Security agencies are so underfunded they cannot do their jobs

To some extent, reducing physical risk is a personal responsibility. Most Canadians can choose whether to insure their houses, participate in radical sports, go for a walk during electrical storms, smoke cigarettes, pick fights with big guys and so on.

 

But to some degree, reducing physical risk for Canadians is the responsibility of governments, including provincial governments (health care) and the federal government (national security and defence).

 

Canadians should be keeping a keen eye on how intelligently these governments are handling risk reduction.

 

Canadians have a suite of federal protection agencies looking out for their physical well-being, including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and, of course, the Canadian Forces.

 

I find it curious that at a time when our economy is shedding good jobs in the private sector, and at a time when Canadians are increasingly vulnerable to human-made and natural disasters, all these agencies are underfunded and badly understaffed.

 

The current federal government has turned its back on $12 billion in annual revenues to Canadians by reducing the GST from 7 per cent to 5 per cent. There's certainly no harm in that if it has plenty of money at hand to perform its various roles – the most important of which is the physical protection of Canadians.

 

But take a look at the weaknesses in the agencies that are supposed to be protecting us, and ask yourself if they have the funding to do their jobs.

 

Let's start with the RCMP. The Senate committee for national security and defence estimates that the Mounties are short-staffed by 5,000 to 7,000 officers. If that sounds unbelievable, consider just a few of dozens of examples I could offer to support the committee's case:

 

• The U.S. Coast Guard patrols the Great Lakes with 2,200 officers. Canada tries to do it with 14 Mounties. The Americans beg us to team up with them to fight crime, but the RCMP doesn't have the people.
• Canada's ports are riddled with crime, but the Mounties don't have the officers to do much about it. Huge gaps in security leave them vulnerable to both criminals and terrorists. It would take 900 more Mounties to police our ports properly.
• The former RCMP commissioner testified that the Mounties can only keep tables on one-third of the criminal organizations in Canada that it knows exist, let alone all the others it hasn't found yet.

 

The federal government's solution to the RCMP's huge personnel shortage was to give the Mounties about 600 additional personnel a year or so ago, about one-tenth of what they need. The government has also promised the provinces funding for 2,500 new police officers, but has strangely not included the country's national police force in the deal.

 

Customs officers are also in short supply. The committee estimates that the Canadian Border Service Agency, which staffs 1,200 border crossings and other ports of entry into Canada, needs 2,300 additional employees. Why? To put an end to using undertrained student summer replacements as border guards, to add a second person at 139 border crossings where officers are forced to work alone, to operate electronic cargo inspection machines that should be purchased and used far more widely than they are now, and to provide enough backup to replace officers taking firearms training.

 

The federal government has committed itself to hiring 400 new customs officers, which will be enough to eliminate work-alone posts, but won't solve the other three problems listed above.

Less than 3 per cent of containers that enter Canada are scanned or inspected, an open invitation to would-be criminals and terrorists.

 

The last information CBSA provided the committee showed that 459 vehicles crashed the border into Canada during a six-month period, and more than 200 were never apprehended. Think about that kind of border fragility when you next read a story about guns and drugs showing up on the streets of Canadian cities. At least part of the problem stems from our leaky borders.

 

Over to the Canadian Forces. It hasn't been fashionable in Canada to care about the size or strength of the Canadian military since World War II. But the military matters in advancing Canada's interests abroad and protecting Canadians at home. This government promised Canadians a "Canada First" defence policy and at one point promised to increase the size of the Canadian Forces by 15,000 to 75,000 by 2010-11 and the size of the reserves by 10,000 to 35,000.

 

Later it quietly announced that it had misspoken, and the increase in regulars would only be 7,500 and the increase in reserves would only be 1,000. So far, even these shrunken words are only words. In the Canadian army's 2008-2009 needs report, Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie revealed that the army's size has actually declined by 30 soldiers since 2005. He testified before the committee that the army is short 1,000 non-commissioned officers. "The army," he said, "is now stretched almost to the breaking point."

 

Indeed, Canada's military can't even come up with enough troops to take on the role it took on in Afghanistan, let alone have troops left over for other potentially important assignments or to strengthen Canada's defences at home. To perform the roles Canadian politicians routinely demand of it, Canada's military should number 90,000. The Liberals presided over the "decade of darkness" for the Canadian Forces in the '90s, but this government isn't doing any better, and it doesn't even have deficit fighting as an excuse.

 

Finally, there is CSIS – the intelligence agency at the heart of Canada's efforts to fight terrorism, which is not going to go away and will shock Canadians some day the way it shocked Americans seven years ago unless we keep our guard up. CSIS, however, now has fewer employees than it did 18 years ago, despite the fact that it has taken on overseas responsibilities.

 

The Number 1 priority of any national government is the physical protection of its citizens. I don't pretend that any Canadian government could come up with the money to fill every Canadian security gap that our committee has identified. I do argue that this government is pretending to stand for law and order without coming close to providing the institutions that provide law and order with the resources they so desperately need.

 

Colin Kenny is a Liberal senator and chair of the Senate committee on national security and defence.

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