"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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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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The Canada-US border : thicker but fuzzier

For all the wringing of hands in the national press about how US security concerns are resulting in a "thicker Canada-US border", scant attention is paid to how that border is also getting blurrier, unless to repeat government assurances that it is not.

Case in point is yesterday's announcement of the Shiprider program, signed Monday by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano - an agreement "designed to increase border security by allowing the RCMP and the U.S. Coast Guard to team up and ride in each others' vessels during border patrols."

Van Loan said the pact shouldn't be viewed as Americans encroaching on the jurisdiction of Canada because it's a joint effort between both countries.
And he stressed that security and trade between the two countries can be mutually beneficial.
"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," said Van Loan.

According to former diplomat Paul Frazer, Canadians shouldn't be alarmed by the prospect of foreign officers policing Canada's waters.
"It's not a one way kind of operation," he told CTV's Power Play from Washington on
Tuesday.
Frazer stressed that the new plan is a quid-pro-quo deal for Canada.
"You will have Canadian authorities aboard American boats, going into American waters, and the reverse coming into Canadian waters."

Right. That sounds fair : the flea will ride on the elephant and then the elephant will ride on the flea.
A couple of points not covered by our enthusiastic media but clearly stated in the agreement :

COMMITTED to the prevention, detection, suppression, investigation, and prosecution of any criminal offence or violation of law related to border enforcement including, but not limited to, the illicit drug trade, migrant smuggling, trafficking of firearms, the smuggling of counterfeit goods and money, and terrorism

based on joint Canada-United States threat and risk assessment and coordinated with existing cooperative cross-border policing programs and activities.

That seems rather ... broad, considering that any "integrated cross-border maritime law enforcement operation" may also continue "on land" and include "aerial support".

But where it gets weird is the section called Information Sharing.
Info is not to be "further shared" with "a non-participating government agency or a foreign country" without "the consent of the participating agency sharing the information" ... "unless the use or further sharing is required by its domestic laws" or there are "exigent circumstances".

Exigent circumstances.

All of which is merely fleshing out the details of last year's Canada-US pact allowing cross-border military activity , following the disclosure two years earlier that 30% of FBI agents operating in Canada do so without the knowledge or approval of the Canadian government.

Well now we have yet another agreement to legalize the decline of Canadian sovereignty.
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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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