| Petti Fong | |
| Vancouver Sun |
Video cameras installed along the B.C.-Washington border after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks regularly malfunction and fail to keep terrorists and drug runners from entering the U.S. via Canada, the former head of the Blaine border patrol said Tuesday.
The 32 cameras have significant operating problems, including rusting poles and the inability to focus once temperatures hit 20 degrees Celsius, retired border patrol chief Carey James said.
James said Tuesday the public should not be lulled into any false sense of security about how well the border is guarded.
"Truthfully, I have trouble sleeping at night because I know the seriousness of the situation and how badly this system is failing," James said in an interview.
The U.S. Border Patrol installed the remotely-controlled video cameras along the western end of the Canada-U.S. border last March along a 70-kilometre stretch of isolated border between the Columbia Valley south of Abbotsford to the Douglas border crossing at south Surrey and Blaine.
The cameras are perched atop 18-metre-high metal poles on U.S. soil. Each pole has two cameras: a regular one for use in daylight and an infra-red one for night use. Both are capable of panning the landscape or zooming in to get an image of a person or car from as far away as five kilometres.
Border patrol staff monitoring the cameras could use the sensors to forewarn them of any potential danger, but because the cameras consistently malfunction, James said there is no way to tell how many people are slipping through the borders.
"We have a problem up here with the I-5 being so easily accessible and it's not just people coming into Canada, but people going to Canada as well," James said. "There is a lot of stuff going on between the two countries and we don't know how serious it is."
James said terrorists have used the Washington-British Columbia border in the past -- the most notable case being that of Ahmed Ressam, who travelled into the U.S. by ferry in 1999 in a car containing explosive material.
He was caught by Port Angeles border guards while trying to flee and later convicted of plotting to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport. He is still awaiting sentencing.
According to James, who was the border chief from 1996 until his retirement in 2001, the pilot project was supposed to cost $5 million, but the tally is now nearly $8 million and it will take millions more to fix the problems.
Hundreds of specific daily breakdowns were recorded by border staff and compiled in a report for the Immigration and Naturalization Services headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Reporter Chris Halsne of KIRO 7 Eyewitness News in Seattle obtained the report, which said controls do not work 95 per cent of the time and confirmed the failure of the cameras when the temperature warms up.
In Blaine, deputy border chief John Bates said Tuesday the cameras are part of a pilot project that is still undergoing revisions and changes.
"It's the first of its kind. What you do with a pilot project is you study the good things and what needs to be fixed," Bates said.
Bates said there are times when the camera doesn't focus properly and there are other issues, such as infrastructure problems associated with the fibre-optics that are used for the camera sensors. "Six months is not very long for a system to be up and running. We're very happy with the successes we've seen. It's just going to continue to get better."
The border patrol does have concerns it has inadequate staffing to monitor the cameras, Bates said. American border patrol officers regularly correspond with their Canadian counterparts, he said.
"We have very good relations with the RCMP. We know that our communications between the borders is excellent, so when we do see someone heading into Canada, the RCMP there are able to make the arrests quickly," Bates said.
Since the camera system was activated, Bates said, sensors have alerted border guards to 107 illegal entrants and five loads of marijuana.
But the number of captures that can be directly linked to the cameras represents just a fraction of the people sneaking past the B.C.-Washington border. Each year, about 1,000 illegal entrants are captured along that stretch of the border.
Canadian Alliance MP Val Meredith, whose riding encompasses south Surrey, said the cameras would not need to be activated if Canada was more vigilant.
"The issue is why is this no longer the longest undefended border in the world," Meredith said Tuesday.
"The Americans have to put up cameras and they're testing aerial surveillance because they have no faith in the Canadian government to manage the security."
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