From the WSJ Opinion Archives
THE AMERICAS
Threat From the North
Canada needs to toughen up on terrorists.
A terrorist attack on the U.S. has been a real possibility for many years. Several terrible plots have been unearthed and foiled just in the nick of time. On Tuesday, the odds caught up with the world's superpower. Now, it is widely agreed, the U.S. has to devise and execute a serious counterattack on terrorism. But to do so it will need the help of its neighbor to the north, which is increasingly a source of the problem. Writing in the Ottawa Citizen on Aug. 1, Martin Collacott, a former Canadian ambassador to Asia and the Middle East, said, "Americans do have genuine concerns about the ease with which international terrorists have been able to enter and remain in Canada with the intent of mounting attacks on the U.S." Writing again in the same newspaper on Wednesday, after the New York and Washington attacks, Mr. Collacott said Canada gives "low priority to identifying, tracking and removing suspected terrorists."
It's been only a week since Mexico's President Vicente Fox visited Washington and told the media that he dreams of an open border with the U.S., just as Canada has. The implication is that Canada is a safe, law-abiding nation that poses no security threat to the U.S. Yet while New York tallied the bodies it could unearth, speculated on the forever entombed, and swept up 220 stories of concrete rubble this week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was in Boston detaining five men that it suspects played a role in Tuesday's attack. News reports suggest that some of them may have entered the country from Canada.
If this is so, Canada will now be under pressure to reassess its immigration and refugee policies. Commerce and travel across the U.S.-Canadian border is important to both countries and no one wants to disrupt those flows with drastic security measures. Yet a U.S. crackdown on terrorism will be meaningless without a serious push in Canada toward greater scrutiny of immigrants and refugees.
Canada shares the same vulnerability to terrorist infiltration as the U.S. and Europe. All open societies pay a price for tolerance and civil liberties. But according to John Thompson, director of the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto-based think tank specializing in organized crime and political instability, "The thing that makes Canada different than the British, French and Americans, is that we tend to be more politically immature. We have a political culture that does not go to war. We have a view, since the 1930s, that we are in a fireproof house. We're supposed to be the international Boy Scouts that are trusted by all other countries." This, he says, has "colored Canadian attitude toward security." As an example, he notes that until yesterday, the largest terrorist strike was the downing of an Air India plane in 1985, when over 330 people were killed. That plane took off from Canada and most of the passengers were Canadian citizens (albeit largely from India originally) but Canada tacitly viewed it as an Indian problem.
A major problem in Canada, says Mr. Thompson, is that the country views openness as a virtue and it is considered "rude to discuss ethnicity." He cites the "Jamaican posse," a West Indian organized crime operation in Canada that politicians appear loath to tackle because doing so would be considered racist. Similarly, he says that the Tamil Tigers, well-known for suicide attacks and other acts of terrorism in Sri Lanka, use Canada as a base to raise money to support their operations: "Canada tolerates people who are raising money and gaining political support for their ethnic group, even when they are involved in organized crime." Adds Mr. Collacott: "We're probably the chief source of funds for the Tamil Tigers." He notes that there are some 200,000 Tamils in Canada.
Both Mr. Thompson and Mr. Collacott believe that one of Canada's main trouble spots is its refugee policy, which allows newcomers to claim the status if they can touch Canadian soil. Some come from the U.S., where they had visitor status, and some board planes with phony documents to arrive at Canadian airports. Ahmed Ressam, the Islamic fundamentalist who tried to drive a truck full of plastic explosives over the Washington state border in December 1999, was one such new arrival. Mr. Thompson says that Ressam had arrived in Canada with a fake French passport and at first claimed refugee status, then renounced his claim. He had a history of prior associations with terrorist organizations but the government did nothing about deporting him.
Mr. Collacott says that the Ressam case brought out the fact that terror suspects can enter the country easily, and, even when there are problems, are not removed. "We don't have the political will to get rid of them," he says. "After the Ressam case, in the last year, media reports indicate that at least one dozen individuals connected with Islamic terrorists came in through the refugee system. They were told they couldn't stay but they weren't deported." Mr. Collacott has also written that, "substantial numbers continue to come in by air and use our refugee determination system to get into Canada with the intention of using our territory as a convenient point of departure for illegal entry into the USA." Mr. Collacott maintains that Canada has not been concerned about this problem because the troublemakers are targeting other countries.
There is pending Canadian legislation--the Immigration and Refugee Act--that would force the government to more scrupulously check the status of refugees and deport bad apples expeditiously. It has already been passed in the lower house of Parliament and soon will go to the Senate. A second bill would rescind the "charity" designation that many of these groups use to raise money for their activities. Mr. Collacott believes the first bill falls far short of what's needed and is particularly critical of the second bill, which he says merely removes tax preferences for giving to terrorists.
Canada is an important political and economic friend to the U.S. and the last thing needed now is finger-pointing to assign blame for Tuesday's attack. Moreover, a majority of the culprits do not appear to have entered through Canada. Nonetheless, Tuesday's events changed the U.S. forever and adapting to the change will require strong counterterror policies. Without a firm commitment from Canada to do the same, the only other option would be to close the border.
Ms. O'Grady edits the Americas column.
