National Post

Friday, November 15, 2002

Yesterday, Ottawa played host to Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State. His trip comes at a time when some Canadians are angry about new U.S. immigration regulations that mandate extra scrutiny for Canadian citizens born in the world's leading terror-incubating nations. Critics say the policy is racist, and many have worked themselves into a self-righteous frenzy over the issue. The main goal of Mr. Powell's trip is to calm Ottawa down.

The Americans have apparently scaled back their policy in deference to Canadian complaints, and Mr. Powell said all the right things yesterday (many sentences beginning with "Our two nations," etc.). So, notwithstanding the roasting Canada's been taking in the U.S. conservative media, it seems our recent whining has not caused any major rift with Washington. Mr. Powell even had the good manners to ask for a Canadian contribution to the upcoming war in Iraq -- though he no doubt knows as well as we do that Canada's underfunded air force and regular army would mostly just get in the way.

Thus, this would be a good time to stop pushing our luck with the United States and start looking inward. One of the reasons Washington is nervous about the Canada-U.S. border is that Ottawa is not sufficiently careful about the visitors we admit.

The point was brought home convincingly this week in a new report prepared for the C.D. Howe Institute by Peter Rekai, a Toronto lawyer specializing in immigration.

In his report, U.S. and Canadian Immigration Policies: Marching Together to Different Tunes, Mr. Rekai identifies a number of ways in which Canada and the United States co-operate effectively to shore up border security. For instance, Ottawa and Washington have set up information networks to exchange data on terror suspects. Since 9/11, we have also cut down on bogus refugee claims through an integrated policy that prevents claimants from "asylum shopping." And, following repeated requests by the United States -- not to mention extensive media commentary on the ridiculously lax treatment afforded would-be Los Angeles Airport bomber Ahmed Ressam -- Canadian authorities are moving (albeit slowly) to detain suspicious refugee applicants, rather than letting them go free until their hearings.

But there's plenty of room for improvement. The main problem is not with admitted permanent residents (who receive plenty of scrutiny), but with temporary visitors such as tourists and students. In many cases, these visitors are processed in a matter of seconds by Canadian border officials, and thus constitute, as Mr. Rekai puts it, "the path of least resistance" for terrorists seeking entry: "Once past the post at a Canadian port of entry, a visitor is basically off the radar screen for tracking purposes. There is no record of the length of stay or of any departure from the country." One example: Between July, 2001, and February, 2002, Citizenship and Immigration Canada lost track of 118 Tunisians who entered Canada as foreign students. For official purposes, the group simply disappeared.

Given the high risk of another major terrorist attack in North America and the mounting evidence that Canada is being used as a logistical hub for a variety of extremist groups, this is unacceptable. At the very least, Canada must implement a comprehensive visitor-entry and -exit tracking system fully integrated into the computer networks of the police and government agencies. For people who enter Canada to study or work, there must be an efficient way for government officials to monitor their education and employment status. Fingerprinting, photographing and other measures may also be appropriate for visitors from high-risk nations -- or for visitors who fall into certain high-risk categories (males aged 16-39, for instance). In some cases, non-residents who enter Canada on an extended stay should be required to periodically register with authorities.

These are just preliminary suggestions. Determining exactly what sort of visitor-control system Canada should adopt will require an extensive debate about the sort of civil-liberties sacrifices (fingerprinting, national ID cards, etc.) we are willing to tolerate in the name of security. That debate should start now. Despite Mr. Powell's kind words yesterday, there is no disguising the fact that security is the number-one U.S. concern. If another terrorist is caught trying to infiltrate the United States from Canada, the border will become a lot more difficult to cross -- for all of us.

-- Anonymous, November 15, 2002

Answers

I suppose we could turn the heat up on the Canadians as they drive down to the Keys. how about checkpoints as often as truck weigh stations, or better yet, make all Canadians stop at all weigh stations. And to make sure we can tell the difference they have to have a special tag or something on the front of their vehicle or they have to paint the frame of the windshield flourescent orange or something.

-- Anonymous, November 16, 2002