Canadian ports, border ill-prepared for terror attack: Think tank

TORONTO, (Jan. 16, 2004) — Highlights from a confidential closed-door seminar involving business stakeholders, trade experts, and security officials shows Canada has failed to prepare its transportation systems against a second major terrorist attack in North America.

The C.D. Howe Institute, an economic and social policy think tank based in Toronto, released its findings from the meeting, which brought together government, business stakeholders, as well as academic and third-party trade analysts in both Canada and the U.S. The group’s purpose was to explore the vulnerability of Canada-U.S. economic and security relations, trade flow, and border preparedness in the event of another 9/11-type attack.

A discussion paper titled “Thinking the Unthinkable: Security Threats, Cross-Border Implications, and Canada’s Long-Term Strategies,” notes that the seminar participants were unanimous in their belief that — despite the long-lasting effects of Sept. 11 — Ottawa has failed to entice citizens and industry in a national discussion about security and been slow in developing a national terrorist response strategy.

“Despite the adoption of new security measures in the past few years, participants asserted that the country has a major gap in its ability to respond to threats and vulnerabilities. There is a lack of a national security strategy to direct and coordinate policies and operations,” wrote the paper’s author Danielle Goldfarb, a policy analyst and international relations expert at the Institute. “Assessing and reacting to security threats will require unprecedented levels of cooperation both inside of Canada — within governments, across levels of government, and between government and the private sector — and across borders.

The group studied a variety of mock terrorist scenarios called TOPOFF-2 — conducted last May by Canadian and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials — as well as both countries’ responses to actual trade-debilitating events like SARS, the black-out, and Mad Cow.

The group concluded that the responses to the scenarios revealed important vulnerabilities and raised serious questions about Canada’s strategies in an increasingly integrated North America. For example, in one terror attack scenario, the group noted that traffic and trade would grind to a halt as border officials tried to cope. In another simulation, the Port Authority shut down all ports, limiting or refusing the loading and loading of containers. “Canada’s vulnerability to disruptions at the border (will) result in the grinding of cross-border transportation and severely disrupt just-in-time freight,” the report stated.

The solution would involve an unprecedented level of cooperation and coordination among all three levels of government and outside agencies. “Canada needs seamless cooperation and intelligence exchanges among agencies such as CSIS, the RCMP, CCRA, Immigration, airport and port authorities.” The country should also make a stronger effort to involve industry in creating a national policy, stated the report.