GUARDING THE BORDER GUARDS

Union Leader Fears Day He Finds Out Officer 'Got Shot'

At 6:15 a.m., the Moran household in Laval is in motion. Ron Moran is
union president for Canada's 9,000 border guards, customs and
immigration staff.

He and Joanne, a nurse, see four of their five children off to school
(identical twin boys, 15, and daughters 12 and eight).

Their 17-year-old son is a student at Dawson College in Montreal
where a gunman killed one student and injured 19 during a shooting
rampage on Sept. 13.

"We had a bit of a terrible day a few weeks ago," Mr. Moran says.
"Fortunately for us, it was just a day. For others, it's a lifetime."

Living with calamity around the corner goes with his job. He answers
a nighttime or weekend phone call with some dread.

"You hear so many stories about near misses," he says. "What you fear
most is that you'll get that call where there's been a tragedy --
where somebody has actually got" -- he falters before finishing the
sentence "got shot." It's the ultimate call.

"Sadly, there are not many weeks that go by that I don't get
information, an incident report from somewhere in the country, that
officers were carrying out an arrest that seemed routine. They got
into a scuffle and they ended up finding handguns taped to the individuals."

He describes a recent near miss, on Sept. 22, at the isolated Cascade
crossing in southern British Columbia. Officers had a "bit of
intelligence" that if a certain man came into Canada, he might be
carrying drugs. The pickup truck arrives, the officers drill into a
suspicious-looking section, find the drugs and test them. "Turns out
they'd seized 80 kilos of cocaine with a street value of about $6.5 million.

"When the RCMP guys arrived, they said 'You guys are crazy.' These
shipments are always escorted by enforcers who follow, go ahead of,
or are around the vehicle carrying the drugs. So the suspicion was
that the head of the crime organization decided not to go in and try
to shoot the (unarmed) officers. Or to knock them out.

"When you're in the heart of that type of operation and arrest, the
adrenalin kicks in. You don't really stop to think what it is you're
actually doing. Cascade is a remote port. If you're in a situation
and you need immediate backup, you're in trouble because some of
these ports' backup time is literally calculated in hours for how
quickly police would be able to get there."

In the first nine months of 2005, officers seized 414 firearms, 4,007
other weapons and $24,449,941. They also seized 1,166 kilograms of
cocaine, 54 kilograms of heroin, 360 kilograms of marijuana, 106
kilograms of opium, 54,194 doses of ecstasy and 339,706 doses of steroids.

Mr. Moran is president of the Customs Excise Union Douanes Accise
(CEUDA), which commissioned the Northgate Group report, A View From
The Front Lines. Released in January, it puts officers' risks
succinctly: "From assaults, to intimidation, to being taken hostage,
these officers are faced with a daily reality -- the risk to their
lives and to the Canadian public is an everyday fact."

Says Mr. Moran: "We give a lot of credit to Stephen Harper's
government to have the foresight not to wait for a tragedy, for a
body count, to take place" before deciding to arm border guards (now
called border services officers).

The first armed officers will be at ports next summer or early fall,
and the entire force won't be fully armed for a decade -- too slow,
he says, but long overdue.

He's seen customs from the revenue and law enforcement sides -- for
25 years. He started as a clerk near Dorval Airport, became a customs
officer in 1991 and then president of the Montreal branch of CEUDA.
He is on his third three-year term as national president, interrupted
by a stint as vice-president.

He represents 9,000 members, including intelligence officers and
investigators. Of 4,500 uniformed officers, 2,500 cover 119 land
border crossings and 2,000 cover marine ports and airports.

"I prided myself in having absolutely no managerial aspirations when
I was in the field," he says. Now, he gets between 40 and 150 e-mails
a day, runs an office with 11 employees, travels, meets with Canadian
Border Services Agency managers and Public Safety Minister Stockwell
Day and staff, and testifies before parliamentarians.

He says he is surrounded by -- and delegates to -- hardworking,
driven office staff and officers in the field. Of his national
vice-president, Jean-Pierre Fortin, he says: "We're one and the other
half of the same sandwich."

He travels to ports -- and stays for the night shift -- to get
officers' take on job conditions. "That gives me an enviable position
when I'm meeting with managers who think they know what's going on in
the field." His night shift doesn't end there; he wants to get back
fast and, from B.C., catches the red-eye home.

Even at home, he's working during his commute from home to his Ottawa
office on Woodward Drive. He's on his hands-free phone, driving in
the slow lane, and sipping a large black coffee. (Not a breakfast
eater, he downs a nutritious breakfast drink at home.)

A youthful, humorous extrovert, he says he likes the unpredictability
of his days.

"I think stress is, to a certain degree, a drug -- adrenalin. Knowing
how your day begins but not knowing how it ends --I guess it's
masochistic in a way," he laughs, "because you know it can't be good
for you and you wouldn't want to do this job for 20 or 30 years. If
nothing else, it wouldn't be healthy."

Lunch, unsurprisingly, is hurried. It's often hotdogs, french fries,
excellent donairs or burgers from the meal truck that rolls down the
street. Or he brings lunch from home (cold cuts, chicken or egg-salad
sandwiches).

His rejoinder to the lunch-bucket stereotype is a joke: "That way,
nobody tampers with my food." It's an allusion to the often testy
relationship he's had with management who, under the Liberals, only
gave up in 2001 their long fight against giving officers bullet-proof
vests, batons and pepper spray. They never did arm customs officers.

During the 15-year fight for these law enforcement officers to wear
guns, he says, he learned how easy it was for management to discard
something when it comes from the union. "You're told, 'You're just
really looking for raises for your members, police officer-like
wages, that you don't really care about the safety of these people.' "

But he doesn't give up easily. And his grandmother's advice "has
stuck with me forever. She said, 'There are two types of people in
the world. Those who do and those who take credit for. The trick is
to be in the first group because you'll find almost no competition.' "

He also quotes from a John Lennon song: "Life is what goes on while
you're busy making plans." It bolsters his risk-taking: "We will make
mistakes if we try stuff," he says. "But if we don't try stuff, we're
sure not to make mistakes -- but we'll just stay still.

"I'm a Libra. I change my position very often -- then I just push
everything through."

The more he does, he says, the more energy he has. He tries to be
home at night in time to "do my share of the homework and preparing
lunches for the next day."

His favourite meals: genuine all-dressed, dripping-with-cheese pizza,
chicken fried rice, Joanne's stirfries -- heavy on broccoli and snow
peas, mashed potatoes and chicken and ribs.

He and Joanne try to watch the news at night and try to fit in two or
three long evening walks each week.

His stress management tips:

1. "Sometimes I'll stay until 6 or 7 p.m. to finish something off
just because I'll enjoy more of whatever is left of my evening."

2. "You have to acknowledge when you're under stress. If I'm reading
something, I'm moving another paper here and then I'm looking at my
computer," he laughs, "I say 'Stop. OK, get a grip because you're
useless right now.' "

"You have to ask yourself, 'What's stressing me the most?' and get to
that right away. I think a lot of people are stressed and they don't
know. I think that's a bigger problem."

3. He chooses time over money. He converts overtime to days off with
his family -- when he can get them.