Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 7 - Evidence - Meeting of May 28, 2012
OTTAWA, Monday, May 28, 2012
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 4:01 p.m. to examine the subject matter of those elements contained in Division 12 of Part 4 of Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012, and other measures; and to examine and report on the status of, and lessons learned, during Canadian Forces operations in Afghanistan.
Senator Pamela Wallin (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence for Monday, May 28.
Today, we continue studying the subject matter of an act to implement the 2009 Canada-U.S. Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations in part of Bill C-38, the proposed budget implementation act. These operations known as Shiprider were tested in highly successful pilot projects. They will permit specially trained, cross-deputized law enforcement officers to work together on boats patrolling the waters between Canada and the U.S. so that criminals can no longer just cross these borders to escape.
For the record, since we last met, there have been an awful lot of reports in the media. I would like to inform members of the media that actual transcripts of the testimony of the witnesses are available. This Canada-U.S. framework agreement is about Maritime cross-border law enforcement, not about land cross-border law enforcement. This is not "Landrider. " We have seen a couple of articles on this. This bill is not being slipped through quietly in omnibus bills. Parliament has considered this proposed legislation twice before in stand-alone bills, including at this committee; but they died on the Order Paper when prorogations came along. People are familiar and it has been discussed.
In some of these articles we have also seen the proposed legislation misrepresented as permitting law enforcement officers to sort of run amok in Canada; and this is, of course, absolutely not true. They will be bound by the rules that specifically address the issue of national sovereignty in each of the countries. I wanted to get that on the record because it is so troubling when we work hard to get witnesses here to explain what is actually going on.
We are completely pleased to have before the committee the Honourable Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety. With him are two senior officials from Public Safety Canada: Mr. Richard Wex, Assistant Deputy Minister, Law Enforcement and Policing, who is almost a regular here on this topic; and Mr. Marc Taschereau, Chief, Border Strategies, Border Law Enforcement Strategies Division.
We are particularly pleased to have you with us, minister. I gather you have some opening comments.
Hon. Vic Toews, P.C., M.P., Minister of Public Safety: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. You gave a good summary, but for the sake of clarity and safety it is perhaps best that I put these remarks on the record: I am shocked and surprised that members of the media would misquote what goes on in these proceedings; but I learn new things every day, I guess.
I am extremely pleased to have had the invitation to appear before you today to assist with your deliberations on one very important component of the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity bill. Bill C-38 contains provisions related to the implementation of Integrated Cross-border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations, also known as Canada- U.S. Shiprider. As this is my second time before this committee on this legislation, I know that you are all familiar with it and understand that these amendments provide a common sense and cost-effective solution to a very real problem. I want to thank my senior officials from Public Safety Canada who are prepared to answer those questions where I do not have the details at my fingertips.
As you know, our government has made the security of Canadians and the safety of our communities a top priority. Our shared border with the United States is quite literally the front line in the battle to protect our safety and security. Canada and the United States share a long history of law enforcement cooperation at the shared border. Canadian and U.S. law enforcement agencies often work together to combat the trafficking and smuggling that goes on in respect of everything from illegal drugs and tobacco to firearms and people.
These operations, however, have traditionally been hindered by the fact that law enforcement officers do not have any status or authority once they cross the border. This is a needless impediment to effectively enforcing the law and keeping Canadians safe. Organized criminal gangs are well aware of these limitations and use them to their advantage. They do so by committing crimes in one country and then fleeing to the other country, knowing that they can often evade arrest and prosecution if they cross the border.
To combat this law enforcement gap, our government has made significant investments in recent years to strengthen border security cooperation with the United States. When the Prime Minister and the American President announced the Declaration on a Shared Vision for Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness in February last year, expanded integrated cross-border law enforcement was included as one of the four pillars of enhanced bilateral cooperation.
Shiprider represents one of our most innovative responses to cross-border criminal activity. I might indicate that this was initially brought in as a pilot project under the prior government. I believe it was in 2005 that the first Shiprider initiative was implemented. It allows specially trained and designated law enforcement officials from Canada and the United States to work together to enforce the law on both sides of the maritime border.
I will be clear on one point: There is no challenge to our national sovereignty because the laws of Canada will apply to all designated law enforcement officials when they are in Canada. This is about sending a strong message that cross- border crime will not be tolerated.
Shiprider officers will crew together on the same vessel to share resources and intelligence to better identify, interdict and prosecute criminal activity in shared waters. I might indicate that the size of these boats is fairly small, and the crew is usually four or five individuals at the most. We are not talking about a large operation but about a nimble operation with a split in crew members of usually two or three from each side of the border.
Shiprider operations have a marked and measurable impact on cross-border crime. Pilot projects conducted in 2005 and 2007 yielded positive results and provided us with a glimpse of the enormous possibilities of this cooperation. For example, the 2007 pilot operations took place on the Cornwall-St. Lawrence Seaway and on the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Over a period of two months in the St. Lawrence Seaway, six direct arrests were made, and Shiprider operations contributed to 41 other arrests.
RCMP and U.S. Coast Guard officers also made major seizures in respect of marijuana, contraband cigarettes, cocaine, vehicles and equipment. They also assisted in the rescue of an abducted child.
This is no drop in the bucket. These drugs and cash were removed from the hands of dealers and never made it to our communities and, in particular, our schoolyards. Not only did these pilot projects help crack down on marine- based crime, they also proved to be an effective tool to help land-based law enforcement officers in their work to disrupt criminal activities in their respective districts.
I am sure you have heard stories of smugglers who have used handheld GPS devices to determine exactly when they have crossed the maritime border, assuming that they are then safe from arrest. During the 2007 Shiprider pilot project, however, when a fleeing boat stopped after crossing the Canadian border, it was approached by Shiprider personnel. While no contraband was found on the vessel, the boat itself tested positive for cocaine residue and it was seized.
The presence of Shiprider operations also resulted in displacement of a considerable amount of smuggling to border ports of entry. The CBSA noted there was a marked increase in arrests at land-based border crossings as a result of the activity of Shiprider in the marine areas.
In 2010 we saw the deployment of Shiprider security operations during the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver and during the G20 summit in Toronto. Both of these security operations were considered a great success.
The relevant provisions in the jobs, growth and long-term prosperity bill will provide the legislative authority to allow authorities to permanently engage in Shiprider operations.
I would like to again underscore that Shiprider will be conducted with full respect to the domestic sovereignty of both Canada and the United States. This is how all Shiprider pilot projects were carried out, and nothing would change moving forward. For example, when operations take place in Canada, they are conducted under the control and direction of Canadian law enforcement and subject to Canadian laws, policies and procedures. If operations occur in the United States the reverse is true, with American officials taking the lead.
Canadians can rest assured that this legislation in no way compromises our traditional values or our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms. The collection and sharing of information in Canada will be governed by Canadian law, including privacy protections.
We have also taken concrete measures to ensure proper oversight and accountability. As such, all Shiprider operations within Canadian jurisdiction would be subject to a public complaints process that largely mirrors that which is currently in place for the RCMP.
Let me now highlight some of the key differences between what is in the budget implementation bill and the former Shiprider legislation, which this committee examined last year.
First, we have added a new principle underlining that integrated cross-border law enforcement operations must "be conducted as directed by a designated officer from the host country. " This new provision will further ensure that Canada's sovereignty is respected by stipulating that direction of all operations rest with Canadian law enforcement officials.
Second, we have enhanced public oversight by expanding our intake points for public complaints to include RCMP officers. This remains consistent with the "no wrong door " approach to the receipt of complaints and is in line with existing provisions of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act.
Other minor technical amendments have been included to further strengthen and streamline our approach to cross- border law enforcement.
In conclusion, let me stress that by cooperating with our American counterparts on important issues of national security, we are telling criminals that exploitation of the shared border will not be tolerated. In order to ensure the flow of legitimate trade and travel across the border, it is crucial that we take the necessary steps to effectively combat illegal activity at and across the shared border. Shiprider is the way of the future and represents a new approach to how we work with our American partners. In fact, it is a proven approach that will increase the safety and security of Canadians.
I would ask all honourable senators to support the rapid passage of the proposed act to ensure the continued prosperity, safety and security of Canadians.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much. It was very comprehensive and we, as you quite rightly noted, have studied this before. Thank you for coming back again.
Senator Dallaire: If I may, Mr. Minister, proposed section 12 on page 276 of the bill states:
Every designated officer has the same power to enforce an Act of Parliament as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when
(a) participating in an integrated cross-border operation;
I would take from this that the American who is on the Canadian ship has the same authority as everybody else.
Mr. Toews: Yes, that is correct. They are under, though, the supervision of the Canadians who take the lead in the operation.
Senator Dallaire: That brings me to a difference in Bill C-38 versus Bill S-13 that I wish to raise with you, which I did previously. I bring your attention to 4(b)(iii), which, as you just stated, says "be conducted as directed by a designated officer from the host country. " These are, of course, the actions in the implementation of the rules.
In Bill S-13, instead of that we said it must be intelligence driven based on threat and risk assessments conducted jointly by Canada and the United States and coordinated with existing cooperative cross-border policy programs and activities.
The reason I raise this, Mr. Minister, is what if you have a Canadian on an American ship in American waters and he sees something that should be acted upon in accordance with the overarching Shiprider framework, but the Americans do not want to do it?
Mr. Toews: The Americans would overrule the Canadian.
Senator Dallaire: They would overrule him?
Mr. Toews: Yes.
Senator Dallaire: I am afraid that is what the amendment says, yet with Bill S-13, it would not have come out that way. It would have been based on joint discussions or a joint operational plan or something of that nature.
Mr. Toews: I still think, under the prior legislation, the American official would still have the authority to end the operation, or to direct the operation in any specific respect, in the same way that the Canadian would be able to direct the American in Canadian waters. I do not think that has changed. I think the legislation, though, as you point out, makes it clearer that that is, in fact, the case.
Senator Dallaire: If we feel that the American commander is not playing by the rules, what happens then?
Mr. Toews: That is a good question, one I raised with my staff in discussing this.
First of all, obviously if an officer is not cooperating, the recourse is to say you are not welcome in Canada. We have the ultimate jurisdiction to determine whether or not an officer is welcome to participate in this operation. That is in the situation where no wrongdoing has been committed. The person is simply not cooperating and we can simply say you are no longer a part of this; we will not work with that particular individual.
That is inherent in the agreement, but let us say the individual commits a criminal act. If that individual commits a criminal act in Canada, he or she would be prosecuted in Canada for it. Similarly, a Canadian who commits a criminal act in the American jurisdiction would be prosecuted in the American jurisdiction.
In respect to a disciplinary offence, that individual — let us say an American in Canadian jurisdiction — would be subject to the American disciplinary rules, and the American policing authority would discipline that individual in the same way that a Canadian officer who is involved in a disciplinary offence, as opposed to criminal wrongdoing, would be disciplined in accordance with the relevant RCMP Act or similar provision.
Senator Dallaire: If the Canadian on the American ship feels that the American ship should have done something, but the American ship decided not to, what is the recourse of the Canadian to bring in a complaint against the American analysis?
Mr. Toews: Ultimately, senator, what occurs here is that if you do not have cooperation, you do not have a working agreement. I think you, more than anyone, should understand the difficulties of working together in a multinational situation.
Senator Dallaire: That is why I asked the question.
Mr. Toews: We have to rely, in good measure, on the good faith of our partners in this. Not everything can be written down, but I think, ultimately, if there is no cooperation, there is no mission.
The Chair: These people are trained and, presumably, sign up for these operations, not because they want to go and —
Mr. Toews: Exactly, but there are always these practical difficulties, senator, when you are dealing with these kinds of situations. I think, especially when it comes to the protection of the public or the public interest, whether it is Canadians or American civilians, we have sufficient safeguards in place — the criminal prosecution, the disciplinary functions and, of course, the general procedures saying that we cannot work with this individual. He has to be transferred. I am sure that has happened sometime in your career. Not with you, but with others who —
Senator Dallaire: Thank you very much.
The Chair: That is a topic for another time.
Senator Lang: Welcome to our guests here this morning. I want to begin by commending the minister and his office in respect to another matter closer to home in Yukon. Through our member of Parliament and the Government of Yukon, we got an extension of hours on one of our border crossings that is coming into effect, I believe, next week. It has been an irritant for many years, and we certainly appreciate the time and the effort put in by you and your staff. It will make things a lot easier for us.
Mr. Toews: In fact, at the risk of taking it exactly where we should not go, the border crossing that you are talking about in the Yukon, is it called Gold Creek?
Senator Lang: Yes.
Mr. Toews: It is a joint building, where Americans and Canadians are in that building together. I think there is a red line going through the middle of the building.
Senator Lang: It might be a red line; I am not sure. All we want to do is to make sure that it is open. We do not care about the line.
Mr. Toews: It is open, but I think that that particular case is a good example of how, especially in isolated areas, we can work together to provide a service to the people of both countries when people simply want to get across. That is a remarkable little story in the Yukon and Alaska where they are sharing a facility.
Senator Lang: Yes, and I certainly appreciate the work both on the American side and the Canadian side.
The Chair: Again, leave it for another day, if I might suggest?
Senator Dallaire: That is your first question.
Senator Lang: We do not get the minister here that often.
Just to clarify for the record here, recognizing that most Canadians are not that familiar with what goes on at the border and how people abuse the rules, perhaps you or your staff could expand further on what the real problems are between the two countries in respect to the border and how it was before the test Shiprider program came into effect so that people understand exactly what is taking place, the seriousness of the situation that we are facing and the reason we have the legislation here.
Mr. Toews: I want to focus on the maritime issue because that is really what the legislation does. Essentially, individuals would commit a criminal act in one country, take the boat across the water and get into Canadian waters or wherever was the opposite of where the crime was committed. Essentially, law enforcement officials were stymied and unable to pursue them into that other jurisdiction.
What the pilot project did — and I think it was an excellent idea — was to erase the border for the purposes of pursuing a wrongdoer. This legislation formalizes that ability to pursue that individual, not only on the water but also on to the land in hot pursuit. That is the only element in which the land issue is triggered in this legislation, when you are in hot pursuit.
However, again, I have to emphasize that that is under the direction of the officer of the country in which one finds oneself, either on the water or in hot pursuit.
Senator Lang: I just want to pursue the question of sovereignty. Of course, that is an issue for a lot of us in Canada and on the American side, as well. The provision that the cross-border law enforcement operation "be conducted and directed by a designated officer from the host country " will meet that test from the point of view of who is in charge and what rules will have to be followed on either side of the border; is that correct?
Mr. Toews: Absolutely. These officers will, in fact, be trained in Canadian law if they are American so that they understand what their legal authority is on the Canadian side. Of course, Canadians will have to be trained in American law in order to participate in those operations.
Despite what a lot of people say, there are not that many differences, but there are some key differences that could make a difference, not so much in the protection of rights when you are arresting someone but in the protection of a prosecution to preserve evidence and deal with that.
Senator Lang: And to be successful.
Mr. Toews: To be successful, that is correct.
Senator Plett: Mr. Minister, I think you have answered part of this, but I would like you to walk me through, if you would, the boat, whether it is Coast Guard vessel or an RCMP one. Let us say it is Coast Guard, and they chase somebody from the American side but stop them on the Canadian side of the border. They make their arrest and charge them. Could you walk me through what happens at that time? They have been charged. They take them to the dock on the Canadian side. That is where they have arrested them. What happens at that point? Does the whole operation continue together? Where does it go from there?
Mr. Toews: I will let Mr. Taschereau answer that. Basically, all I want to emphasize — and Mr. Taschereau will get into some of the details — is that even though the offence has been committed on the American side — let us say you cross over into Canadian waters and the arrest takes place there. There cannot be a rendition across the line again and incarceration of that individual.
Once the individual suspected of committing the crime is on the Canadian side, you would have to go through the regular extradition proceedings if the person does not voluntary consent to go back to the other side.
There is nothing in this process that short circuits the rights an individual might have under extradition treaties and laws.
Marc Taschereau, Chief, Border Strategies, Border Law Enforcement Strategies Division, Public Safety Canada: Senator, to answer your question, if they are charged in Canadian jurisdiction, they would be processed based on Canadian law and prosecuted here in Canada based on the offence that took place in Canada. That is essentially the process that would take place.
Mr. Toews: If the offence is committed in the United States, they would not be charged. They would be detained on the Canadian side and extradition proceedings would take place as a result of Americans charging the individual in the United States and then filing the appropriate documents for extradition.
Senator Plett: Am I correct that the boat would go to the dock on the Canadian side and the detainee would be turned over to the RCMP who would do whatever needed to be done at that point?
Mr. Toews: It depends on the facts, but that is, generally speaking, correct.
Senator Plett: We have talked a lot about the pilot projects, specifically in the Windsor and Vancouver areas.
In the southern part of Manitoba there is only a little water separating Canada from the United States. I live on that lake and am concerned about whether I will be able to sleep comfortably. If an RCMP boat were patrolling that little area, would it have Coast Guard people on board?
Mr. Toews: No; you would have to be a designated officer. Simply being RCMP or Coast Guard would not give you the authority to cross over.
Senator Plett: There would be some boats patrolling that would not have the Shiprider designation?
Mr. Toews: That is correct. Shiprider would be the exception rather than the rule.
Senator Lang: But not in B.C. or on the Great Lakes?
Mr. Toews: The important component is that everyone has to be designated. A Canadian cannot assume American jurisdiction and an American cannot wander on to the Canadian side of the water and assume jurisdiction to enforce Canadian laws. It is a very carefully laid out process by which there must be formal designation.
I do not think it would work to let Americans enforce the law in Canada and Canadians enforce the law in the United States. I would have significant concerns about sovereignty. There has to be a specific process and a specific designation, as well as training, that will safeguard rights on both sides of the border as well as ensuring that officers know how to deal with information and the like.
Senator Mitchell: Inevitably and unfortunately, this exercise will probably involve the use of firearms from time to time. Are the rules of engagement generally different for American officers than for Canadian officer, and have they been amalgamated and coordinated?
Mr. Toews: Mr. Taschereau can speak to that. There are differences in the rules of engagement with firearms, but I want to be clear that if an American is on the Canadian side, Canadian rules that apply.
Mr. Taschereau: I understand that use of force by the RCMP and the United States Coast Guard is virtually the same. Notwithstanding, if there are differences, training, which is a key foundational element to this program, would ensure that there is a thorough understanding of appropriate use on each side of the border.
Senator Mitchell: Under the terms of the agreement, the Commissioner of the RCMP is the head person and he designates people from the Canadian side for this program. He can designate RCMP officers or police officers who are appointed or actually employed by the province.
If provincial police officers are employed, who will pay them? Will the federal government undertake that budget responsibility?
Mr. Toews: When an RCMP officer is operating in Manitoba, for example, that officer can be acting in three different capacities. That officer can be acting as a municipal police officer, a provincial police officer or a federal police officer. For example, in the province of Manitoba, about 15 per cent of the RCMP responsibilities and officers are federally designated.
It would probably be one of those individuals who would be specifically designated with enforcement along the border. That is already being paid for by the federal government.
Having said that, it is not always that clean because you can have one individual carrying out all three responsibilities. I do not see the money issue being a big deal here.
Senator Mitchell: This does not refer to the appointment of an Ontario or Quebec police force officer to Shiprider?
Richard Wex, Assistant Deputy Minister, Law Enforcement and Policing, Public Safety Canada: These sorts of arrangements will be negotiated with the provincial police service of jurisdiction in question. You are right that it need not only be an RCMP member; it could be a provincial police service member or an independent municipal police service member. As the minister correctly pointed out, in many cases police officers in those other municipalities are RCMP through the contract policing arrangement. Depending on the facts of the case and the arrangement in question, cost arrangements will be worked out among the parties.
This legislation does not speak to those protocols or operational matters; rather, it creates an enabling framework to allow the Shiprider program to take place.
Senator Hubley: Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being with us today. I would like to pursue the costs that might be involved. You said that each side will need training in law. In what other areas will there be need? Will extra equipment be needed for this operation? Will there be expenses involved in that?
Mr. Toews: We do not anticipate this costing the police services any more money, but there will obviously be training.
Mr. Taschereau: This is enabling legislation, so in and of itself there are no costs. It is a model. The nice thing about this model is that it allows the RCMP and the United States Coast Guard to better leverage their resources. Even if we do not add new personnel or vessels, we can make better use of our resources. It is a force multiplier.
Senator Hubley: Do Canada's resources match the American resources? Will we be fine with what we have?
Mr. Taschereau: When Mr. Oliver was here the other day he said that the RCMP currently has 400 vessels, four of which are specifically dedicated to Shiprider. That does not compare to the United States Coast Guard. They have many more resources than we do, and that is true in all the border agencies.
Notwithstanding, this will enable us to use to use our fewer resources more effectively. While there is no set ratio here, there would generally be one RCMP vessel and one USCG vessel working collaboratively in our shared waterways.
Senator Manning: Have you had to find extra financial resources to implement this program?
Mr. Toews: My understanding is that no additional resources are required.
If we look at the officers that are already on the Great Lakes, all this does is enhance their ability to cross the border and pursue a specific subject if they had to, but we are not looking for any increase in resources because of the Shiprider program.
If you ask the RCMP or if you ask any agency, "Could you use more resources, " I am sure they could find ways of convincing us that more resources are always needed. We are not looking, as a result of the Shiprider program, for any specific resources at this time.
Senator Manning: I know we had a discussion at earlier meetings concerning the land component to the legislation. Minister, you touched on the term "hot pursuit "; that is, that officers can go on to the land as long as they are in hot pursuit.
In regard to aerial surveillance, which is I am sure an ongoing activity, are there any provisions here that authorize aerial surveillance? Has that been taken into consideration? In regard to flights over our jurisdiction from the U.S. or theirs, is there anything in the legislation that touches on that or is that addressed in any way? Do you anticipate that happening?
Mr. Toews: This does not authorize any over-flights of Canadian soil by American airplanes, or drones, or others. Obviously, if you have a drone on the American side, they have the ability to look into Canada. I think there have been some media reports about that. There is some drone activity along the Canada-U.S. border by the Americans. That is public knowledge.
What I see as important is the coordination of those types of resources in order for individuals to work better together, but I do not see this in any way authorizing the intrusion of American equipment into Canada, other than the marine context.
Mr. Wex: As the minister indicated, that is correct in that we are not talking about drones, which have come up in the media. There are drones on the southern side of the border perhaps, but that is not what this is about. There is aerial surveillance by way of assistance to the vessels, which is contemplated, as the minister indicated, in this act and in the framework agreement. They are not there for direct law enforcement activity but to be the eyes in the sky, if you will, to provide some aerial support for domain awareness; that is, what is going on in the water to the vessel on the ground.
As I think I indicated the last time I was here, there may be a suspect vessel hiding behind an island and the Shiprider vessel has lost sight of that vessel. They are in radio communication and the aerial support will provide the information to the Shiprider vessel to help them navigate the waters and affect the necessary arrest.
Senator Manning: This is support.
Mr. Wex: Only there in support, not with respect to direct law enforcement activity.
The Chair: Thank you for your cooperation. We have time for a second round.
Senator Dallaire: Mr. Taschereau, you mentioned that the enabling legislation gives you the flexibility to even your resources within the ministry. It is also an opportunity to drive a Mack truck through and manoeuvre, seeking funding without necessarily having it identified as the legislation goes through.
Taking the minister's position that this is not an increase in the requirements of funding that cannot already be absorbed within the Canadian context, and taking for granted the same scenario on the other side and that they have joined in this because either they have the funds or did not see a requirement for more people, there will be no quid pro quo exchange of costing by the other side because they are implementing this thing even though they may have more people involved than us.
Mr. Toews: There are no joint budgets to implement this. I think it is important to recognize that this helps not only Canada but also the United States in terms of that flexibility on the border.
We do not see this as requiring additional resources to implement, in the same way that the 2005 pilot project was implemented without any additional resources. It was simply the use of existing resources and providing them with the legal flexibility to work on both sides of the border. I think that is the way the Americans are viewing it. Certainly that has been the gist of my conversation with the American authorities.
Mr. Taschereau: That is true.
Senator Dallaire: So the agreement did not, on either side, identify a costing exercise of O and M to implement this down the road, and if it does, that would be subject to a separate negotiation, would it?
Mr. Toews: That would be a separate negotiation. I hate to speculate in any respect. However, for example, if it was recognized that we need more officers or need another boat, obviously, the resources would have to be found inside the RCMP or the Coast Guard or there would have to be some kind of an appropriation passed through Parliament to achieve that. At this point, we do not see that as being necessary.
Senator Dallaire: The internal staff check is identified, then.
Our border services people, who are now armed and being armed —
Mr. Toews: Most of them.
Senator Dallaire: Well, we could debate that one, too.
The Aboriginal police — and I am not sure if we can use the term "Aboriginal waters, " but we are into waters that are along the shores of Aboriginal territory — are not involved in this exercise.
Mr. Toews: I do not see anything excluding Aboriginal and First Nations police forces from being involved in this. In the same way that we would make agreements with the Ontario Provincial Police or the QPP, I do not see any bar to incorporating the resources from some of the First Nations communities. As you know, some of the cross-border smuggling has involved these communities. Some of those officers may be in the best position to know the terrain, know the river, know the lake and therefore cooperate, but they would have to go through the same training that any other Canadian officer would have to go through.
Senator Dallaire: So they meet the standard of that.
Mr. Taschereau: In Akwesasne, the police have been trained. A couple of them have been trained in the Shiprider context; they have taken the courses. We actively contemplate the participation of not just the OPP or other municipal law enforcement partners but Aboriginal police associations as well.
Senator Dallaire: My specific question was also on our border gang, the federal border police or border guards.
Mr. Toews: CBSA?
Senator Dallaire: Yes. Now that they are armed, can they be designated as peace officers and be engaged? That is not clarified here.
Mr. Toews: No.
Senator Dallaire: They will not be part of this at all?
Mr. Toews: No. They serve a very different function and we tried to keep that separate.
Senator Plett: Senator Dallaire spoke a bit about resources. There is no commitment that I see that we are committing an amount of resources to this program equal to that of the United States.
Mr. Taschereau said earlier that the United States has many more Coast Guard vessels than we have RCMP vessels. I see this as our country being a net beneficiary of a lot of vessels and a lot of equipment that the United States has that we possibly do not have. Would I be correct in that?
Mr. Taschereau: Absolutely. There is no ratio set in either this legislation or the framework agreement.
While there is a general intent to use comparable numbers of both officers and vessels, it is conceivable that we could in fact leverage additional U.S. resources, which would ultimately be in our interest in terms of identifying and interdicting cross-border criminality.
Mr. Toews: Say we only have four RCMP boats and the Americans have four RCMP boats, we are no longer stopped at the border. That means that one boat can cross the line, just by the fact that the same number of boats, the eight, would give us flexibility and therefore increase our operational capabilities. In that sense, it is a real benefit to Canada and indeed, I would say, the United States.
Senator Mitchell: Minister, on page 14 of your written notes you say, "We have also taken concrete measures to ensure proper oversight and accountability. " You then draw the comparison to a process similar to the one currently in place with the RCMP.
Of course, we are having some issues with RCMP accountability and oversight these days. Could you talk to us about the structure, why we would have confidence in that, that they can hold the RCMP accountable in this case, and how much money will be put into that process?
Mr. Toews: Accountability is basically the topic of another bill. In terms of the complaints commission, that will be set up, as well as the disciplinary powers that officers have inside the RCMP, which are very restricted at this time. I think that has been part of the complaints members of the public have pointed out, that incredibly complex process.
We are trying to get a lot more flexibility like the military has in terms of discipline of officers so that it does not necessarily all have to go to the commissioner, but line officers can make these disciplinary decisions as well.
Both in terms of a public complaints commission, which is an independent body, and the pushing down of the authority to exercise disciplinary measures is something that our government will be bringing forward as a result of some of the very good work that people in Public Safety have done and certainly something the commissioner has been specifically asking me for. I can only wonder why this was not done a long time ago and why we did not take the model of the military, which I think has a very sensible delegation of disciplinary authority.
Senator Mitchell: Mention has been made of the role of the CBSA in that essentially they are not directly involved. Is there some tension there? Would they not have expected to have been involved? How will that be coordinated?
Mr. Toews: They are trained for different things. They are not a police force in the same sense that the RCMP are. We obviously want them to be more than tax collectors, and that is why they are armed. They do have certain law enforcement functions, very important law enforcement functions both on the border and inland. As you know, they have had tremendous success in this "most wanted " initiative. Of the 90 or so individuals we put on that "most wanted " list — people who have been evading arrest for years and are suddenly being picked up — I think about 35 have been arrested and are back in custody, and hopefully they will find their way home as quickly as possible.
Remember, the CBSA takes care of all of our airports and also does a lot of the inland enforcement. There are about 15,000 deportations a year that CBSA is involved in one way or another. Their function is different than a police function. Their training is not the same, and I am a little hesitant at this point simply to designate them as police officers in the same way as the RCMP or the OPP. They serve a different function. I think we have to be very careful before we start confusing those roles.
Senator Mitchell: Back to the question about the accountability, the structure and the legislative changes, when do you anticipate that legislation being presented?
Mr. Toews: I never know what I can say out loud or not. It is a very confusing world.
Senator Mitchell: You are amongst friends here.
Mr. Toews: There is cabinet confidence, and some of these matters have not been discussed in cabinet yet. I cannot remember whether I have read it in the newspaper or whether it is in my briefing notes. I am very cautious when it comes to talking about this.
I think I have given you about as much as I can on that legislation, but I can say very soon. I am very familiar with all aspects of that legislation, and I am actually quite excited about it. I think that it will fill a gap that has created a lot of difficulties for senior administration in the RCMP. Also, it will bring back public confidence to the extent that it has been eroded in our national police force. For me, this is a priority, and that is why I say soon.
Senator Mitchell: It cannot be soon enough.
Mr. Toews: I agree with you, senator.
The Chair: If you are excited by the information, it must have been in your briefing note; it could not have been in a newspaper column.
Mr. Toews: I am always fascinated by a good piece of fiction.
The Chair: We have been reading a lot of it.
Senator Hubley: I have a question regarding your notes, if you do not mind, minister. You mentioned, and the question popped into my mind at that time, that during the pilot projects when there was a crackdown on marine- based crime, you indicated it also helped the land-based law enforcement officers in their work to disrupt criminal activities. Could you comment on that?
I would then like you to comment on whether you see other gaps that will probably be addressed in the future and that should be addressed in the future accordingly as the marine aspect becomes strengthened. What happens then?
Mr. Toews: I do not want to talk too much about operational details, but what we note happens is when you focus in a certain marine area, obviously criminals stay away from there and they have to find alternate ways. Sometimes they go upriver or downriver. Sometimes they say the risk is too great on the river, period, and go across on a land crossing. That is what we saw with Shiprider. The impact of Shiprider was to send criminals to the land crossings and the arrests took place there. It has that displacement effect.
Senator Hubley: Was our land-based monitoring adequate to put all of that into place?
Mr. Toews: We have increased our CBSA officers by about 26 per cent, and we stressed front-line officers. It has made a real difference. I think, again, there will always be discussion about what the right amount is, but we have been very supportive of the need for strengthening those border crossings.
Senator D. Smith: I have had some border crossing experience lately. I will not tell you about going to Philadelphia last week.
Mr. Toews: We heard about it.
Senator D. Smith: This is another incident.
I have a simple question. I would love to get into the Mexico stuff, but we do not have time. At the bottom of page 6 of your notes, you state:
It allows specially trained and designated law enforcement officials from Canada and the United States to work together to enforce the law on both sides of the maritime border.
I am assuming there is a quid pro quo. In other words, whatever status our people have on their side, their people would have on our side. Is there a difference in their status and the scope of what they can do on each other's soil? I assume that it would be more or less the same.
Mr. Toews: There is an element of reciprocity, but remember: The Americans do not bring their laws to the Canadian side.
Senator D. Smith: I understand that.
Mr. Toews: There is no quid pro quo in that respect. Once they are on the Canadian side, even if the standards are different, they must comply with them.
Senator D. Smith: The same applies to us when we are on their side.
Mr. Toews: Exactly. There is reciprocity in the sense that both will be carrying firearms on both sides of the border. However, in terms of the law that they are subject to, if a Canadian were to commit a criminal offence during the course of operations there, American law would prosecute that individual. Similarly, if an American ran afoul of our laws, Canadian law would prosecute him or her. Does that answer your question?
Senator D. Smith: Does this avoid extraditions?
Mr. Toews: No. We got into that earlier. If you cross the border and then are lucky enough to get back home to Canada, rendition cannot occur without the legal, formal extradition.
Senator D. Smith: I assumed that.
Mr. Toews: That is very clear. We do not want this to be a quick end run around our extradition laws.
The Chair: Thank you very much, minister. We appreciate your return visit and the explanations; and our thanks to Mr. Wex and Mr. Taschereau for visiting us again.
Mr. Toews: Thank you very much. I always remark about how polite people are in the Senate and how thoughtful their questions are. I do not know what it is.
Senator D. Smith: We meditate.
The Chair: That is it. We are happy to provide lessons to the other side.
Our next witness, appearing as an individual, is Dr. Bill Anderson, from the University of Windsor's Cross-Border Transportation Centre. Dr. Anderson is Ontario Research Chair in Cross-Border Transportation Policy. He has been very interested in trade flows and security along the border between Canada and the U.S. I believe that he has the unique perspective of being an American who has moved to Canada; he has seen this from both sides.
Dr. Anderson, I understand you have an opening statement. Welcome and please proceed.
Bill Anderson, Ph.D., Ontario Research Chair in Cross-Border Transportation Policy, Professor, Political Science, University of Windsor, as an individual: Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee and comment on Division 12 of Bill C-38. By way of a few words about myself, I am by training an economic geographer. My research over the years has been in transportation and trade in Canada-U.S. relations. I should note that I have been a faculty member in Canada for, not continuously, a total of almost 20 years, so I have been back and forth across the border.
In my current position at the University of Windsor, I focus on cross-border transportation issues. While I am not an expert in law enforcement operations, I am naturally very interested in security issues as they relate to the border. As the chair already said, I note that I am a citizen of both Canada and the United States. My Boston accent usually gives me away on that anyway.
The Chair: We would have picked you out, it is true.
Mr. Anderson: From a practical perspective, the advantages of the Shiprider program are clear: It eliminates the border as a refuge for people involved in illegal activities, such as smuggling of drugs, firearms and illegal immigrants or even terrorism. Furthermore, given the challenge of patrolling huge areas of water where literally hundreds of thousands of small boats operate, it helps to allocate resources efficiently and eliminate duplication of effort.
However, I wish to focus my brief comments not on operational details but rather on how Shiprider fits into what I see as a new model of efficient management of the Canada-U.S. border. Let me start with a little background. I promise I will come back to Shiprider on this.
I believe the term "perimeter security " is the source of significant confusion. Based on the dictionary definition of "perimeter " as an outer boundary, the perimeter approach is sometimes taken to mean that North American security, immigration and customs functions are to be shifted to the outer boundary of the combined Canadian and American land masses and to airports acting as points of entry to both countries, thus making the Canada-U.S. border inconsequential. This perception is reinforced by the obvious example of the Schengen Agreement, whereby inspections and paperwork have been entirely eliminated at borders between European countries. However, I do not think Schengen is an apt model for the Canada-U.S. context.
The key thing to understand is that since many border processes are necessary because of differences in policy between neighbouring states, eliminating the border is only possible with a very high level of policy harmonization. The European Union has had over 50 years to achieve this harmonization, starting at its inception with the creation of a customs union and extending more recently to a common visa policy. By contrast, Canada and the United States do not have a customs union and have significantly different policies in areas such as visas and firearms. Even if the goal were to achieve a European style elimination of border functions, the necessary process of policy harmonization would probably take decades; it is not clear to me that such complete harmonization would even be desirable.
While I have spent most of my time worrying about the costs imposed by the border, I have also come to realize that the border confers important political and social benefits, because the existence of the border makes it possible for Canada to define and enforce its own laws and policies.
Our objective should not be to make the border disappear or become irrelevant, but rather to preserve the benefits of the border while at the same time managing its costs through a more efficient execution of border functions. Preserving the border does not mean that we are doomed to an inefficient regime whereby the same functions are carried out independently on either side of the border. Given the long history of peace and cooperation between Canada and the U.S., it should be possible to manage our shared border cooperatively while preserving the integrity of each country's laws in its own territory.
Shiprider provides a concrete example of how this can be done. As I understand it, the idea behind Shiprider is that Canadian officials should be able to assist U.S. officials in the enforcement of U.S. laws in U.S. territory, and U.S. officials should be able to assist Canadian officials in the enforcement of Canadian laws in Canadian territory. This idea is behind things like the Integrated Border Enforcement Teams, Canada-U.S. cooperation on screening containers in third country ports, and the principle of cleared once, accepted twice.
The difference under Shiprider is that officials of each country may actually pass into the other's territory in the process. The language of division 12 defines how this can be done while ensuring that Canadian laws are enforced under the command of a Canadian official while in Canadian territory and that the reverse is true while in U.S. territory.
I think it is a serious misinterpretation of Shiprider to suggest that it somehow seeks to undermine the Canada-U.S. border. It only eliminates the border as a place of refuge for criminals. It preserves the border as a bright line separating the legal regimes of two sovereign states. If Shiprider can be implemented successfully, and pilots extending back to 2005 suggest that it can, then it will be a major step in the direction of a more efficient and effective model of management for the Canada-U.S. border.
The Chair: Thank you very much, and thank you for your perspective.
I know a lot of people have done ride-alongs and been looking at this. Have you spoken to people in the area in which you live about this specific program and how it is working from their point of view?
Mr. Anderson: Yes, I attend just about all of the border events, and there are many of them around Windsor and Detroit. There was a big one in Dearborn recently, we had one in Windsor recently, and heard presentations and seen field presentations.
I have also spoken quite a bit with the harbourmaster in Windsor who has been very involved in consultations on this. I have not been on a boat, but I have heard a lot about this. Certainly Windsor is a town where you can probably stop people on the street and say "Shiprider " and they know what you are talking about.
The Chair: That is one of the reasons you are here, because it is not a common phrase everywhere. Is your sense that people are comfortable with this, that from their point of view, whatever their involvement may be, or their access point, that it is working for them?
Mr. Anderson: I think there is some discomfort on the expectation that this will result in more frequent boarding or confrontations for pleasure craft. Remember that there are, even in Windsor probably, tens of thousands of pleasure craft. This is a very sensitive issue there and, for that reason, the main concern with Shiprider is that it will result in more interference with pleasure craft.
The CEO of the Windsor port, who I believe operates the largest marina in the area, feels quite certain that that is not the case, that the idea here is not to be checking large numbers of pleasure craft, but rather to be going after targeted, illegal operations, and so he has been trying to make people less concerned about that.
The Chair: That is certainly the information we have as well, that it is part of ongoing police operations or crime operations. It is not just out there randomly searching.
Senator Dallaire: Professor, the purpose of this law that is within the overarching border and framework agreement — Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law— is to provide additional means to prevent, detect and suppress criminal offences and violations of the law in undisputed areas of sea, internal waters, along the boundary, and so on.
There are never enough resources to guarantee a 24/7 ocular or even electronic surveillance of the border, nor whatever thermal means or whatever to identify whether illegal weapons or stuff like that are in these ships that could be coming in. Without that sort of guarantee, you then have to base a lot of your concept of operations of this thing on intelligence.
In your analysis of this, did you see willingness on the part of the Americans, who have a whole variety of intelligence-gathering agencies, to open up their intelligence information to the Canadians in order to coordinate the apprehension and prevention of movement of not just illegal materials, like drugs, but also weapons and God knows what else?
Mr. Anderson: Let me be clear that I do not have first-hand knowledge of an issue like that, but I do speak to people who are involved in that. Their feeling is that there is already a lot of cooperation across the border in terms of information being exchanged, as long as it involves some sort of ship that might be moving across the Detroit River or Lake St. Clair.
Beyond that, intelligence beyond those types of things and whether there would be intelligence coming from other sources within the United States coming into this, I do not have any information on that, sorry.
Senator Dallaire: With respect to ships that are using the St. Lawrence Seaway, as an example, do you in any way, shape or form see that even with Shiprider there still can be gaps in our ability to provide that enhanced capability of detecting, monitoring and preventing the movement of illegal instruments, arms, nuclear devices, God knows whatever, through the system? Is this a significant exercise on that security side versus purely the criminal cigarette smuggling?
Mr. Anderson: Yes, I think it is a significant exercise, but certainly there is no question that the gaps are enormous. This exercise in itself may make some contribution to reducing those gaps, but those gaps will still be very significant.
The Chair: We have a long border.
Senator Dallaire: The reason, if I may, is that after 9/11we were accused of being a sieve up here, and a lot of the American enhancement of the border was because they felt that we on our side were letting stuff go south. I wonder, because of the extensive intelligence capability they built up, and ours which is a player, whether part of this exercise has been an enhancement of the exchange of significant classified material. If you do not have the eyes, at least you know what is coming in and will be able to deploy appropriately.
Mr. Anderson: I would not be privy to any information on the exchange of classified material.
Senator Lang: I want to pursue the one point that I believe Senator Wallin asked and you answered, that in some cases quite a number of Canadians might be concerned because of the fact they are on pleasure craft and would perhaps be apprehended because of the framework that is being presented in this legislation.
Part of the other side of the question that could be put to that is are we limited because of the number of actual craft that we have, both on the American and Canadian side? Although we are working together there are only so many, so they will not really have the resources to, on a Saturday afternoon, apprehend individuals for no reason at all. Obviously they will have to designate their resources to those areas where intelligence has brought them to the point where they know where these individuals are, they know the craft they are on and they know what they have to do in order to be able to apprehend them. Perhaps you would like to comment on that?
Mr. Anderson: That is certainly the case. People have to understand that there will not be a large number of these boats available, first of all because it is very expensive to provide all the training. Based on what I have read, I think something like 200 officers are trained now. Also, for this to be effective, the boats have to be of a class that is capable of pursuing fast boats, and there are a lot of fast boats available for criminal activities. It will not be a large number of boats out there doing it, and they will not be wasting those resources asking people how many life jackets they have.
I think there is a general discomfort, in boating regions, in dealing with American officials, and I think this is part of a general problem that we have at the border. People do not understand that those officials have a job to do, and they have to ask certain types of questions. Also, sometimes those officials do not realize that, for most people, when you are approached at the border, whether it is on the water or at the port of entry, it is maybe the only time when you, as a law abiding citizen, are ever approached by a law enforcement official wearing a gun, approaching you as if you are a suspect. It causes a great deal of discomfort. If you cross the border on a regular basis, you become quite hardened to that, and it does not really bother you anymore. However, for many people who only cross the border occasionally or are questioned occasionally in their pleasure craft, it is a little bit of an intimidating situation for them. I think that is really the source of the discomfort.
Senator Lang: I think it is a question of how they put the question. For many of us who have gone across the border, it is, a lot of times, strictly a process that you go through, but there are situations. I went through one not too long ago, and it is a matter of how they put the question. That is what really bothers you, and that is not just on the American side. That is on the Canadian side too. That works both ways.
However, I wanted to go a little further. We asked the minister about the real problems that they are facing out there, even prior to this legislation, and the magnitude of the problems that we are facing. You have obviously spent a lot of time reviewing the need for this legislation. Perhaps you would want to expand a little bit on that, just exactly what you have read and seen with respect to the crimes that are taking place, on a day-to-day basis, that we are looking to apprehend.
Mr. Anderson: It is notoriously difficult to figure out, based on the number of arrests or something like that, how much smuggling, for example, is taking place. Certainly, the reputation of this region — the St. Clair River and, in particular, Lake St. Clair — as areas for smuggling is very well known. The Department of Homeland Security considers the St. Clair River as one of the key points in North America for the smuggling of illegal immigrants, so that is as big an issue as drug smuggling. Those are the main issues. There is a lot of drug smuggling. We hear a lot more about drugs that are collected at the ports of entry, rather than on the water, because I think there are a lot more. However, there are many times more vehicles passing through the ports of entry than coming up for inspection on the water.
Senator Lang: I just wanted to follow up on the human smuggling that you referred to. Perhaps you would like to expand on that. You said that area was identified as an area for human smuggling.
Mr. Anderson: This was when there was a new border surveillance centre at Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Michigan. They have installed quite a few towers with cameras to watch the St. Clair River because of the fact that it is an easy place for people who want to get into the United States. Most of the time, they are not particularly nefarious characters or people involved in terrorism or even, necessarily, people involved in smuggling, just people who want to get into the United States, for whatever reason, and have found themselves in Canada. That would be an opportunity to do that.
Senator Plett: You mentioned that one of the biggest concerns — you have said it a few times — is that many of the people around Windsor and many other areas are owners of pleasure craft. The way I understand the law, a police officer cannot just come into my house because he or she feels like coming into my house. There are procedures to follow. Are there procedures like that when a police officer wants to board another ship? Do they not have to have some reason, some suspicion, or can they simply just stop any pleasure craft with this legislation and board that craft?
The Chair: To be clear here, Dr. Anderson is not a legal expert. He is here talking about the border itself, but go ahead.
Mr. Anderson: In fact, since I was invited to come here, I have spent a lot of time talking to people about these very questions, so, if nothing else, I have learned a lot in the last week or so.
I do not know what the actual rules are. You can approach a boat and ask safety questions, so, naturally, it is possible to approach boats for that reason. I am not sure exactly what the procedure is in terms of whether you can, or when you can, board a boat. I do not see that this legislation will change that. What it is changing is who can be involved in the boarding, not what the rules are with respect to boarding.
Senator Plett: That is why I question why people would have a concern about this with pleasure craft because this legislation would not change any of those laws.
Mr. Anderson: Right. I think that is the message that the people at the port authority and others have been trying to get across. I am telling you sort of an empirical thing. When I bring this up to people, that is the first thing I hear; people tell me stories that say, "Well, I was stopped coming across Lake St. Clair eight times last summer, " just to give you an example of the impacts.
The Chair: Just to be clear, that is not part of a Shiprider operation.
Mr. Anderson: No, not a Shiprider operation, just ordinary officials.
The Chair: That could be local police.
Mr. Anderson: It could be Canadian officials; it could be American officials.
This is something that has really had a big effect in terms of pleasure craft crossing the border. I was speaking to somebody from the town of Leamington, which is south of Windsor. It is where Point Peelee Park is, and it has a big marina. They were telling me that most of their business used to be Americans from Ohio who liked to come over on the weekends, and they do not do that anymore because they feel uncomfortable about the likelihood of possibly being boarded, most typically by American officials.
Senator Lang: Coming back?
Mr. Anderson: Coming back, yes, and they have to have passports. Because of my job title, I think people think I am the hotline for boarder horror stories, and I actually hear a higher rate of complaints from Americans — people I know from Michigan — who have problems going back into the United States. Most of the stories I hear are things where I think if they just were a little bit patient and a little bit more tolerant of the questions that have to be asked, I do not think there would be a problem. Nevertheless, it is recognized by people on both sides of the border as kind of an irritant.
Senator Plett: Certainly, they ask questions that are intended to trip people up.
Mr. Anderson: Right.
Senator Plett: There is no question about it. When you cross a border, they ask, "Do you have anything to declare; have you purchased anything on the other side? " You say no, and then they ask, "Are you bringing in any alcohol or cigarettes? " Well, usually my inclination is to say that that question was kind of answered when I answered the first question.
Mr. Anderson: Right.
Senator Plett: They are trained to trip people up, and it makes you feel uncomfortable sometimes.
Mr. Anderson: Yes, it makes people feel uncomfortable. There are other things. Sometimes people wonder why they are being asked so many questions. I have had this explained to me. A lot of times, particularly on the U.S. side, they seem to be asking you endless questions that do not seem to be going anywhere, and you notice that they are looking at their screen. They are actually waiting for information to come up on their screen. That is really why they are asking the questions, but people still feel a little bit intimidated by that.
The Chair: I appreciate your comments, but this is not specific to Shiprider.
Senator Dallaire: My questions are on the economics side of Shiprider. Would having Americans on our ships not permit faster pre-inspection for border crossing of assets? Would this not facilitate the process of getting goods across the border?
The Chair: I am trying to figure out how that is Shiprider-specific.
Senator Dallaire: If there is an American on a Canadian ship that is leaving Canada, can a border inspection be done before it reaches American waters?
Mr. Anderson: Border inspections of goods tend to be associated with points of entry. There are ideas about how to do border inspections for pre-clearance before getting to the point of entry. However, most of the vessels that are actually moving things are moving up and down the seaway between major ports. From my understanding, Shiprider would not come into play with those vessels.
The issue with pleasure crafts would not be associated with transporting goods, unless they are transporting illegal goods.
Senator Dallaire: In assessing the scenario from the area you are in, do you have the impression that there is a bigger threat of illegal activities moving north to south than south to north in the environment to which we are trying to respond?
Mr. Anderson: I think the movement is in both directions. Human smuggling is mostly north to south, Canada to the United States. In terms of certain drugs, like marijuana, it would be mostly from Canada to the United States, whereas cigarettes and cocaine is mostly from the United States to Canada. There seems to be illegal trade in both directions just as there is legal trade in both directions.
Senator Dallaire: What about weapons?
Mr. Anderson: Weapons move mostly from south to north. If you broaden the perspective away from where I am operating to the Greater Toronto Area, that would be the number one concern, because so many of the weapons that are involved in crimes in the Greater Toronto Area can be traced back to the United States, either through ports of entry or through illegal movements of the type that Shiprider might intercept.
The Chair: We have only seen a couple of pilot projects to date, but with the discussion around this and the discussion at the higher levels about the joint border operation, is it your sense that this might serve as some kind of disincentive? We have heard from police witnesses in earlier situations that criminals knew that as long as they could get over to the water on the other side they were scot-free and they thumbed their noses as they gunned the boat across the water. Will this provide some disincentive? Even though the numbers and the presence might not be that significant or overwhelming, might the fact that it exists have some impact?
Mr. Anderson: Absolutely. In the pilots that were done, as Minister Toews mentioned a few minutes ago, the disincentive, oddly enough, came in the form of seeing more movement of contraband through the ports of entry. Not having the opportunity to run to the border makes your probability of being apprehended a lot higher. Currently, under the best of circumstances you might be able to have a hand off; that is, a Coast Guard vessel following a boat that is going to reach the border will contact the RCMP or other law enforcement agency on the Canadian side. However, the likelihood of making that hand off successfully is pretty small.
The Chair: I was interested in your point that, even though this program is not large, it serves as a model. We have figured out a way to not only cooperate but to actually physically integrate and work together on solving a problem.
Mr. Anderson: Yes. From about 2005 until the joint declaration came out from the president and prime minister in December of 2010, progress on the Canada-U.S. border was stalled, you might say. What has been happening since then, not only with the Shiprider program but also with all the recommendations in the Beyond the Border report, points to a more cooperative approach to the border.
When I first started thinking about the border full time, I kept hearing people talking about the perimeter approach. "Perimeter approach " means different things to different people. According to the dictionary, perimeter means that you de-emphasize the internal borders, which is what has happened in Europe under the Schengen Agreement. I do not see that as coming to the Canada-U.S. border for the reasons I mentioned in my initial remarks, and I do not think it is desirable. If you say that we want to make the border disappear, you are really saying that we need a very high level of harmonization. In many places harmonization is a good thing, certainly with things like technical standards, but one can think of plenty of examples of policies in Canada that require the border to be in place as it currently exists.
The answer is not to harmonize everything between the United States and Canada but rather to create a cooperative agreement under which Canadian and American officials can work together understanding that their mission is to enforce Canadian laws in Canadian territory and American laws in American territory. That is how my view has evolved over the last few years with respect to the border.
Shiprider it is a very nice example of that. It is a very clear set of rules that defines that approach.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate that you traveled here from the actual area that is impacted by this to testify before us. We really did want to have your voice involved.
Before moving on to consideration of lessons learned in Afghanistan, I will make a few remarks about Shiprider.
The concept was well tested by means of pilot projects which, according to much of the testimony that we have heard, have been very successful. They enabled searches, seizures and arrests that would not have been possible if Canadian and American law enforcement officers had been restricted to their own national waters.
Division 12 of Part 4 of Bill C-38 would implement a framework agreement between Canada and the United States, signed in 2009, that would permit ongoing Shiprider operations, that is, integrated cross-border maritime law enforcement operations. No longer would criminals be able to move across the water border into the other jurisdiction in order to escape. Instead boats jointly crewed by cross-deputized Canadian and American law enforcement officers would be able to chase and apprehend them.
As we have heard from witnesses, the legislation and framework agreement ensure that the sovereignty of each nation is to be respected. When in Canada, the crews will be under Canadian command; when in the United States, the crews will be under American command. All crews will be trained and certified in the laws and law enforcement procedures of the other country. In other words, this joint law enforcement will be carried out according to the rule of law. The rights of all persons in both countries affected by these operations will be respected and there is a public complaints mechanism.
This pre-study agreed to by our respective parties is now concluded. I have been informed — and I shared this with the deputy chair earlier — that there is to be a motion in the chamber tomorrow that all testimony that we have taken here at this committee and at others will be forwarded to the National Finance Committee, where Bill C-38 will be dealt with, for clause-by-clause consideration. I also understand that this is the procedure for other committees studying other aspects of Bill C-38.
Thank you for allowing me to read that into the record. We will take a brief pause at this point so that we can thank Dr. Anderson and invite our next witness.
Thank you for your patience as we have been changing topics and witnesses with great frequency today.
As part of our ongoing study of lessons learned in Afghanistan — and we are slowly drawing to a close on this — we have heard primarily from military people on this issue. Also, we invited the folks at CIDA because Canada adopted a whole-of-government approach in its mission in Afghanistan.
One of the key players, along with the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces, was the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
We know that, of course, the military involvement will end in 2014 with the training, although, along with our NATO partners, we will continue to help fund Afghan National Security Forces and other developmental issues. That may also be a question for us in the next little while here.
To help us understand lessons learned from the whole-of-government approach, we now welcome Gordon Venner, Assistant Deputy Minister, Afghanistan, Middle East and Maghreb, Foreign Affairs and International Trade. I believe you also have an opening statement.
[Translation]
Gordon Venner, Assistant Deputy Minister, Afghanistan, Middle East and Maghreb, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada: First of all, Madam Chair, may I say that I am sorry I was not able to accept your invitation three weeks ago.
[English]
I would have barely made it back in time, but I would have been so jetlagged that I would have slept through my own opening statement. Today you may sleep through my opening statement, but I am at least alert.
The Chair: No, we are very keen.
Mr. Venner: Thank you for your flexibility.
As you know, for more than a decade Afghanistan has been one of the government's top international policy priorities. As my minister said recently:
We have invested billions and billions of dollars and sacrificed more than 150 lives to ensure that country never again becomes a haven for terrorism.
Indeed, we have lost 158 soldiers, one Canadian diplomat, one journalist and three humanitarian aid workers — two with international NGOs and one working independently. Over this period, Canada has expended considerable resources, energy and effort to see through our objectives.
Much has been accomplished over the past decade. While the challenges we have faced have been at times daunting, we are making a difference in Afghanistan. This progress has been hard won and is the result of the concerted efforts of dedicated professionals both here in Ottawa and in Afghanistan. It is also the result of good working relationships with our allies and with other like-minded countries.
Today, I would like to speak briefly to the whole-of-government approach that Canada has brought to this endeavour, which has fundamentally and irrevocably changed for the better how the government handles complex civil military engagements. Canada's experience in Afghanistan will inform future Canadian missions in failing and fragile states, if or when such missions are required.
In October 2007, after six years of primarily combat engagement in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper commissioned an independent panel to examine our mission in Afghanistan and to make recommendations for the future of Canada's role within the country.
Madam Chair, as you know from your own involvement as a member of that panel, the outcome of this work was a report that recommended more focused priorities, clearer benchmarks and integrated planning.
In February 2008, Canada both extended our mission in Afghanistan and expanded its scope and mandate considerably. In line with the panel's recommendation, 2008 marked a transformation of the mission, from one focused on military combat to an integrated and joint civil military partnership. This included a range of federal departments, agencies and programming instruments brought together under a single policy framework. Priorities were clarified and signature projects selected.
More than 120 personnel from various departments were deployed to Afghanistan in late 2008 and in 2009. These people worked alongside 2,880 Canadian Forces members in Kandahar as part of one mission and one team.
The whole-of-government mission in Afghanistan was, at its peak, the largest Canadian presence abroad since the Korean War. I can tell you that these brave men and women made enormous personal sacrifices to assist the Afghan people.
This commitment required a new way to coordinate efforts and ensure Canada's contribution made a positive difference in Afghanistan while maximizing efficiency.
The effort was led by a DM-level official working within the Privy Council Office and supported by departmental task forces. These task forces involved all aspects of each department's Afghan engagement and quickly helped further reinforce the overall coherence of Canada's mission.
This approach improved planning here at home and increased effectiveness where it mattered most: delivering on Canadian priorities and helping Afghans rebuild and turn their country back into a viable country that is better governed, more stable and secure and hopefully never again a haven for terrorists.
In Kandahar, for example, Canadian civilians and soldiers worked and lived side by side in an integrated Provincial Reconstruction Team, which included integrated visits and planning cells, joint project management boards, common protocols and a joint command structure.
Because of the nature of the environment in which Canadians were working, it was critical that departments gave civilians going into Afghanistan important survival tools. Training was provided in managing hardship in war zones effectively; psychosocial support programs were developed, which included mandatory counselling before, during and after postings to Afghanistan; decompression leave policies and compensation packages commensurate with the level of hardship and risk were developed; reintegration programs for all returning DFAIT, CIDA and Correctional Service of Canada personnel were developed and delivered.
A critical incident strategy was put in place. I had the opportunity in the last couple of years to chair a couple of the rehearsal exercises that we used to prepare ourselves for critical incidents, and it was a very sobering experience to recognize the incredibly broad scope of threats that we could be subject to. Hostile environment training was made mandatory. A comprehensive and mandatory pre-departure training program was also provided.
We want to note the innovations and the lessons learned during the 2008 to 2011 period that continues to serve Canada well, albeit differently in our current mission. Today, as we approach the halfway mark in our 2011 to 2014 engagement, Afghanistan remains an international security and development priority for Canada. While Canada's combat mission is now complete and Kabul has become the singular focal point of our operations, Canadian soldiers and civilians continue to have a significant presence and are delivering on approved commitments and priorities that will guide our work until 2014, after which time our country will not have any military mission in Afghanistan.
The policies, tools and structures that were developed by the government remain in place and continue to be applied to our work in Afghanistan and in a much broader context throughout the world. As a result of our Afghanistan experience, Canada has developed a cadre of highly trained personnel from across government who are well-versed in working in austere and dangerous conditions.
I would be happy to take questions on the specifics of this, but allow me to close by simply saying that it is important to remember that ultimately the Afghanistan of 2012 looks nothing like the Afghanistan of 2001.
Since Canada began working in Afghanistan, 9 million children are now in school, 39 per cent of whom are girls; the GDP has quintupled; there are growing economic opportunities, particularly in the mining sector, which is drawing the interest of Canadian investors; the media is flourishing in Afghanistan; civil society is growing; and health care is improving. Two hundred Canadian police have deployed to Afghanistan and 4,333 Afghan National Police have been trained in Kandahar since 2008. Afghanistan is on track to train 350,000 ANSF personnel by October 2012 and has lead control of security in more than 75 per cent of the country.
The lessons we have learned will help make the most of the commitments announced by Prime Minister Harper in Chicago last week. Our $110 million per year over three years will help sustain the ANSF, and we will insist on strict accountability measures.
As the Prime Minister stated, Canada's continued financial commitment "will help ensure lasting results for the hard-won progress that Canadians have made in Afghanistan. "
[Translation]
Honourable senators, the lessons learned from our decade-long engagement there will help us deliver future support and assistance to Afghanistan, up to 2014 and beyond. Thank you.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you very much. I want to pick up on many of your points. I know that when this all began, the military folks said, "What do we need a bunch of diplomats coming over here for? " They did not sign up for front-line activity, that is not what they are trained for and how can all this work. I am sure there were concerns on your side about their approach to dealing with the situation that you may have thought needed some subtlety.
Did it work? I know the situations are never comparable, but do you have some kind of template for whatever the situation might be — there will not be another Afghanistan in that way — where you have gotten over those first hurdles that are now in place, that if something happens tomorrow, you kick into gear?
Mr. Venner: What we have is a lot of experience that is going to be valuable to us in a wide variety of circumstances.
The coordination mechanisms that were established for Afghanistan, some of which are still in place and others of which we have moved on from, were very robust and I think would be very adaptable to a wide variety of different circumstances. However, as you point out, we will never have exactly the same circumstances again.
I agree with you absolutely that it is critical we have that experience. We have also been conscious to keep good records as we go through all of this to ensure we will be able to refresh our memories on how we did this as well.
I was not involved in the beginning, but one of the great challenges when we first got into this was there was no one in the Canadian Forces or working in the Department of Foreign Affairs or any other department who ultimately became involved who had any experience of Korea, yet you had to go back that far to find foreign engagement of this magnitude.
The Chair: It was in the corporate memory.
Mr. Venner: There was no corporate memory there. In some sense, the people who did have a corporate memory had memory of extremely different types of initiatives. They had memories of what it was like to be a participant in the first Gulf War, for example, or memories of the Balkans, which were useful but were not of the same type of exercises, especially in terms of the overall level of commitment and duration of the commitment. That is why we need that.
Of course, we also have the benefit for the next few years of the tremendous experience of the individuals who have been involved, and we are already taking advantage of that. When Bob Johnston was here three weeks ago, I think he talked about some of the CIDA staff who had gone from Afghanistan to Sudan or Haiti. I know from our perspective, we are making very good use of some of our people in the field who have come back to headquarters and are now working on the same type of programming they were delivering in the field.
That is a little broader than your question on the institutional mechanisms, but it is an awful lot we have to bring to bear the next time we have to do something like this.
The Chair: That is helpful. Thank you. We will come back to that.
Senator Dallaire: We stumbled into a new era of conflict where it is not as sequential as classic conflict used to be. The diplomats do their best. They fail, send in the generals and the troops; they fight; they beat up; they win and then we rebuild. We are in an era of enormous complexity, ambiguity and concurrent actions, where all these different disciplines are working together. Afghanistan is the most recent of that style of scenario since the early 1990s. As we see in Libya and other operations and as we have seen the nature of integrated UN missions around the world, we can be in these failing states and imploding nations for decades to come.
Therefore, we have people with experience. We have veterans of all types from all these different departments, the 120 and so on, that were finally deployed to fill these different responsibilities of development, emergency, operations and all the other things.
It is fine to say that you have this experience within different departments, but in the formal process of lessons learned, what commitment do you have to keeping these people together for contingency planning and potential deployment again without ripping them out of your structure to end up at an empty desk for a while or giving them two hats to wear, and then have them come back and be thrown back into it?
What sort of permanence is created in your structure and what sort of capability is there to support these people who have been to the field? Has it been career enhancing? Has it held them back? Medically, what structure has the military with Veterans Affairs to help them through their injuries? My question is long; I am sorry.
The Americans have implemented a concept of response to mass atrocities and genocide prevention. They have created a board and have moved assets from other departments to permanent status for preparing contingency plans, et cetera; but we have not. Do you not see it as essential to create a whole new framework of permanency in those government departments to meet, prepare and continue to train and develop to avoid putting at risk your operational effectiveness in other areas because you are ripping people out of the system? That is as succinct as I am able to ask it.
Mr. Venner: I am trying to disaggregate all the different questions.
Senator Dallaire: I have been waiting a long time for this.
Mr. Venner: Let me deal with some of the different elements. If I miss one, remind me and I will come back to it.
I will first deal with the question about ensuring that we have the right mechanisms in place to support the people. This is something where we have learned a lot. Certainly, what we are doing now is very different than what we were doing at the outset. We have learned that there are things we have to do to support people before they go off into the field; there are things we have to do to support them when they are there; and there are things we have to do to support them when they come home.
We do much more comprehensive training of our people before they go out into the field — everything from hazardous environment training, which we do with the military, to better first aid training and that type of thing. We have a much more comprehensive program. We also have learned that when people are working in this kind of hardship environment, we need to ensure that they take mandatory leave while they are at post. We force them to get away, even if they do not want to go. Sometimes they get so into what they are doing, they want to stay put and not get away. We have decompression leave policies and special compensation packages.
At the other end, we have reintegration programs for all who come home. These programs allow them to continue to see as a group many of the people they worked with while in the field and to have access to professional counselling and the type of thing they need to make the readjustment.
Last September we were doing one of these sessions we put together for our staff. I got to go out to a dinner and talk to a whole bunch of people who were freshly out of the field. I was able to hear from them as a group about their experiences. It was obvious to me, just over the course of dinner as I listened to them talk to one another, that they were all using the opportunity to put their experiences in perspective. For some, it was a matter of months and for others it was a longer period of time.
Just last week I had the opportunity to sit down with one of our staff who had just returned home after almost three years in the field. One thing we do for them is help them validate their experience by valuing the expertise that they have developed. I think that helps them to realize that they have made a really important contribution and that we will need to be able to call on them in the future.
I referred to other aspects of the support we provide, such as the whole-of-government critical incident strategy and the mandatory hazardous environment training.
The question of institutional memory is a little more difficult. I would say this: This is not exactly new to us, but it differs from department to department. At Foreign Affairs, we have been moving people all over the world from one assignment to another for as long as we have been around. We have learned that just because somebody moves from one environment to another does not mean their expertise dries up the day that they take on a new assignment. We are used to consulting our staff and reaching back to people who have had previous assignments. We consult their expertise on problems that we are dealing with now.
One person who gives me the best advice every day when I am dealing with Afghanistan is our former ambassador, William Crosbie, who spent two years there but is now home as an assistant deputy minister dealing with completely different responsibilities. The fact that he has moved on to other things does not mean that I do not have the opportunity to talk to him every day; and I take advantage of it. That is true for other people who have worked on the file before, such as David Mulroney, who is in Beijing but continues to be available to give us advice. We are not likely to soon forget some of the institutional changes that we experimented with, especially the effective ones, which will serve us in good stead.
The Afghanistan Task Force created within the Department of Foreign Affairs did some things that were really quite innovative. It took onto itself responsibilities like personnel functions, financial administration functions and communication functions, which normally are in different parts of the department. By putting them together as part of an integrated team, we were able to make that task force function much more effective. If we were to get back into the same kind of situation in Afghanistan or elsewhere in the future, we would most likely want to draw on a similar kind of model.
Senator Dallaire: The term "lessons learned " applies to preparing for the next time. It is a completely different philosophy than fighting the last war. You saw that. You are into today and the future. How do you proactively adapt what you had in order to be ready for the next time? From what you have described, for about the last five years in the field to varying degrees, mostly since 2008, it seems that there is a really steep learning curve in Foreign Affairs — maybe they are smarter than the guys in Defence. I am not convinced, however, because we are talking about the whole-of-government. Other departments may have had experiences around the world and have the structures to be prepared to build on the lessons learned, the standing operating procedures, structures, care of their people and the expertise available to leap in.
My experience is not from my personal field time only. In 1996 I was involved in our engagement in the Congo. The whole thing was so ad hoc that orders were given by the then prime minister just two days before.
What is the formal process that exists in your department? Can you tell me about the whole-of-government way of ensuring that formal lessons have been analyzed, that formal recommendations have been written and that formal decisions with regard to structure, training, care of personnel, organizational changes and so on, have been written out and are being implemented as a result of the Afghanistan experience?
Mr. Venner: There are a couple different aspects to that. One is that because of the way in which the Manley panel reported and the way that we have reported on the objectives set at the time, we have a strong public record of what we have done and how we have done it. For example, the reports that have been tabled for Parliament, including the quite recent fourteenth report, provide a very good documentary record of what the government set out to do and how it did it. I suspect that you would find that each department has its own methods internally for capturing its experience and the lessons that it has learned.
I will just give an example, because it also allows me to go back to part of your first question, which I realize I ignored. For the first time we have had people in the field who have died or been seriously injured. We have been going through the experience of how to deal with that for the first time. These are experiences that the Department of National Defence has a tremendous degree of experience in, but it was new for us as a civilian department.
We have been very good internally about making sure that we have kept the records and we have done studies and hired outside experts to capture what we have done.
However, I think you would find that how that has been done on a department-by-department basis probably does vary a bit, and I am not sure that there is a master template.
Senator Dallaire: Thank you for being so candid.
The Chair: The quarterly report, those reports have been, as someone who was involved in the committee but also has been there, I think you really have captured them, and I think it goes beyond just accounting for what we have done. It is against objectives and how does it mix.
Mr. Venner: Clearly one of the most important lessons learned from the whole-of-government experience has been how the utility of following through on that recommendation of the Manley commission.
Senator Dallaire: I have read all those reports, and I am into the heart of process within departments versus output.
Mr. Venner: You are just a glutton for punishment, are you not?
Senator Dallaire: I have seen the casualties of going at it ad hoc.
Mr. Venner: Right.
The Chair: I think what we keep hearing from here is there will not be an identical process again, so how can you kind of pull it out at 30,000 feet? What is there to say it will not be like Afghanistan again? We have heard from the military on that, the things they were able to do in Haiti, because of the experience on the ground, although it was like night and day. These are very different situations.
Senator Dallaire: That is what we are looking for.
Senator Lang: If I could just pursue another area here in your opening statement. First of all, I want to make this comment about Afghanistan. Probably one of the most impressive successes is the number of kids going to school. In your opening remarks you refer to 9 million children, and probably the most important statistic is that just under 40 per cent of them are girls. To be successful, they need a society that is educated, obviously. If that is true and it is bearing fruit, then I think there are possibilities for successes.
Looking into the future here, last week in Chicago I saw the Prime Minister committing Canadians to $110 million per year for the next three years to Afghanistan. You also said in your statement, which he said in his opening remarks, that we will insist on strict accountability measures. Perhaps you want to expand on that statement. Whatever the taxpayer is committing to this particular program and projects, how can we ensure that accountability will be there?
Mr. Venner: I can just make a couple of points, and I will come back at the end, if I can, to your opening comment about schools and the number of children who are in them.
With respect to accountability, I think the Prime Minister said that his expectations of the Government of Afghanistan were that it must continue to demonstrate its commitment to meeting international human rights obligations, to combating corruption, to strengthening the rule of law, to increasing tolerance of religious freedoms and to protecting women's rights as ensured in the Afghan constitution. That is our checklist. Those are the things that we will be looking for. As to the exact mechanisms for doing that, we have a couple of years to work this out.
That is important because we do not yet know precisely how we will spend that $330 million. There are many mechanisms through which we could do that, some of which we have used before like the Law and Order Trust Fund, but there are others that are being debated that have not even been created yet that we might end up using. The Americans have been talking about a NATO trust fund. There are other opportunities.
We will need to know precisely how we will flow that $330 million through, what funds it will go to and also how we intend to allocate that. It is a security contribution but among other things, for example, we will have to decide how much of it should be directed to the police and how much of it should be directed to the Afghan National Army.
It is only when we have the answers to those questions down, which we will be working on in the months ahead, that we will be able to precisely say how it is we will go about ensuring that we have assurances on those five things that the Prime Minister mentioned.
I would just go back to your comment about the children in schools. One of the things that we most worry about these days is trying to protect all of the gains that we have made in Afghanistan. It is absolutely true that if there was a sudden disintegration in the security environment or something like that, a lot of what has been achieved could be endangered, but there are some things that are contributions that cannot be rolled back.
To give you a couple of examples, huge numbers of children and huge numbers of girls have already had the experience of a fair bit of education. God forbid, if every one of the 52 schools we have built in Afghanistan should burn down tomorrow, you could not take away the education that those children, and especially those girls, have already received.
Think about all of the children we have vaccinated for polio. If we were never to vaccinate another one, which will not be the case, all of the children who have received those vaccinations cannot be unvaccinated. Who is to say what kind of future contributions might be made by the girls on the basis of the education they have already received, or some child who did not die of polio, to the future of Afghanistan? Some of our commitments are irreversible.
Senator Lang: Thank you.
Mr. Venner: Some of our accomplishments are irreversible.
The Chair: I could not agree more on that point.
Senator Plett: Your last comments, at least in part, answered what I was going to talk about, but I want to pursue that a little further.
In your presentation you quoted Minister Baird:
. . . we have invested billions and billions of dollars and sacrificed more than 150 lives to ensure that country never again becomes a haven for terrorism.
Later on you repeat that: never again a haven for terrorists.
What you just said about not being able to go back in time with the education and the vaccination is tremendous, and I certainly agree with that. However, there is a culture out there, and it is not just the Taliban that have created that culture. There is a culture out there that women and girls have not had the same rights.
We have a country right next door to Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden was not found in Afghanistan; he was found in Pakistan. Call me from Missouri, I guess, but I am a little hesitant in being too optimistic. Certainly what we have done there, and I commend our government, our defence department and the foreign affairs department, for the tremendous work they have done there. However, with us pulling out, what assurances can we have that it never becomes a haven of terrorism? What assurances do we have that Pakistan is not harbouring a lot of these people and as soon as we leave Afghanistan they are all across the border and starting up again where they left off? I think if we change the culture of people, that is wonderful, but that takes more generations than what we have been there to change the culture of the people.
Mr. Venner: I think it is a two-pronged answer, senator. I agree that it is a long-term process. The first part of it is ensuring the security environment on the ground for the foreseeable future because that has to be sustained in order to make sure that Afghanistan does not again become a launching ground for terror and also because it is necessary to protect all of the other accomplishments that we have made. If we lose the security environment, everything else is in danger.
That is why the $330 million contribution is critical to making sure that the security situation stays in place. It is not just us. A lot of other countries made announcements in the run-up to Chicago. The Australians put $300 million on the table over three years, and there are others.
Also, these contributions have been announced a couple of years in advance, so it provides us with a certainty, going forward, about the kind of environment we will be working in and the kind of resources that will be available. Obviously, a critical element of this is being able to leave Afghanistan to the Afghans. Our training mission, which is continuing now in a big way, is about making sure that we train the Afghans to be able to do this work themselves in the long run.
That is a segue to the second half of your question about cultural change. Our training mission does help to foster some cultural change, but there are a lot of other things that we are doing that are responsible for bringing about some cultural change in Afghanistan. I have already mentioned the tremendous benefits that have come out of our educational investment. In the longer term, we will hopefully see a payoff from that as some of the students who are educated as a result of those programs grow up. Just the fact that so many of those graduates will be female is, itself, going to be a big cultural change. There are more specific things that we have done to help bring about cultural change.
Democracy programming and the work we have done on electoral reform are part of changing the culture in Afghanistan. I was just reading earlier today about the work that we have done in the Ministry of the Interior where we funded a gender adviser to help them deal with integrating women into programming, especially of into the police forces. Thanks in large part to the work of the gender adviser, there are now a lot more female officers working in policing. Those female police officers do things like respond to domestic violence calls and that type of effort. All of that is part of the cultural change.
I agree with you that it is a very long-term process, but I think if you combine a short-term focus on maintaining the security environment — things like the $330 million announcement and all of the others — with a long-term commitment to some of the other changes that we are making on the development side, hopefully it all comes together in the end.
Senator Plett: I do not know if you are comfortable answering questions about Pakistan, but what kind of a threat is Pakistan to everything that we have done there?
Mr. Venner: When we ended the combat mission in Afghanistan, the government announced that we would have four new priorities going forward. One of the key things that it announced that we would be doing is putting a focus on regional diplomacy. We started what we used to call the Dubai Process. We changed the name to the Afghanistan Pakistan Cooperation Process, but that work is indicative of the tremendous importance that we have attached to improving cooperation in the region. In fact, the Director of the Afghanistan Task Force is in Kabul today, where he is preparing for meetings that we are facilitating and chairing, between Afghan and Pakistani officials, on border cooperation. Yes, we do think it is important, and we are at the forefront of efforts to try to improve efforts, particularly with respect to border cooperation, which, as you can imagine, is a great challenge when both sides do not even agree on where the border is, necessarily.
There is some important work going on there.
The other thing I would say — and this is broader than just Pakistan, but Pakistan would be part of the picture — is that we are participating in something called the Istanbul Process, which was founded in a meeting, surprisingly enough, in Istanbul some months ago. The minister's parliamentary secretary, Parliamentary Secretary Obhrai attended that first meeting. There will be another meeting in Kabul in June. This is a process that principally involves Afghanistan and its direct neighbours but does have a role in it for the broader community of countries that have made contributions in Afghanistan. We are in that outer circle, but we are participating and stand ready to assist.
Senator Plett: I just want to echo what you and Senator Lang both said. Success should be measured in the number of vaccinations that we have done and in the number of girls, especially the number of children, that are being educated, so thank you.
The Chair: If you change the girls' minds, you will change a lot of other minds in these places.
Senator Dallaire: I am looking at lessons learned again, in preparation for the future. While we have been doing the heavy lifting in Afghanistan since 2006, it was indicated that we have had Haiti, Libya and other areas where we have had capabilities deployed. Darfur, South Sudan and other crisis situations were ongoing and needed some whole-of- government inputs into what we wanted to commit.
We recognize that there has been a lot of cooperation and coordination — collaboration even — between departments, in meeting the challenge of Afghanistan, but the lesson of having to integrate all these different disciplines or departments, in order to create the SOPs and the fundamental structures, has not been well articulated. Also, more importantly, there has not been the education of the public servants, the military, the RCMP and all of these others to be prepared to face the next exercise, based on their experience, in a structured way.
Have you changed the development and progression of your people in regard to meeting these complex, whole-of- government, future challenges to be able to bring it all together with dedicated people who have those competencies? As an example, are there more people going to the war college in Toronto, more military inside of Foreign Affairs, CIDA and all this kind of stuff, exercises being run on a regular basis and all that kind of stuff? Has that philosophy of preparation been introduced in a formal way that will be sustained as we prepare? It might not be Afghanistan, but it can be just as bad somewhere else. Are we preparing for that?
Mr. Venner: Again, senator, you have covered a lot of things there.
The answer to your question is that we are doing more of a lot of those things. It was the Afghanistan experience, for example, that led us to return to the practice of sending our staff to the staff college in Toronto. In fact, I am going down to speak to the staff college's graduating class, as I did last year. I will go down and speak to them again next month.
We do send staff down there. Not as many as we would like to, but we try to always have a constant presence. I am pleased to say that I think that the individual that we will be sending on the course next year will be someone who is coming out of Afghanistan. We do get some useful work that way.
I know that when I go down to the staff college, I take the opportunity to sit down with their academic experts and learn from them some of the experiences and the stuff that they have drawn from their own experience inside the military structure. I am looking forward to doing that again in a couple of weeks.
Some of this is starting to become second nature, if you will. We are developing new reflexes. It does get reflected in many of our training efforts. It is reflected, for example, in head of mission training. Having given some people head of mission training every year, more and more of the people doing the work have had some experience with the Afghanistan experience. They bring that to the table and share that with people who are going out, some of them to other conflict zones. There is more of that.
It is a slow, steady process. As you know, institutional and cultural change must take place in organizations in the same way it must take place in other countries, and we are working on it.
Senator Dallaire: You do not want to be where we were at the start of this, having to go back to Korea. Ergo, with respect to lessons learned, the permanency of keeping this alive and keeping people keen and prepared for the next exercise, is that now institutionally in the ethos of the foreign service, or DFAIT? Do you think it is entering into other departments also?
Mr. Venner: Those who have worked on it have been fundamentally changed by the experience. This will be a big chapter in Canadian history when we get far enough down the road that we can stand back and look at it objectively. I find it hard to believe that we would ever let these experiences slip away.
The Chair: It does seem that is one of the lessons learned. The degree to which they can share that, the degree to which that will become guidance or a template we do not know, because we have to see what the next conflict presents.
Mr. Venner: That is a great point. I see it in my dealings with the people who have served in Afghanistan and come back and offer their experience and allow us to draw on their expertise. Some of our former ambassadors and others continue to feel that this is tremendously important.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We appreciate your testimony today and your assistance in helping us to look at the overall lessons learned by the Government of Canada as a whole, including government departments other than defence and the CF. I share Senator Dallaire's view that you have been very frank. We appreciate that.
(The committee adjourned.)