Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the House committee, and ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for permitting us to come here today to speak about issues concerning Canada's national security as it relates to the Canada Border Services Agency.
I would like to introduce to you Mr. Dave Brown. Mr. Brown has been an assignment writer and tactical firearms editor for Blue Line magazine for just over 10 years now. Dave will be sharing with you his experiences in training and equipping officers of the CBSA in the Manitoba area.
Blue Line has been publishing monthly for the past 18 years. It is a publication directed at the broad-based law enforcement community across Canada. As such, we have had an ear to the ground about law enforcement issues for quite some time.
Living and working daily with police and others involved in law enforcement has given us quite a unique view on policing and security issues in Canada. Much of our contact has been at arm's length and as keen observers of the industry.
I would like to assist you with a perspective you may or may not have heard in the past and present, with a couple of logical conclusions which, at your discretion, you could place in the realm of possible, probable, or simply blue-sky thinking.
You have been in receipt of a package of past commentaries, articles, and news pieces drawn from past editions of Blue Line magazine, which you may refer to at your leisure.
I feel that your concern about border security is not one that's easy to get a handle on. It is fraught with a myriad of interconnected issues and a multitude of agencies, levels of government, and management and labour relations concerns. However, when it comes down to simply deciding if arming CBSA officers is a wise move, there is no confusion. There can be no debate on the issue and there is certainly no rational argument that can be brought to counter the logic.
I have stated in the past that this government simply has to consider what is reasonable under the circumstances. Points I have brought up in the past are numerous. Almost every illegal revolver or pistol in Canada today has come within a few metres or two of a member of the Canada Border Services Agency, and I think that's something to think about.
If other levels of this same Canadian government have decided that fisheries officers and certain members of the Ministry of the Environment should carry sidearms, then the concept of a CBSA officer being armed to protect our borders is most certainly not a far stretch to the imagination.
The message being sent out to smugglers, criminals, and even terrorists is enhanced incredibly by an armed officer at the border crossing. Being greeted by an officer with a sidearm at a border point of entry is not viewed by any other country in the world as being out of the ordinary. In fact, a simple sidearm would be viewed by most as being rather lax.
However, I think this group should be thinking far beyond the simple matter of arming border officers today. They must think of the future and they must think of the best manner in which to efficiently execute a wide range of law enforcement functions so that efficiency is a primary concern.
In the recently released book Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives, by Cambridge professors David Weisburd and Anthony A. Braga, there is a statement about America's system of criminal justice that I most certainly would apply to Canada's system as well. It goes as follows :
America's system of criminal justice is overcrowded and overworked, undermanned, underfinanced, and very often misunderstood. It needs more information and more knowledge. it needs more technical resources. It needs more coordination among its many parts. It needs more public support. It needs the help of community programs and institutions in dealing with offenders and potential offenders. It needs, above all, the willingness to reexamine old ways of doing things, to reform itself, to experiment, to run risks, to dare. It needs vision.
In my estimation, the CBSA has capabilities and potential far beyond its current functions. The idea that certain levels of action required to be taken must be delegated to another enforcement agency is simply not operationally or fiscally prudent in this day and age. The CBSA officer making an arrest and handing the person over to a police officer for the sole purpose of processing and prosecuting is horribly flawed. The officers within the CBSA unit should not have to sap away resources from another police service to help them perform their jobs. If an arrest is made by an Ottawa police officer, he does not call in an OPP officer to continue the process and investigation.
In the case of the CBSA, too many of their functions involve having to trip over parallel investigations of which they are not notified, nor even invited to be a part. Of particular concern to me is an entire branch of the RCMP that is set up to perform the exact same tasks that should be kept entirely within the CBSA investigations branch. Why should taxpayers be supporting two separate agencies to perform the same function? In the day and age when police resources are stretched to the breaking point, why are we insisting CBSA officers call police to their aid, and at the expense of local municipalities?
A good part of this talk can be transposed over many other investigative enforcement branches of other federal departments. The Canadian Coast Guard and parks warden services are two more that are told to call police for assistance if firearms are required. This is no longer viable. Each enforcement branch must be equipped, trained, and ready to perform all their enforcement responsibilities.
Last year I visited a nuclear power facility to update our readers on the advancements made there in security over the 15 years since I'd done a story on the facility. Originally I was not impressed. Many years ago, when they told me that their security personnel were trained to hold off an armed attack on the plant for 15 minutes--because that was how long the test studies had shown it would take to get an armed officer on site--the guards were unarmed. In this remote location, that would mean one officer with one gun, a .38 revolver with six shots. When I returned, a more enlightened security branch head advised me that their tactical security personnel could secure and hold this facility better than any other agency or group they could call in. So they would be calling in the police to simply back them up.
If a private security firm can possess this kind of confidence, why can't the Canada Border Services Agency?
Thank you.