PAY UP FOR A SAFER PORT

This week's arrest of 15 men on charges of importing an estimated $2.1
billion in drugs through the Port of Montreal suggests strongly that the
port was not just infiltrated by the West-End Gang but virtually taken over
by it. The amount of illegal drugs involved was massive: 44 tonnes of
hashish and 265 kilograms of cocaine.

The Port of Montreal is Canada's largest and busiest port, a natural target
for drug-smugglers. To its credit, it has stepped up efforts to curb the
amount of illicit cargo flowing through. This year, the port authority has
invested $1.5 million of its own money to make the port more secure. It has
added security cards, increased patrols, camera surveillance and increased
co-operation with customs officials.

These measures would doubtless be more effective if it were not for another
problem: the presence within the port itself of alleged drug-smugglers. One
of the 15 arrested was Donald Matticks, son of admitted drug-smuggler
Gerald Matticks. The younger Mr. Matticks was hired to work at the port as
a checker, someone who verified where containers are placed at the docks.
The strategic usefulness to drug-smugglers of having someone on the inside
occupy such a function is obvious.

Donald Matticks was not an employee of the port. He was hired instead by a
trade association, the Maritime Employers Association. Given that Donald
Matticks had no criminal record, there were no grounds for the association
to refuse to employ him. Yet according to a report by Senator Colin Kenny
last spring, the port work force features a large number of ex-convicts and
former drug-smugglers. The forces of Canada Customs, on the other hand, are
not numerous. There are only about 40 customs officials to check the one
million containers that enter the port every year.

When the Senate report was released in the spring, the unions denied the
presence of organized crime at the port. "If police have charges to lay,
let them lay them, but please let us cease wildly accusing everyone without
having the guts to prove it afterward," said Jacques Giroux of the Syndicat
des D,bardeurs du Port de Montr,al.

Now that the police, including the Surete du Quebec, the RCMP and the
Montreal police department, have held up their end, done the investigation
and laid the charges, it is up to the Montreal Port Authority to take
further measures to stem the flow of illegal drugs and, one suspects, other
things, such as stolen goods.

With the expansion of world trade and the number and size of international
ports on the increase, port authorities can no longer rely on such
old-fashioned methods as manual inspection. The time consumed and the
manpower required are too great.

Improvements in technology offer long-term solutions to what now seems an
intractable problem: keeping the port free of illegal drugs. A method
raised by the Kenny report involved packing containers under strict
supervision. The containers would then be equipped with monitors to detect
any attempt to tamper with the seals. The container would further be
tracked by a global positioning device.

Another solution that shows promise is gamma-ray technology. More versatile
and mobile than existing X-ray systems, gamma-ray technology is also more
reliable. It can detect as little as half a kilogram of contraband within a
thick steel-walled tanker truck. These are hugely expensive measures. But
there's nothing cheap about the toll that contraband drugs have exacted in
Montreal. So far, 160 people have died in the turf war over drugs. It's
time to pay the price of making the port safe.