Madam Speaker, I rise today to partake in this debate on Bill S-23, an act to amend the Customs Act and to make related amendments to other acts.
The bill proposes to streamline legitimate cross border trade and travel through electronic monitoring, self-assessment, advance information and pre-approval.
As already pointed out today, the official opposition hesitantly supports Bill S-23 but does so reluctantly given the government's poor record in maintaining the integrity of our borders, particularly the long, mostly unprotected border we share with our neighbours to the south.
Canada is a trade dependent country and as such the economic viability and stability of manufacturing companies operating within Canada rely on the ease with which goods flow between Canada and the United States. A threat to the openness we enjoy along the Canada-U.S. border is a threat to the billions of dollars of trade and the tens of thousands of jobs we appreciate and have here in Canada. Over 87% of our trade is done with our neighbours to the south, the United States.
This weekend the governor of the Bank of Canada warned that the fallout from terrorist attacks on the United States may push our weakened economy into a recession. David Dodge warned the government against trying to bail out the economy with additional spending or being foolhardy and going back to deficit financing, which Minister of Finance Paul Martin has indicated he may have to do.
Mr. Dodge stated:
--economic growth in the third quarter will likely be close to zero or slightly negative, and we will continue to feel the adverse effects into the fourth quarter.
Furthermore, the governor of the Bank of Canada said that it is certainly possible that the economy will slip into a recession, which as we all know and has been discussed here lately is commonly defined as two quarters of negative growth.
Last week the Minister of Finance said that he will not rule out a deficit if it protects Canada from terrorism. Claiming that the number one priority for the government is to protect Canadians, the finance minister says there will have to be additional spending in terms of our national security.
The official opposition fully supports increased spending for our security and for our intelligence agencies. We have pointed out numerous times in the House, and not just in the wake of the horrific events of September 11, that CSIS and the RCMP are underfunded and underresourced.
Having said that, we would counter that we do not need to be plunged back into a deficit situation if the finance minister and his government would simply prioritize spending, something that should have been done years ago. It is time to put to an end the frivolous spending on such things as fountains and golf courses and reallocate our scarce dollars to support the front lines of defence, CSIS, the RCMP and national defence. These three have been financially starved for far too long.
As stated earlier today, we cannot consider liberalized border procedures without first considering how to best restore the integrity of our borders. A company based right here in Ottawa is developing a passenger screening system that it says could have foiled last week's terrorist attacks. The system developed for the transport department by the Ottawa branch of a United States based corporation, Intrinsix Corporation, combines video cameras, reservation computers, metal detectors and x-ray machines to help identify potential terrorists. The company says that its system, which works by networking all of those elements together, would have triggered security alerts when hijackers boarded four flights in the United States last week.
In last week's Ottawa Citizen , Claude Clouthier, manager of the Intrinsix Ottawa office, said that the strength of the airport security data fusion system is that it displays all the information on one computer screen. Mr. Clouthier reported to the Ottawa Citizen that Transport Canada was funding development of the system through an agreement with the United States to create new anti-terrorism technology but that the project had apparently been stalled over cost concerns. “Cost is always the issue, because it is a very complex problem”, said Mr. Clouthier.
We would agree with Mr. Clouthier. When we deal with national security or when we deal with CSIS and RCMP, funding and resourcing is a problem with the government.
Furthermore, the Intrinsix manager said that he believes Transport Canada has a renewed interest in the project since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon on September 11. Intrinsix received a $140,000 contract in February 1999 to develop a working prototype of the system. The Intrinsix preliminary report on the system recommends that Transport Canada install video surveillance cameras at check-in counters and boarding gates. The report noted that the lack of integration of security machines makes it difficult to track a passenger's bags through an airport without sending a security guard to make a physical check.
It is absolutely appalling that a system such as this one developed by this Ottawa based company has not been used in Canadian airports and that only now, after the attack on America, has our government decided that perhaps it should bring forward some precautionary measures.
The Liberal government's failure to continue funding for such systems is indicative of its relaxed attitude toward security in Canada. Unfortunately we have a government that is reactive, not proactive, regarding the security and the safety of our citizens. It is for this reason that we are reluctant to support a liberalization of our border controls. We are also reluctant to entertain loosening border controls due to the large volume of illegal migrants currently crossing our border so freely, illegals who may ultimately provide a stream of terrorists gaining entry into the United States by circumventing Canadian and United States border controls since we have no exit controls.
No exit controls, as I pointed out in April of this year, mean that it is impossible to calculate how many people remain in Canada illegally, how many have slipped into the United States or how many have returned to their countries of origin or have gone elsewhere.
As of October 23, 1998, there were 6,110 warrants for removal issued against persons deemed to have abandoned or withdrawn their refugee claims. Of these, 640 warrants were executed and the persons were removed from Canada; 240 warrants were cancelled, that is, they were no longer deemed refugees so they were cancelled; and there was no action taken on the remaining 5,272.
Six thousand, one hundred and ten applications and five thousand, two hundred and seventy-two warrants still sit in a dusty, dingy corner somewhere because we do not have the resourcing to deal with those warrants, or the backbone. Quite obviously this is a very serious problem that must immediately be rectified to restore our border integrity.
More than nine million commercial shipments enter Canada each year, 75% at land border ports and the rest at international airports, marine ports, postal facilities and bonded warehouses. Approximately one million marine containers enter Canadian ports annually and another 200,000 enter by truck or rail after being off-loaded in United States marine ports.
I would like to point out that most illicit drugs arrive in Canada by aircraft, marine container and truck. At least 100 tonnes of hashish, 15 to 24 tonnes of cocaine and 4 tonnes of liquid hashish are smuggled into Canada each year.
I do not think I need to point out that drugs are synonymous with organized crime. Drugs and organized crime are very relevant when we refer to the fundraising of terrorist organizations.
An Ottawa Citizen article dated March 3, 1999, under the title “RCMP battles to halt flow of Colombian drugs”, states that Canada is particularly vulnerable to drug trafficking, the principal source of revenue for most crime groups. According to the drug analysis section of the RCMP, smugglers are attracted to Canada because of the low risk of arrest due to limited police resources that “have stymied investigations”:
Smugglers are attracted by the sprawling, largely unmonitored Canadian coastline, the low risk of arrest and the relatively light penalties--
I therefore reiterate that we support measures aimed at liberalizing trade but we do so only as we ensure that all necessary measures are in place to effectively control organizations and terrorists and those who support them.