"Feds must respond to Senate security report"

Monday, April 9, 2007

Editorial
Feds must respond to Senate report
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Canada - The Winnipeg Sun  


There's been a lot of trash talk lately between Prime Minister Stephen
Harper's Conservative government and the Senate Committee on National
Security and Defence, chaired by Liberal Sen. Colin Kenny. 

Kenny has accused the feds of trying to silence and discredit the committee,
while the prime minister's seconds have accused Kenny and his committee of
occasionally wasting money and doing a poor job. 

There've been suggestions on both sides that partisan politics is playing a
role in all this. 

In fairness, the reports by this committee of what would appear to be gaping
holes in our national security system criticized the previous Liberal
government when it was in power, just as they criticize the Conservative one
now. 

What we'd like someone in the federal government to answer is simple: Are
the following things that Sen. Kenny told us last week in a meeting with Sun
Media true? 

(1) Is it accurate that only 2,400 of the 135,000 people who work at
Canada's airports every day are searched when they come to work? Does this
mean there is an effective inspection rate of 2% for these employees, who
are allowed on a daily basis into sensitive security areas? Or, put another
way, does this mean the chance of any given airport worker being searched on
any given day is one in 50? 

(2) Are only 4% of the cargo containers delivered to our seaports ever
inspected? 

(3) Does federal security on the Great Lakes and adjoining waters consist of
only three patrol vessels - one RCMP and two Coast Guard - staffed by 14
RCMP officers and some provincial and local police, supplemented where
possible by a few local police marine units? 

(4) Does no one inspect cargo and mail being loaded onto airplanes? 

(5) Does anyone inspect delivery trucks when they enter airports, or does
security typically consist of the driver briefly waving a pass at whoever's
working the gate? 

(6) Is the budget for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service lower
today than it was in 1990, before anyone had ever heard of 9/11? 

(7) Finally, if all or any of this is true, how safe are we, really, from a
terrorist attack here?

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