Beyond the Border War on Drugs

Seven months after Steve and Barry signed off on Beyond the Border last year, agreeing to improve cross-border investigations and share more info on Canadian travelers with Homeland Security, US AG Eric Holder explained to the Northern Border Summit that while Canada and the US already had an "excellent relationship" on  "cooperation in criminal investigations and prosecutions", " certain sentencing laws – and information sharing policies and practices – should be updated." 


Uh-oh, I wrote at the time, here comes Operation Doobie - the source of Steve's hardon for "spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six pot plants" - and this in a country that overwhelmingly supports decriminalization if not outright legalization.


Well, it would appear Operation Doobie has now entered the building.

There are a number of curious things about the Whitehouse National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy, January 2012, which I'll get to in a minute, but basically it calls for more info sharing from ISPs :

  "It is imperative that Canada and the United States work together to expedite the sharing of information from electronic communication service providers; and share information necessary to lay the foundation for intercepting internet and voice communications under their respective laws in a timely manner." (Pages 33-34)

Plus greater integration of Canada and US law enforcement agencies in Border Enforcement Security Task forces (BESTs) and the 15 Integrated Border Enforcement Teams (IBETs), including FBI, ICE, CBP, USCG, CBSA, RCMP, DEA, OPP, etc etc. Mention is made of the coordinating duties of the DEA and FBI offices located in Ottawa, Vancouver, and Toronto.

And more tech. Lots and lots more tech : thermal cameras, license plate readers, unmanned aerial vehicles, mobile and remote video surveillance systems.

Naturally this is reported in the US media as being about keeping Canadian marijuana out of the US, however small potatoes we might be compared to the US Mexico border :

"Agents seized about 9,470 pounds of marijuana along the northern border in fiscal 2011, according to Customs and Border Protection statistics, less than 1 percent of the roughly 2.4 million pounds seized along the southwestern border."

Ok, now for those curious bits ...

It really is all about pot.

"Marijuana is the most widely abused illicit drug in the United States and Canada. 

Marijuana and Ecstasy remain the most significant Canadian drug threats to the United States. While still responsible for significant social harm and public health and safety consequences at the individual and community levels, methamphetamine (meth) and heroin pose much lesser threats to each country, as evidenced by case reporting and limited northbound and southbound seizures." 

See now I would have thought meth and smack were a greater threat than pot but apparently that's just me.

However if I was trying to justify expanding internet spying or spending billions to further integrate Canadian law enforcement under DEA and Homeland Security, then I guess I'd pick a viable target like potheads over the junkies in the DTES.

In the report, various Canadian ethnic groups are held responsible for grows and labs - Vietnamese, Italian, Irish, Indian, eastern European, plus the Hell's Angels and FN border reservations - but then the report elsewhere undercuts its own message by noting that the prevalence of reported drug use - cannabis, cocaine or crack, speed, Ecstasy, hallucinogens (excluding salvia) or heroin - is down slightly in the US and down a whopping 14.5% in Canada from 2004 to 2009.

Aside from its considerable preoccupation with pot, the report states that "Canadian-produced meth currently poses a limited threat to the United States" and "the vast majority of cocaine that crosses the U .S .–Canada border is northbound into Canada". 

Plus ""Vietnamese Transnational Crime Organizations, in some cases with ties to Canada, have moved their indoor marijuana grow activities to the United States in an effort to decrease transportation costs and limit the risk of seizure associated with smuggling marijuana across the Northern border."

So ... drug use down, meth no biggie, cocaine flows north, and pot grows moving stateside. 

So what, aside from the danger posed by people staring raptly at their hands while eating a shitload of cookie sandwiches, has any of this got to do with integrating the border again?

Back to the National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy :

"During the November 9-10, 2010 Cross Border Crime Forum Ministerial, the four co-chairs, the Attorneys General for the United States and Canada, the Minister for Public Safety and the Secretary of DHS ... officials underscored the importance of a shared vision for border security and highlighted progress made by the United States and Canada over the past year to safeguard the critical resources, infrastructure, and citizens of both nations, focusing on streamlining information sharing and enforcement efforts and enhancing the ability of both countries to identify and respond to a wide range of threats."

Safeguard the critical resources of both nations? Are we still talking about pot here?
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Monday night update : Via Greenvie at Bread & Roses, a great piece comparing SOPA to the war on drugs :
Stonekettle Kitchen : SOPA, PIPA, Good Intentions and the Road to Hell
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Another thrilling episode of Beyond the Border

In this week's episode, Steve lays a cunning trap for Barry. In exchange for agreeing to pass travel and "informal" info about Canadians on to Homeland Security, Steve gets Barry to promise to maybe match $1-billion in Canadian taxpayer dollars to fund some pilot projects sometime in the future that will principally benefit the 40% of Canada-US corporations that rely on a cross-border supply chain. Will Barry take the bait?

Well you can clearly see the advantage to Canada here. If US security dudes are openly operating in Canada, never again will the RCMP suffer the humiliation of delivering a Canadian citizen to the US border so he can be tried and jailed in the US for acts committed and not considered criminal in Canada.  So there's that.

And "informal information exchange", ie unsubstantiated spook-thinks about brown Canadians with funny names like Abdelrazik and Arar, has clearly worked out really well in previous informal information exchanges.

From the Canadian Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan:

Canada and the United States have a long history of working together to defend the freedoms and rights of our citizens and to deal with threats to our collective way of life. Cross-border cooperation and information sharing are crucial to these efforts.

See how that works?
None of that old "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety" nonsense. It's all the same thing now - it's "collective". And if we have to pitch a few more hippies/troublemakers/brown peoples into the gaping maw of US security paranoia, well that's just a price we're willing to pay to keep those trucks rolling back and forth over the border.

Most of the TV and print media commentary in favour of this latest episode of Beyond the Border has come from Canada-US Project luminaries Derek Burney, Colin Robertson, and Fen Osler Hampson, whose Blueprint for Canada-US Engagement appears to be the blueprint for Steve and Barry's deal. They say it will be very good for Canada and is in no way a threat to our sovereignty, a defence which would be rather more reassuring had Hampson not made a pitch to the Foreign Affairs committee in 2009 in favour of dropping the national border altogether.
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Homeland security perimeter

Listening in on : Border Security Challenges After 9/11: A Conversation With Three Commissioners of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Sept 9, 2011

On Sept. 10, 2001, Robert Bonner tells us, he began his job as head of what is now the US Customs and Border Protection. The next day, in reaction to 9/11 events, he raised the border security alert to Level One, resulting in border wait times from Canada increasing from an average of 10 minutes to over 12 hours. It was at this point he realized security considerations would have to be addressed without "effectively shutting down our [US] country's economy ... These two pillars are not mutually exclusive."

Expanded X-ray and radiation technology on the borders and "advance electronic data" and vetting incoming travellers in foreign airports were put in place to expand the security envelope beyond the US borders.

 "And this is an important point," he said. "We were able to do this without congressional mandates."
 
Also at the roundtable was former commissioner Ralph Basham, who described the US/Mexico security fence as the "dumbest idea" he had ever heard of : "We all knew this wasn't the answer".
And current CBP Commissioner Alan Bersin :

"What will become more and more a feature of our homeland security efforts is partnership at a new level with the private sector. We cannot actually accomplish this goal without being in partnership with the private sector, given their involvement in the private supply chain and travel network ....  From day one we brought the private sector into the discussion and rather than designing and then mandating an approach to security, we actually co-created it in the case of the express carriers.....

In this way we will overcome the dichotomy within this decade and we have always realized it as a dichotomy - those of us inside CBP have realized it but I think we need to make this much more a staple knowledge on the part of the American people - which is that trade and security are not mutually exclusive. Not only are they not mutually exclusive, let alone antithetical to one another, but we at CBP increasingly believe that they are the same process, that in fact we cannot increase our security profile unless we expedite the 99.5% of trade and travel that is legitimate." 

And if 'we' don't, added Basham, the terrorists will have won.
 
"Without congressional mandate" and dependence on the private sector from day one should remind you of the SPP : Security and Prosperity Partnership, whose various proponents advised on its deathbed that it could only be resuscitated in increments.
 
Steve of course continued to deny for months that any such new combined security perimeter border action plan even existed, while simultaneously consulting on it with lobby groups and the private sector since last fall.

Interesting that all three CBP commissioners repeatedly emphasized the importance of keeping the borders nice and thin for their supply lines, isn't it?
I thought that was supposed to be our worry, not theirs - something the Americans just don't get - and thus the reason why we have to give them whatever they want so trucks will keep running back and forth between Windsor and Detroit.
 
So much for the "prosperity" part - on to "security" :
 
Yesterday ...
Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the Northern Border Summit 
 
... 9/11 ...  unprecedented threats... yada yada
"Because of the promising new “Beyond our Border” initiative that President Obama and Prime Minister Harper proposed earlier this year, our law enforcement efforts have never been more closely aligned ...
The creation of “NextGen” teams of cross-designated officers would allow us to more effectively identify, assess, and interdict persons and organizations involved in transnational crime ..."
Ok, here we go, italics mine :

"Despite the excellent relationship we’ve established, I believe that there are areas in which the U.S. and Canada can enhance cooperation in criminal investigations and prosecutions. And I believe we must consider how extradition, and mutual legal assistance processes could be streamlined to avoid delays; and whether certain sentencing laws – and information sharing policies and practices – should be updated.
As Canada’s national government considers various anti-crime policies and approaches, we will continue working to implement a comprehensive anti-crime framework that respects the sovereignty of both our nations."

Certain sentencing laws?
Well we knew about the push for information sharing but "sentencing laws" ? For what crimes?
Is this why Steve has been pushing for "spending hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers dollars on prison building, in order to impose a mandatory minimum term of six months in jail for anyone who grows more than six marijuana plants" ?

Holder winds it up :

"Since December, senior representatives from DOJ, DHS, Public Safety Canada and Justice Canada have been meeting regularly ... and progress has been made in developing a pilot project that we hope to launch next year."

Operation Spliff? Operation Doobie?

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"A quick perimeter security deal"

is what an editorial in the Windsor Star is calling for now that Steve has his majority despite "opposition MPs who claimed it would weaken Canadian sovereignty":

"The reality is this: There is no other way to keep goods and services flowing freely across our borders."

Department of Homeland Security, Feb 1:

"DHS believes the risk of terrorist activity across the northern border is higher than across the southern border because there are active Islamist extremist groups in Canada that are not in Mexico, it is easier to cross the northern border because it is twice as long as the southern border, and DHS has a fraction of the law enforcement officers and surveillance assets on the northern border than it has in the south."

Three days later Steve and Obama released their Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness, although news of it had already been leaked back in December.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano five days ago at the May 4 US Senate Committee on Homeland Security, transcript from audio webcast : 

"Our strategy for the northern border is different. It's much more technology-dependant for example so we are adding more systems up there that can detect low-flying aircraft. Also our partnership with Canada has really evolved over the past months so that you had Prime Minister Harper and President Obama themselves announcing a joint vision for a perimeter [here Napolitano makes a big circle in the air with her hands] involving Canada and the United States and greater cooperation with Canadian law enforcement on both sides of the border. That is going extraordinarily well. For example we are looking at being able to integrate their own sensors and radar feeds into our system as well."

Enter thinktanky support from the Wilson Center in Washington DC, who awarded Steve their Public Service Award in 2006 after he had been in office a whole 8 months . Via Luiza Ch. Savage, a link to an upcoming May 11 Wilson Center event :

Northern Border Crime and Terror Networks: Fact or Fiction? : (italics mine)"

How vulnerable is the Canada-U.S. border to crime and terrorism? Americans are concerned that terrorists might infiltrate from the North ...

In an effort to inform a more evidence-based policy approach to Canada-U.S. border integrity, a team of U.S. and Canadian researchers has been collecting data on cross-border criminal activity, with surprising results on the nature and extent of cross-border criminal connections on both sides of the border. The findings bolster the argument in favor of shifting from joint enforcement to joint jurisdiction—a model similar to the way Canada and the United States have been collaborating on matters of national defense for decades."

Flashback : David Biette, director of the Canada Institute at the Wilson Center, in 2009

"Perimeter is no longer a dirty word. ... The old Toronto nationalists of the 1960s were essential to building the idea of a postmodern Canada, but now they're starting to die off."

as Steve and his various US enablers are no doubt hoping for the same for Canadian sovereignty.

Of the "US and Canadian researchers" speaking at the Wilson Center event, I note that the US researchers and at least one of the three Canadian researchers receive funding from Homeland Security and the US Defense Dept.
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Son of SPP : The Sequel

Well, it's back. The 'one security perimeter' deep integration SPP/FTAA zombie, now with new and improved emphasis on security.

You're shocked, I'm sure.

Like it ever really died.

The re-animators just learned not to dig it up and parade it around in parliament too often.

"Beyond the Border: A Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Competitiveness"

"A Declaration by the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Canada."

"We share responsibility for the safety, security and resilience of Canada and the United States and we intend to address threats at the earliest point possible, including outside the perimeter of our two countries"

reads a draft agreement yet to be signed by Harper and President Barack Obama.

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Les Whittington at The Star :

" In what could be the biggest challenge to Canadian sovereignty since free trade in the 1980s, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is secretly cooking up a deal with the Obama administration that would give Washington a much bigger say in Canada’s border security, immigration controls and information-sharing with American law-enforcement agencies."

Naturally there's a working group to handle the implementation -isn't there's always some extra-parliamentary working group to handle the implementation? This one - "Beyond the Border Working Group" - is staffed by officials from the Privy Council in Ottawa and National Security Staff in the White House.

The US is also currently negotiating a similar deal with Mexico called New Border Vision, and the foreign ministers from all three countries are meeting in Ottawa in four days.

Chris Sands of the Hudson Institute - and author of Negotiating North America, the closest thing we have to a manual on implementing deep integration security - says it's all about "trying to boost security by exchanging more information, rather than fortifying the border" :

"But it's taken us [Canada and the US] a while to see the world in the same way"

Sands is not always this diplomatic. Two years ago he addressed a security conference in Ottawa.

Sands :

"... homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends.

In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians. Not only about (routine) individuals but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge."

Sands then recounted a conversation he had with Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security :

"Canadians have "had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they've paid nothing." Now "we want to give you less access, but we want you to pay more and, by the way, we're standardizing this (with other visa-free countries) so you're not special anymore."

Well certainly that's an assessment Harper would have no trouble with.

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Stuart Trew at Council of Canadians, yesterday :

"Canada has armed and secured itself to the teeth to satisfy the U.S. but no new perimeter plan can bring the U.S. economy back to life. That’s the real reason trade is down across the border."

John Manley, former Liberal deputy prime minister and now president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, yesterday :

"The real question will be what do we get at the border in exchange for greater co-ordination on security."

Back in 2005 when he was Canada Chair of the deep integration project, 2005 Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, Manley wrote :

"The Task Force's central recommendation is establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter."

.Are we going to let them get away with it this time?

WELL, ARE WE ?

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James Laxer : Stop Fortress North America

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Privacy - Homeland Security-style

The same party that thought the Canadian government collecting info about Canadians via the mandatory census was an egregious violation of privacy and civil liberties is apparently just fine with having info about Canadians collected by the US Homeland Security. Funny old Cons, eh?

We've known this was coming since 2007. Bill C-42 , an Act to amend the Aeronautics Act, will allow Canadian airlines exemption from Canadian privacy laws in order to pass passenger info on to Homeland Security if the flight veers at all into US airspace enroute to its final destination. So even if you aren't going to actually land in the US on your way to a Mexican holiday or even a short hop from one Canadian city to another that touches US airspace at some point, Homeland Security will still have veto power over whether you get to board your flight.

"Canadian sovereignty has gone right out the window," raged Liberal transport critic Joe Volpe in June when the Cons first presented the bill. "You are going to be subject to American law."

Then on Tuesday he voted for it along with all the rest of the Libs and Cons. It passed second reading 241 to 34.

Hey, they may have had difficulty bringing themselves to vote for Canadian mining sector responsibility abroad, but when it really matters, the Libs can still get out the vote.

Fun fact : On the same day, Tony Clements' Bill C-29 - Safeguarding Canadian's Personal Information Act was debated in the House. Volpe made yet another rousing speech about privacy.
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Homeland Security damage control in the Gulf

July 2 : CNN : "The US Coast Guard announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms, out on the water or on beaches.Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and class D felony charges. The coast guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet before scaling it down to 65 feet."

July 3 : MSNBC : A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security.

July 4 : Bloomberg : The US government is expected to take over control of the central information website on the Gulf oil spill response that has been run jointly by various agencies and BP for the 2 1/2 months since the rig explosion.

The Department of Homeland Security wants a one-stop shop for information that is completely overseen by the government as it settles into the long-haul of dealing with the response to the disaster. The U.S. Coast Guard falls under Homeland Security's authority.

The deepwaterhorizonresponse.com site may still be maintained during the changeover, but ultimately it will be taken down altogether when the government moves the response information to its own website."

July 6 : Washington Post : "In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.
As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

On Monday, the joint operations center for the federal government and BP reported that more than 671,428 barrels of an oil-water mixture have been captured and stored. About 90 percent of the mixture is water, so the true amount of oil skimmed is relatively small -- roughly 67,143 barrels of oil. Had the estimated amounts in the March response plan been accurate, 38 million barrels of oil could have been removed by now. "

Although the US House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power, the Republicans in the Senate have blocked it. There will be no real investigation.

Instead, the Coast Guard, under the auspices of Homeland Security, and Minerals Management Services, the federal body charged with (not doing any) oversight of oil drilling and now renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, will announce this week the creation of an expert panel to conduct a "preparedness review" for Deepwater Horizon.
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2010 Olympics spawns a further armouring of NAFTA

Well, colour me surprised. Who could have guessed that security arrangements for the 2010 Olympics would spawn a further militarization of North America and U.S.-Canada security integration?

G&M :

Canada and U.S. authorities are talking about extending cross-border security measures that were implemented for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and were to end with the closing of the Winter Games.
The joint patrols [RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard] will end with the Paralympics but spokesmen from the two agencies said yesterday legislation that would allow joint maritime policing on a permanent basis is on the agenda of both the U.S. and Canadian governments."

That's just an Olympic rebranding of Bill C-60, the amusingly named Keeping Canadians Safe (Protecting Borders) Act, tabled in Parliament in November.

The Cons actually sidelined C-60 when they prorogued Parliament, but as The Library of Parliament helpfully points out, not passing parliament didn't prevent its implementation during the Games because C-60 is but the legislative arm of the earlier Security and Prosperity Partnership inspired Shiprider Projects and the Canada-US Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations signed in May 2009 by Canadian Minister of Public Safety Peter Van Loan, and the US Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet "9/11 terrorists entered the US from Canada" Napolitano.

Fun quote from that 2009 signing :

Van Loan said the pact shouldn't be viewed as Americans encroaching on the jurisdiction of Canada because it's a joint effort.
"Because of the integration of our North American economies ... effective management of the border is essential to the health of both of our countries' economies."

At the time we were advised that the Canadian border proved an unmanageable obstacle to the US ability to pursue bad guys into Canada, conjuring up memories of old movies in which a car chase ends in an obligatory squeal of tires and a cloud of dust before a government road sign that reads "You are now entering ....".
It was always crap of course as even Stockwell Day acknowledged back in October 2006 that "U.S. agents carry out investigations in Canada without the knowledge or approval of the Canadian government" but we just retroactively approve them anyway.

C-60 seeks to embed part of that practise into Canadian law. Clause 11 :

"In the course of an integrated cross-border operation, every designated officer is a peace officer in every part of Canada and has the same power to enforce an Act of Parliament as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."

In every part of Canada. Same power as the RCMP.

The Library of Parliament page on C-60 also advises that passing C-60 will necessitate changes to "the Criminal Code, the Customs Act, the Export and Import Permits Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act."
I'll bet.


Then there's that big fat Homeland Security Olympic Coordination Center in Bellingham built to augment NorthComm's bi-lateral Civil Assistance Plan, which already "allows the military from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a civil emergency."

The collaboration of "40 U.S. federal, state and local agencies, including military intelligence groups, the navy, national guard, air force, coast guard" and assorted Canadian security agencies was mandated to "specifically co-ordinate the U.S. response to any terrorist attack or domestic emergency during the Winter Games."

They'd like to extend that now too.
Well we knew that.
As the FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge announced back in Sept. 2008 :

"This facility will provide a strategic response platform to facilitate critical response efforts during the Olympic Games and beyond."

And beyond. We've now reached 'and beyond'.

h/t Dave : Told ya so.
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Homeland Security's reefer madness

In an interview on NPR, assistant commissioner Michael Kostelnik of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol explains why the Department of Homeland Security has five weaponless Predator drones patrolling the Canada-US border :

"routinely we have small helicopters they come and drop hockeybags full of B.C. Bud - a very lethal type of hydroponically grown marijuana."

Lethal marijuana.

Ok, to be fair, he did also mention that library that straddles both countries...
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North American Leaders' Summit 2009 - an insider's view

With the next North American Leaders' Summit in Guadalajara, Mexico less than a month away, Canadian media have begun reporting snippets from a new report by Hudson Institute expert on Canada-US relations Christopher Sands : Toward a New Frontier : Improving the U.S.-Canadian Border.

And why should we be listening to him? Because he's an insider.

Sands is advisor to the U.S. Section of the North American Competitiveness Council, the corporate wing of the SPP, and a lecturer on North American integration for both the US State Dept. and the Dept. of Homeland Security. His Negotiating North America : The Security and Prosperity Partnership is perhaps the closest thing we have to a semi-official manual on the SPP.

In light of his latest policy recommendations for the Summit :

• rebranding a revived SPP,
• allowing environmental, labor and human rights groups equivalent NACC status to that so far only extended to corporations,
• increasing transparency of reporting
• decentralizing border security away from Washinton to the individual states, and
• implementing a common security perimeter

it's worth looking at some of his other recent assessments of Canada-US relations :

"Homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends."

"In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians. Not only about (routine) individuals but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge."

Here Sands recounts a conversation with the assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security :

"Canadians have "had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they've paid nothing." Now "we want to give you less access, but we want you to pay more and, by the way, we're standardizing this (with other visa-free countries) so you're not special anymore."

Canada's Peace, Order and Unreliable Government : [on Canada's minority governments]

"This does not mean that Canadians or their interests will be maltreated, punished, or maliciously ignored by Washington. U.S. policymakers will pity Ottawa, indulge it when possible, and ignore it only when necessary."

Afghanistan, Feb 2009 :

"Since the November U.S. election, Canadian editorialists have talked about the impressive Canadian contribution as a calling card with the new administration in Washington, sure to gain a hearing and possibly even concessions for Canadian interests.

The valuation of the Canadian contribution, however, is usually exaggerated.

The United States maintained 35,000 troops in Afghanistan until recently, when an additional 30,000 were deployed to join this force. Canada's 2500 are just 3 percent of the total Western force. ... In contrast, both India and even China have suggested they might offer ground troops to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban. That does not devalue or diminish the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan; but it may help to explain why President Obama is unlikely to lobby the Harper government to rescind its announcement of a 2011 withdrawal.

Canada is an oddity among US allies. Most countries have come to terms with their relative smallness when compared to the United States, and though they work to make respectable contributions to US-led security efforts and campaigns, they are realistic about what they can do. Canadians, flush with memories of outsized past contributions to international security, particularly during two world wars, expect to be treated as a junior great power. "

Good to know.

The Leaders Summit is less than a month away - Aug 8-11 - and the Canadian government has yet to make any public announcement about it at all, let alone what will be on the agenda this time round.

Council of Canadians are demanding that Canadians not be left out of the process yet again : Demand a say in North America's future.

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Good luck with that.

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Cons agree to bring Abdelrazik home

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced in Question Period today that the government will comply with, rather than appeal, the Federal Court decision ordering it to repatriate Abdelrazik,
stranded in Sudan since 2003.
Good.
As Chris Selley writes : "It's all over but the thousands of unanswered questions"
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Here's one.
How much did this July 2006 US Embassy memo figure in extending Abdelrazik's exile?

"US Embassy DCM John Dickson made a demarche this afternoon re Abdelrazik.
... He had been asked to deliver a message from the White House, specifically from senior levels of the Homeland Security Council. [US] Ambassador Wilkins might be calling Ministers Toves [sic] and Day tomorrow. Frances Townsend might also be calling.

Dickson's main message was that the US would like Canada's assistance in putting together a criminal case against Abdelrazik so that he could be charged in the US. The US had information on Abdelrazik but at this point, it was not enough to charge him; the same might be true for Canada. If Canadian police or security agencies shared what they had, it might prove to be enough for the US to proceed, as the threshold for prosecution there was lower than here."

Days later the US added Abdelrazik to the UN Security Council terrorist blacklist, despite not having sufficient evidence to charge him under their 'lower threshold'.

And just so we're clear here - the threshold for action was spectacularly lower.
Recall that Maher Arar was renditioned to Syria the day after a wounded 14 year old Omar Khadr in Bagram prison was shown photos of Arar and coached into saying that "he looked familiar", and the US evidence against Abdelrazik appears to be the unfortunate spinoff derived from waterboarding a schizophrenic halfwit 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

Here's a question :
We don't know what correspodence transpired after the memo above, written three years after Arar returned to Canada and during the time we were hearing advance notice of the O'Connor report which would clear him of all terrorism allegations two months later. Was Abdelrazik kept in exile at the Canadian Embassy in Sudan to avoid a similar debacle by someone who decided he was safer left there than he would be back in Canada?
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Blame Canada!

"Well, some of the 9-11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know," McCain, last year's Republican presidential candidate, said on Fox News on Friday."

He was defending U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who made similar, now deemed "mis-spoken", allegations a few days ago.

So, the current head of Homeland Security and the guy who came alarmingly close to being the President of the US are both getting their intel from South Park now?
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More no-fly list nonsense

In Terry Gilliam's apocalyptic movie, Brazil, which he would have preferred to name 1984 1/2, a hapless bureaucrat investigates a mistake in a ridiculously counterproductive terrorist tracking system that has confused an innocent Mr. Buttle with a terrorist named Tuttle. Buttle is arrested and killed. It was a typing error.

Glenda Hutton, a 66 year old retired elementary BC school secretary, never arrested, has joined the ranks of 5 year olds and US senators whose names have mysteriously appeared on some no-fly list or other, preventing her from fulfilling her lifelong retirement dream of world travel with her husband.
Apparently her name resembles that of someone else on a list, although she cannot find out which one.

As Julie Morand of Passport Canada explained to her, "In fact … you should always be questioned since a name similar to yours appears to be on an American list."

Excuse me? A similar name on an American list?

An Ottawa Citizen article, no longer available, from Sept 2006 reported that :
"Air Transport Association of Canada uses the US Homeland Security no-fly selectee list to screen passengers even on domestic flights from one point in Canada to another. They do this despite Transport Canada's statement that there is no requirement for them to do so. There are reportedly 70,000 people on that list."

And that was two years ago.

Thirteen months after Glenda Hutton was stopped while boarding a domestic Air Canada flight from Comox to Calgary, Transport Canada, the Dept of Foreign Affairs, the Dept of Public Safety, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have all for their various reasons been unable to help her.

Note to actual terrorists : Don't use the name Glenda Hutton. Or Glenda Button.

SPP and Server in the Sky

CP : U.S. security chief says fingerprints not private
"The U.S. homeland security czar says Canadians shouldn't fear plans to expand international sharing of biometric information such as fingerprints.
Michael Chertoff says a person's fingerprints are like footprints.
"They're not particularly private," Chertoff said in an interview Wednesday during a brief visit to Ottawa.
"Your fingerprint's hardly personal data, because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world."

Well that's just crap. Having a glass of wine in a public restaurant is not at all like having your fingerprints fed into a database like Server in the Sky.
You remember Server in the Sky, don't you? It's the FBI's proposed shared database of biometric information - our fingerprints, palm prints, and iris scan data - to be exchanged among the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
The International Information Consortium, as the five founding nations including Canada call themselves, will meet behind closed doors in May in San Francisco to plan their strategy.

CP : "An internal RCMP briefing note on the Server in the Sky project recommends the national police force continue to support the initiative."

As noted back here, one of Server in the Sky's most alarming aspects is that Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, heard of it for the first time in January by reading about it in a UK newspaper.
No Canadian officials had informed her of the project.

Stockwell Day met with Chertoff on Wednesday to discuss SPP initiatives in advance of the Leaders' Summit in New Orleans on April 21.

Integrate This! on the new biometric BC Enhanced Driver's License developed in conjunction with Washington state. Jennifer Stoddart describes it as creating a de facto national ID card in both countries.
IT : "The EDLs require biometric and other personal information on Canadians and Americans to be stored in a common database that is accessible by security agencies in both countries. Because Canada’s Public Safety department is insisting on all provinces developing a similar EDL to B.C.’s, and all of them will be compatible with the REAL ID program in the U.S., the Harper government is essentially working on a de facto North American ID card behind closed doors through the SPP."

SPP : Now with 100% more North America!

With the April 21 SPP leaders' summit looming on the still devastated New Orleans horizon, suddenly all the usual deep integration players are "North Americans" looking for the next new and improved incarnation of the SPP.

Why? Well because we ruined the last one.

Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun :

"Canada-U.S. efforts to resolve post-9/11 border problems plaguing North America's economy have fallen victim to conspiracy theories.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership, launched in 2005, is so misunderstood by the public and so discredited by opposition groups it should be relaunched and rebranded.
That's the view of Simon Fraser University political scientist Alexander Moens who has just completed a study of the SPP for the Fraser Institute. Moens asserts "the time has come to rebrand the talks and give them a clear mandate."

In a not very remarkable coincidence, this is also the view of the US right wing think tank Hudson Institute in their study, "Negotiating North America : The SPP" : who note that due to "xenophobes who fear fictitious superhighways" ... "it may ultimately be necessary to re-design and re-launch a new process to take up the work of the SPP under a new acronym."

Happily Moens has come up with one already :

"He's calling for the SPP to be replaced by NASRA, which stands for a North American Standards and Regulations Area. It "would include further economic integration beyond free trade but not political integration."

North American Standards and Regulation Area?

Good god man but that's a lame-ass name.

Would it have killed you to call it the N.A. Standards and Regulation Anschluss?

Moens attended the Network on North American Studies in Canada conference in Vancouver in March, where he chaired a presentation from a book project entitled The North American Experiment.

NNASC, according to their website, is "a new initiative between Canada and the U.S., in partnership with leading universities, government agencies, think tanks and civil society. It is a unique private sector-public sector partnership"

Another presentation at the same conference was "Managing Shared Resources Across North American Borders" chaired by Rick Van Schoik of Arizona State University who is also a director of The North American Center for Transborder Studies. In a recent essay "North America's Forgotten Agenda : Getting Development Back on Track", he lists among his key recommendations : "Implement a North American security perimeter".

Van Shoik will head ASU's participation in the Dept of Homeland Security's new $15M "Center of Excellence for Border Security and Immigration" :

"The establishment of the center by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security follows more than two years of work assembling a team of U.S. universities, Mexican and Canadian institutions government agencies, technology companies and national laboratories."

Did I mention this Vancouver conference was funded in part by Dept of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada and that they also participated in Van Shoik's session?

On March 29 NNASC held a panel discussion "Bridging the North American Divide From Economic Integration to Community" in San Francisco, featuring Dan Schwanen from the Center for International Global Innovation. In his essay "North American Integration Post Bush", Schwanen admires the success of the Dec 2001 Smart Borders initiative and proposes a similar "Smart North American Economy" within a "North America that badly needs rethinking".

See what I mean? It's all North America all the time in the tanks.

And finally in Tuesday's Financial Post ,ubiquitous professional Canada slaggers Michael Hart and Bill Dymond from Carleton University quote from their C.D. Howe Institute paper in which they advise dropping the SPP in favour of a whole new agreement :

"What Canada needs is a trade policy that recognizes the increasing importance of global value chains and the critical role of Canada-U.S. integration in gaining full benefit from their exploitation...

The only cost that would arise is political : in Canadians' exaggerated preoccupation with ephemeral concepts of sovereignty and nationhood."

Fuck you, Michael "Canada blew it!" Hart, NAFTA and FTA negotiator, former official at the Dept of Foreign Affairs and Int. Trade, and sometime deep integration teacher at the North American University.
Too bad we had you defending our 'exaggerated preoccupation with ephemeral concepts like sovereignty and nationhood' when you were our voice at NAFTA.

But no worries, as Barbara Yaffe reassures us :

"Conspiracy theorists should recognize that the governments directing the SPP are separate entities, with politicians looking out for their own respective national interest.
No Canadian government interested in reelection is going to sell out to U.S. interests on border policy."

UPDATE : POGGE nails it!

SPP and the Canada-Israel "border" update

Remember this?
Israel and U.S. Sign Homeland Security Pact
Rebecca Anna Stoil, Jerusalem Post, Feb 8, 2007
"Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter and his US counterpart, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, signed a joint memorandum in Washington DC on Wednesday evening, setting a series of goals and terms for security collaboration between the two nations.

The joint understanding included partnership on flight security, including passenger and cargo inspection and information sharing on the topic of emergency planning, response, recovery and damage control.

Dichter, who is on a four-day diplomatic visit to North America, was recently officially appointed as Israel's diplomatic counterpart to Chertoff. The former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head is widely recognized in Washington as an expert in counter-terrorism, particularly following a nine-month stint as a fellow at the D.C. Brookings Institute think tank.

"Iran is the largest terrorist state in the world," Dichter said late Tuesday night to members of the public security committee of the Canadian parliament. Moving from discussing geopolitics to talking shop with the Canadian lawmakers, Dichter laid out what he believes to be the guidelines for Canadian-Israeli security cooperation in the future, possibly similar to the agreement that the minister signed a day later in Washington DC."

Minister Dicter and Canadian counterpart present joint statement
State of Israel Ministry of Public Security, Oct 30, 2007
"A meeting was held on the 29th of October, 2007 between the Canadian Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Mr. Stockwell Day, and Minister Dicter.
...for preventing and fighting home land securities issues....
...to maximize the exchange of information, technology and operational activity...
...cooperation in home land security and counter terrorism issues.
• Counterterrorism and Crime
• Emergency preparedness
• Border crossing security, focusing on biometric identification"

Canada and Israel Sign Declaration to Cooperate on Public Safety
Public Safety Canada, Mar 23, 2008
"1. To prioritize and manage cooperation in the following areas within the responsibility of the Ministries:
Border management and security, including biometric applications

2. To achieve the following objectives:
Build on their shared commitment to facilitate and enhance cooperation to protect their respective countries’ population, assets and interests from common threats."

Just an agreement by a couple of US client states, both of whom make war on their indigenous populations, signed in the wake of Dick Cheney.

SPP and the Canada-Israel "border"

According to The Jerusalem Post on Oct 29, in "Israel, Canada sign security accord", Stockwell Day and his Israeli counterpart Public Security Minister Ari Dichter are negotiating a Canada-Israel agreement on "homeland security matters" and have set up "three joint working teams to promote talks on counterterrorism and crime; emergency preparedness; and border-crossing security focusing on biometric identification."

The Israeli ministry referred to their press release as a "joint statement" but there was no similar press coverage in Canada nor any mention of it on the Canadian government website.

When reached for comment by the Globe and Mail on Nov 14, Stockwell Day's communications director Melisa Leclerc initially went into denial overdrive : "This is inaccurate. There is no joint statement. The minister didn't sign anything," and stated that the talks were "at early, early, stages."

A few hours later however, "she retracted the allegation of inaccuracy against the Israelis, saying that it was actually aimed at a report in The Jerusalem Post", before flakking on about how Day and Dichter merely "enjoyed a productive discussion on issues of mutual interest".


And yet what is described by Ms Leclerc as "early, early stages" in the talks is reported on Israel's Ministry of Public Security website as being pretty far along : "methods to improve the implementation of the bilateral cooperation between the two Ministries" :

"The parties have agreed to intensify future cooperation by identifying ways of direct communication in order to maximize the exchange of information, technology and operational activity. For the same reason it has been agreed to accelerate negotiations for the signing of an Arrangement Paper between the two Ministries on cooperation in home land security and counter terrorism issues."

I feel safer already.
So why all the secrecy, Ms Leclerc? Aside from your undoubted concerns about how this news will go down with the voting Canadian Arab and Palestinian public - not to mention the rest of us.

Well, you know how the Cons hate to be continually accused of being Bush poodles ...

Israel and U.S. Sign Homeland Security Pact
Rebecca Anna Stoil, Jerusalem Post, Feb 8, 2007 (Italics mine)

"Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter and his US counterpart, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, signed a joint memorandum in Washington DC on Wednesday evening, setting a series of goals and terms for security collaboration between the two nations.

The joint understanding included partnership on flight security, including passenger and cargo inspection and information sharing on the topic of emergency planning, response, recovery and damage control.

Dichter, who is on a four-day diplomatic visit to North America, was recently officially appointed as Israel's diplomatic counterpart to Chertoff. The former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head is widely recognized in Washington as an expert in counter-terrorism, particularly following a nine-month stint as a fellow at the D.C. Brookings Institute think tank.

"Iran is the largest terrorist state in the world," Dichter said late Tuesday night to members of the public security committee of the Canadian parliament. Moving from discussing geopolitics to talking shop with the Canadian lawmakers, Dichter laid out what he believes to be the guidelines for Canadian-Israeli security cooperation in the future, possibly similar to the agreement that the minister signed a day later in Washington DC."

This would be hilariously funny, except for the fact that it isn't.

Brilliant sleuthing by ReWind.It at Bread n Roses

SPP : Jelly beans and the DHS

At the Montebello press conference, a reporter asked Harper, Bush, and Calderon point blank whether the SPP agenda on border security, energy, and streamlining regulations was a prelude to a North American union and hey, what about that NAFTA highway?

Harper :

"Is the sovereignty of Canada going to fall apart if we standardize the jelly bean? You know, I don't think so."

Bush twice said he was "amused by the conspiracy theories" and "It's quite comical, actually, when you realize the difference between the reality and what some people are talking on TV about."

Jelly beans and Bush's particular take on reality vs TV. OK then.

The above letterhead is from one of the only internal government documents we have to date on the SPP. Obtained via a Freedom of Information request from the US government watchdog group, Judicial Watch, it is a memo from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, this Michael Chertoff :

"I want to take this opportunity to thank you and your respective staffs for your support of the SPP up to this point. The components involved in the development of the SPP implementation report substantially advanced our homeland security agenda with Canada and Mexico." 

"DHS-led U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico groups already in existence will take on the SPP actions within their scope. That said, the SPP has, in addition to identifying a number of new action items, comprehensively rolled up most of our existing homeland security-related policy initiatives with Canada and Mexico, and ongoing action and reporting in the various U.S.-Canada and U.S.-Mexico working groups led by DHS should now be driven by a single agenda : the SPP."

We now return you to your regularly scheduled coverage of jelly beans and Bush's take on reality.
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