SEND IN THE MOUNTIES

The State Of Security In Canada Is Pathetic; Stephen Harper Should
Dramatically Increase The Number Of RCMP Officers, And Soon

I want to present a challenge to Stephen Harper and his new
government: Make better use of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The
security of Canadians is full of holes. Only a bolstered RCMP has the
potential to fill them.

We Canadians are very adept at sending RCMP officers across the
country and around the world as photo-op symbols of Canada's
dedication to the causes of justice and public order.

There are too many guns on the streets, the drug trade appears to be
out of control, and several reports by our Senate committee for
national security and defence have shown that in an era of worldwide
terrorist attacks, our coastlines and border crossings are virtually
undefended. Our sea ports and airports are riddled with organized
crime, which creates security gaps that terrorists and gunrunners are
well aware of.

Am I an alarmist? Optimists point to an overall decline in crime
rates, and they're right. But that's a factor of demographics: a
higher percentage of older people means less overall crime,
particularly petty crime. But it doesn't mean fewer big-time threats
from people the Mounties have told us are active in Canada: Asian
Triads, Russian gangsters, narco-terrorists and traditional organized
crime. Most of these people aren't aging baby boomers. They're young,
mean and efficient.

Outfits like the Hells Angels are running huge nation-wide businesses
with massive profit margins. They're great organizers, marketers and
masters of just-in-time delivery. They've demonstrated that you don't
need an MBA to succeed in the dark side of commerce -- all you need
is a society that can't get its act together to keep you in check. In
Canada, they've got a beauty.

Enter the RCMP.

The RCMP are a national institution, which I believe is essential
when you're fighting coast-to-coast crime. Trying to use a
multiplicity of government departments, organizations and police
forces to deal with issues such as airport security means no one
really has a handle on what needs to be done. And nobody can be held
accountable when big things go wrong.

The RCMP also have an outstanding record when given the resources.
Like all big organizations, they screw up from time to time, but for
the most part, these people have the right credentials to go after
the worst kind of people.

For some time now the RCMP have been starved of resources. Inadequate
funding has meant that the force has only been able to play a fringe
role at our ports and on our borders. You may find the following
numbers shocking -- I do: The RCMP's resources are so limited that
they currently dedicate fewer than 30 officers permanently to monitor
and investigate organized crime at ports across the country, fewer
than 100 at all Canadian airports, and fewer than 150 to Integrated
Border Enforcement Teams -- the key units monitoring crime and
national security investigations along the whole of the Canada-U.S. border.

These miniscule numbers give new meaning to the words "spread thinly."

And make no mistake, our ports, our borders and our border crossings
are vulnerable. When our Senate committee first pointed out that our
sea ports and airports were riddled with organized crime, we were
greeted with waves of denials. About a year later, the government
acknowledged the problem and became a signatory of the minimalist
standards of the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code.
It provided $115 million in financial assistance to improve security.
The money went into things like fencing.

Fencing and other physical improvements at sea ports, airports and
border crossings are helpful, but criminals need only to bribe or
intimidate port employees to circumvent these kinds of barriers. And
our committee has been told in no uncertain terms that they do.
Fences are a poor substitute for robust and sophisticated policing.

What Canada needs to beat criminals that don't restrict themselves to
municipal or provincial boundaries is an intelligence-led policing
effort with the resources and capabilities necessary to meet any
threat, anywhere in the country. The RCMP isn't the police force of
local or provincial jurisdiction in every province, but it has proven
itself a team player with provincial police forces in Ontario and
Quebec in recent years, and it can offer intelligence, leadership and
support in these jurisdictions.

What Canada has now is a fragmented approach with too many weak
links. At airports, for instance, responsibility is diffused between
Transport Canada, local airport authorities, the Canadian Air
Transport Security Authority, local police forces and whatever
rent-a-cops the airport authorities choose to employ to save money.
No one is accountable.

The bad guys have skilled and single-minded teams. We have a
collection of players, some of whom don't skate so well.

Take a look at Canada's Great Lakes, where nobody has a clear picture
of what is going on, where smugglers go about their business with
relative impunity, where the unrestricted whirl of pleasure craft in
the summer provides cover for anybody wishing to do just about anything.

The new Harper government is now in place, and says it is committed
to increasing the security of Canadians. Prime Minister Harper is
going to meet again with RCMP Commissioner Giuliano (Zack)
Zaccardelli to discuss security. If Commissioner Zaccardelli follows
sad tradition, he will hold out a small bowl, tug his forelock, and
suggest that modest increases to the RMCP budget would sustain it as
an effective institution.

What Commissioner Zaccardelli should be doing is making the case that
the government must be bold enough to increase the size of the RCMP
by at least a third over the next decade. The force should be given
the lead mandate to upgrade the domestic security of Canadians,
particularly by fighting organized crime nationally and closing the
security gaps on our borders and at our ports.

The RCMP currently employ about 16,000 persons in uniform, with
training facilities to bring in approximately 1,400 to 1,600 recruits
a year. The size of the force should be increased to at least 21,000
within a decade.

To make this number a reality, the force needs to double its training
capacity, and increase the number of recruits it graduates every year
to approximately 3,000. Even extraordinary measures like this will
not yield the kind of seasoned officers we need right away. But it
will increase the force's capacity, freeing up experienced officers
to tackle our national security problems on behalf of all Canadians.

Right now, Canada's national response to crime and terrorism looks
like a juggling act, with plenty of balls in the air and plenty of
dropped balls on the ground. Jugglers don't make good street
fighters. Somebody has to take charge. Who better than the RCMP?