is full of holes. Only a bolstered RCMP has the 
potential to fill them.

We Canadians are very adept at sending RCMP officers across the 
country and around the world as photo-op symbols of Canada's 
dedication to the causes of justice and public order.

There are too many guns on the streets, the drug trade appears to be 
out of control, and several reports by our Senate committee for 
national security and defence have shown that in an era of worldwide 
terrorist attacks, our coastlines and border crossings are virtually 
undefended. Our sea ports and airports are riddled with organized 
crime, which creates security gaps that terrorists and gunrunners are 
well aware of.

Am I an alarmist? Optimists point to an overall decline in crime 
rates, and they're right. But that's a factor of demographics: a 
higher percentage of older people means less overall crime, 
particularly petty crime. But it doesn't mean fewer big-time threats 
from people the Mounties have told us are active in Canada: Asian 
Triads, Russian gangsters, narco-terrorists and traditional organized 
crime. Most of these people aren't aging baby boomers. They're young, 
mean and efficient.

Outfits like the Hells Angels are running huge nation-wide businesses 
with massive profit margins. They're great organizers, marketers and 
masters of just-in-time delivery. They've demonstrated that you don't 
need an MBA to succeed in the dark side of commerce -- all you need 
is a society that can't get its act together to keep you in check. In 
Canada, they've got a beauty.

Enter the RCMP.

The RCMP are a national institution, which I believe is essential 
when you're fighting coast-to-coast crime. Trying to use a 
multiplicity of government departments, organizations and police 
forces to deal with issues such as airport security means no one 
really has a handle on what needs to be done. And nobody can be held 
accountable when big things go wrong.

The RCMP also have an outstanding record when given the resources. 
Like all big organizations, they screw up from time to time, but for 
the most part, these people have the right credentials to go after 
the worst kind of people.

For some time now the RCMP have been starved of resources. Inadequate 
funding has meant that the force has only been able to play a fringe 
role at our ports and on our borders. You may find the following 
numbers shocking -- I do: The RCMP's resources are so limited that 
they currently dedicate fewer than 30 officers permanently to monitor 
and investigate organized crime at ports across the country, fewer 
than 100 at all Canadian airports, and fewer than 150 to Integrated 
Border Enforcement Teams -- the key units monitoring crime and 
national security investigations along the whole of the Canada-U.S. border.

These miniscule numbers give new meaning to the words "spread thinly."

And make no mistake, our ports, our borders and our border crossings 
are vulnerable. When our Senate committee first pointed out that our 
sea ports and airports were riddled with organized crime, we were 
greeted with waves of denials. About a year later, the government 
acknowledged the problem and became a signatory of the minimalist 
standards of the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code. 
It provided $115 million in financial assistance to improve security. 
The money went into things like fencing.

Fencing and other physical improvements at sea ports, airports and 
border crossings are helpful, but criminals need only to bribe or 
intimidate port employees to circumvent these kinds of barriers. And 
our committee has been told in no uncertain terms that they do. 
Fences are a poor substitute for robust and sophisticated policing.

What Canada needs to beat criminals that don't restrict themselves to 
municipal or provincial boundaries is an intelligence-led policing 
effort with the resources and capabilities necessary to meet any 
threat, anywhere in the country. The RCMP isn't the police force of 
local or provincial jurisdiction in every province, but it has proven 
itself a team player with provincial police forces in Ontario and 
Quebec in recent years, and it can offer intelligence, leadership and 
support in these jurisdictions.

What Canada has now is a fragmented approach with too many weak 
links. At airports, for instance, responsibility is diffused between 
Transport Canada, local airport authorities, the Canadian Air 
Transport Security Authority, local police forces and whatever 
rent-a-cops the airport authorities choose to employ to save money. 
No one is accountable.

The bad guys have skilled and single-minded teams. We have a 
collection of players, some of whom don't skate so well.

Take a look at Canada's Great Lakes, where nobody has a clear picture 
of what is going on, where smugglers go about their business with 
relative impunity, where the unrestricted whirl of pleasure craft in 
the summer provides cover for anybody wishing to do just about anything.

The new Harper government is now in place, and says it is committed 
to increasing the security of Canadians. Prime Minister Harper is 
going to meet again with RCMP Commissioner Giuliano (Zack) 
Zaccardelli to discuss security. If Commissioner Zaccardelli follows 
sad tradition, he will hold out a small bowl, tug his forelock, and 
suggest that modest increases to the RMCP budget would sustain it as 
an effective institution.

What Commissioner Zaccardelli should be doing is making the case that 
the government must be bold enough to increase the size of the RCMP 
by at least a third over the next decade. The force should be given 
the lead mandate to upgrade the domestic security of Canadians, 
particularly by fighting organized crime nationally and closing the 
security gaps on our borders and at our ports.

The RCMP currently employ about 16,000 persons in uniform, with 
training facilities to bring in approximately 1,400 to 1,600 recruits 
a year. The size of the force should be increased to at least 21,000 
within a decade.

To make this number a reality, the force needs to double its training 
capacity, and increase the number of recruits it graduates every year 
to approximately 3,000. Even extraordinary measures like this will 
not yield the kind of seasoned officers we need right away. But it 
will increase the force's capacity, freeing up experienced officers 
to tackle our national security problems on behalf of all Canadians.

Right now, Canada's national response to crime and terrorism looks 
like a juggling act, with plenty of balls in the air and plenty of 
dropped balls on the ground. Jugglers don't make good street 
fighters. Somebody has to take charge. Who better than the RCMP?
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman