Canada follows U.S. after 9/11
Contact:
Andil Hira (Port Moody), 604.291.3286, ahira@sfu.ca
Doug Ross (Vancouver), 604.291.4782, douglas_ross@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 604.291.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca
Website: http://www.sfu.ca/~ahira
Despite costly new measures aimed at protecting North America from another terrorist attack like 9/11, it is doubtful that Canadians and Americans are any safer today than they were that fateful day.
That conclusion is in a new report looking at Canadian-American relations six years after three planes commandeered by terrorists were used in attacks on America, killing hundreds of people.
Simon Fraser University political scientists Anil Hira, an expert on international political economy, and Doug Ross, an expert on international conflict, are the authors of Canada After 9-11: A Land of Deep Ambivalence.
The report finds Canadian and American differences on security issues conflict with the two countries’ desire for economic integration. That incongruence, says Hira, has led Canadian policymakers “to blur the lines between economic and security initiatives. Their initiatives are reactionary rather than proactive,” he says, “to assuage American fears about Canada as a weak link in terms of security.”
With no consensus or long-term planning on national security policy, Canada is mirroring American policies on security, such as recent anti-terrorism legislation. Hira says Canada’s compliance runs counter to its traditionally strong respect for civil liberties, as demonstrated in the recent Maher Arar case.
“Canada has never had armed border guards or an electronic surveillance system at the border,” says Hira. “But those are coming into place to keep economic goods flowing across North America.”
Hira and Ross will present their study at a border-security workshop at the SFU Burnaby campus, Friday, March 23, ASB 9705, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Their study was based on three years of collaborative research with a political scientist at the University of Iberoamericana in Mexico City and a sociologist at Villanova University in Philadelphia.
Federal, regional, American and Mexican government officials will attend the workshop, which is open to the public.
Backgrounder:
The title of the one-day symposium is Terrorism, Trade and the Threat to Prosperity: Adapting North American Security and Border Relations to Terrorist Threats.
Topics of discussion at the symposium include:
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Bilateral or trilateral approaches to continental security;
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Challenges to security in transportation, energy supply vulnerability and industrial security;
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How credible and serious is the terrorist threat of using weapons of mass destruction;
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Security planning in North America, and,
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Environmental and cultural threats to security such as citizenship, identity and migration
Officials from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Canadian Border Services Agency and Canada’s Department of National Defence will help moderate various workshops.
Hira says Canada’s reactive stance prevents it from “seeing the big picture on a number of fronts. They include assessing the extent to which we are willing to sacrifice civil liberties in exchange for greater security. The policy and institutional reactions thus far have failed to grapple with global terrorist threats that don’t distinguish between military and civilian targets.”
Hira notes: “Policies such as the Canadian presence in Afghanistan may reflect positive motives, but have not been adequately thought out, regarding their value in terms of reducing the potential for terrorist harm.”