e ; News: Auditor-General; Senate Report Criticizes Canada’s Emergency Preparedness

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Auditor-General Fraser came down on the federal government again last week, charg- ing that the government’s $7.7 bil- lion spent in the wake of September 11% to protect Canadians was mis- spent and left “significant gaps and errors” in Canada’s national securi- ty.

In examining the Liberal response to terror attacks on the United States, Fraser cited several deficiencies in contingency plans across the nation. She also addressed many record-sharing dis- crepancies, specifying that about 25,000 Canadian passports are lost or stolen every year, and that while the RCMP are immediately noti- fied, such information often never reaches customs agents and front- line border workers. She also noted that over 4,500 airport employees-at five major Canadian airports that have access to restricted areas could have “possible criminal associa- tions” to various illegal organiza- tions, and that Transport Canada and the RCMP do not share crimi- nal intelligence, making it harder to

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do background checks. A antiquated and underfunded system also leads to a chronic backlog in fingerprint- ing, with a delay often spanning two and a half months. “These matters” she said “are serious and they need to be addressed.” One of the major concerns that she highlighted was

the fact that many departments and agencies in Canada are not assess- ing situations adequately, nor are they sharing enough relevant infor- mation with the other agencies.

The Liberals were attacked in the House for their complacency on this issue last Tuesday. “Nobody is minding the security store and I expect that our American friends are going to be extremely alarmed when they read this _ report” Conservative MP John Williams told CTV. Conservative leader Stephen Harper asked why Canadians should continue to trust the Liberals after “10 years of these kinds of failures.”

_ Prime Minister Paul Martin responded by saying that his gov- ernment has been proactive in securing Canada’s defense. “One of the very first things... [we did] was, in fact, to consolidate all of the activities required for national secu- rity.” said Martin “ We’ve created a new post of minister of public safe- ty and national security and we have put it under the deputy prime minister.” Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham conceded that border guards do not have the same infor- mation as the RCMP when it comes to stolen or lost passports, but stated that a program to facilitate the transferal of such data is now being developed.

In the same report, the Federal Auditor General took aim at

_ Health Canada, the Canadian Food

Inspection Agency and the Canada Revenue Agency, denoting misman- agement and inadequate implemen- tation of regulatory procedures in each of the three bodies. She claims that Health Canada has not suffi- ciently monitored the risks of new medical devices on the market, such as heart valves, blood-test kits and

artificial hips, while that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has failed to properly screen the threat of new plants that are being imported and introduced to Canada.. Fraser also alerted the government that due to faulty and lax penalties, that the Canada Revenue Agency could be overpay- ing GST refunds and claims, per- haps to an amount somewhere in the millions of dollars.

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While these findings reveal consid- erable oversights within the govern- ment, it is expected that the security problems will become the

most pressing issues to the current mandate. A Senate Committee report on Canadian disaster-pre- paredness was released last week as well, finding that severe under funding and a lack of cooperation between all levels of government has crippled Canada’s ability to deal with potential disasters. “Within the bounds of financial realism, there is no excuse for unreadiness.” The report stated “Governments are paid to be ready.”

The report stated that there was “over-whelming” evidence suggesting there was very little cohesion between the federal and

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respective provincial and municipal governments on _ this matter. “Insights of municipalities on the front line of emergency response are largely ignored by federal and provincial planners,” the report stat- ed. It found that while larger cities were considerably better prepared for disaster than were smaller municipalities, that all were rela- tively unaware of resources avail- able to them. Two-thirds of the 86 municipalities asked said that they had no knowledge of Health Canada’s emergency medical sup- plies and equipment, provisions which are stock-piled in centers across the country.

This report called for better cooperation and increased funding

- for first responders, pointing to the

complaint that most police, fire- fighters and ambulances across Canada would have _ trouble responding in a disaster, as many use different equipment and com- munication systems. Re-iterating a point from Fraser’s report, it also

calls for the strengthening of the

federal government’s emergency system and its cooperation with other jurisdictions in Canada.

At the press conference, Fraser commented that other coun- tries are also having difficulty in security preparedness but that the Canadian government has failed to properly assess the current global climate and adjust accordingly. “The government as a whole failed to adequately assess intelligence lessons learned from critical inci- dents such as September 11% and systematically follow up on needed improvements,” said Fraser, but added “Other countries, including the United States, have examined similar areas and have reported [comparable] findings.”