Home Newsroom 2005 Speeches (archive) McLellan: 2005-07-15

15th Annual Summit of the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region

Speaking notes for
The Honourable Anne McLellan

Seattle, Washington
July 15, 2005

As delivered

I am indeed pleased to have this opportunity to speak to you today and I take it as a great honour to be able to come here and speak to this organization, which is unique in our two countries. And I think it speaks to the farsighted nature of those in the Pacific North-West that this organization was created by legislation in the states, provinces and territories involved and that you have been working on the issues that are key to the quality of life in this area, be they economic issues, safety issues, security or emergency preparedness issues.

This year’s summit is particularly timely following some important progress regarding the Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America. I’m going to say a little bit more about that in just a few minutes because of course this partnership was signed in Waco, Texas by Presidents Bush and Fox and Prime Minister Martin and I want to talk a little bit more about this because it speaks to the benefit of collaboration and cooperation at the highest level of government in our three countries.

The importance of security in particular was brought into sharp focus obviously just over a week ago when terrorist bombs in London killed more than 50 people and injured hundreds more. And I think, ladies and gentlemen, this is a reminder that none of us can be complacent in terms of our collective responsibilities, especially those of us in government, around our obligation, our responsibility to do whatever we can working together to ensure the collective safety and security of our peoples and to ensure that if a disaster were to strike, be it manmade or natural, that we are prepared and that we have the systems in place, the human resources and other forms of resources to recover from an emergency or disaster whether it is a terrorist bombing, a flood, hurricane, forest fire, earthquake or whatever the case may be.

The Government of Canada understands that security is closely linked to prosperity. David Wilkins, the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada, I think hit the nail on the head a couple of weeks ago when he told reporters in Ottawa, “you can’t have prosperity without security - they go hand in hand.” Already North America is the world’s largest economic block and we have an obligation not only to ensure its security but also to seize opportunities that can enhance our collective prosperity and quality of life.

Like the United States, Canada sees the collective safety and security of its citizens as the single most important responsibility of government. We have taken many steps on our own and in collaboration with the United States and other allies to be vigilant and to respond to the new threat environment. Since the tragic events of 9/11, the Government of Canada has increased funding by more than $9 billion for public safety initiatives such as border security, policing and intelligence. New systems were put in place after 2001 and we saw those new systems in our country kick into gear last Thursday, just as they did in the United States. We have equipped and deployed more intelligence and frontline investigative personnel and strengthened our emergency preparedness and response capabilities.

Our screening of immigrants, refugee claimants and visitors has been improved. Working with local authorities in other countries, Canadian Migration Integrity Officers overseas have stopped thousands of people with improper documents from boarding flights to North America. Think about that. Stopping thousands of people who had forged documents or illegal documents of one kind or another - people who would have come to our country and to the United States illegally. Also, we have implemented antiterrorism legislation that has given law enforcement agencies the tools and authorities needed to combat terrorist organizations.

My new department was created in 2003 by Prime Minister Martin and one of the reasons the department was created was because we wanted to put a sharper focus and greater clarity on the challenges of safety, security and emergency preparedness, just as after 9/11 the United States government decided to create the Department of Homeland Security. My department is very similar to that initially led by Tom Ridge and now led by Michael Chertoff and, in fact, we face some of the same challenges. You don’t create big new departments with so many different agencies, so many different mandates and, in some cases, different cultures and histories - you don’t do that easily. And the management implications, the administrative implications of that are really quite enormous.

Within my department we have Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We have the new Canada Border Services Agency that you see at land, sea and airports. We have CSIS, which is of course, for lack of a more elegant expression, our spy agency. We also have Corrections, Parole and Emergency Preparedness, focusing on emergency management. So it’s a big department and there are challenges that we face in terms of bringing it together and making it work. They are the same kinds of challenges that my colleague, Michael Chertoff, faces in terms of trying to bring all those entities in Homeland Security together to ensure that they’re functioning, understanding each other’s roles and responsibilities and working together in ways that do not create barriers to our ultimate mandate, which is the collective security of Canadians and Americans.

In April 2004, Canada took another important step forward with the release of our first ever Integrated National Security Policy. It is designed to ensure that the government is prepared for and can respond to a full range of security threats from terrorist attacks to natural disasters. To implement this policy, we established an Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, to coordinate key players from across the Canadian security and intelligence communities and to evaluate national security threats. We established a new Government Operations Centre to provide stable, around-the-clock coordination in national emergencies. Our Integrated Threat Assessment Centre shares information and works on a daily and hourly basis in some cases, with equivalent organizations in the United States, the UK, Australia and other countries around the world with whom we have close intelligence-gathering and sharing relationships.

Transportation security is also a priority for us, as I know it is for this organization. Following the Madrid bombings, we put in place an intelligence network to share potential threats with major urban transit systems in our country as well as national rail services, because one of the things I believe is that lessons learned are absolutely key. When a disaster or tragedy happens, that is bad enough, but if you do not learn from it, then that is truly a tragic failure. After Madrid we learned, as did the United States and other countries, that we needed to focus more carefully on our rail and our mass transit systems, which is why in our country we put together a network which was activated at about 5:30 a.m. last Thursday Ottawa time. All the intelligence that we had gathered both at home, from the U.S., the UK, was shared and what we knew at that point immediately was transferred, transmitted to VIA Rail, CN, CP and our mass transit systems in our major urban centres such as Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and so on.

What that did was to provide the information that an organization like the TTC - the Toronto Transit Commission - could then use in terms of deploying its own officers, calling in the Metropolitan Police of Toronto, bringing in sniffer dogs, doing a public alerting, warning the public that they should be on guard for suspicious packages or suspicious actions because we all have a role to play here. In fact, we continue to be in that state of heightened vigilance, as is the case here in the United States, around mass transit because the investigations in London are not complete and we’re not exactly sure where those investigations may lead. But that is the kind of thing that we learned from a tragedy such as Madrid. I know we will learn from what happened last week in London and I was very pleased to see the G-8 leaders coming out of Gleneagles saying that we’re going to work together to do a better job of focusing on rail and mass public transit. We need to do things like share information, gather better intelligence, understand what best practices are all about as they relate to rail and mass transit.

Canada is also implementing a comprehensive plan to improve marine security and I know in this part of both Canada and the United States, this is a very important and challenging issue. We’re doing this in part through increased cooperation with the U.S. Coast Guard and other American defence and security agencies and we are providing additional funding to enhance investigative capacity of the National Port Enforcement Teams, including the one based in Vancouver. The Government is also installing new radiation detection equipment to screen maritime containers entering Vancouver and other Canadian ports and this is just some of what we have done to enhance marine security since 9/11 with an increase of over $900 million to secure this sector.

But you know, ladies and gentlemen, someone was telling me this morning that, in relation to the radiation detection devices they are deployed right now in the ports in New Jersey and New York, they’re getting an enormous number of false positive which means of course your whole system slows down. The containers have to be inspected and so what is happening is that you’re actually slowing down marine transportation and therefore I think that we have to look at these systems and have to hope that technology helps improve these systems. I’m not suggesting they’re not needed, in fact, we’re buying some 22 or more of them to deploy in major Canadian ports. But just as there is an upside in terms of improving security, there are also some issues with these that then lead to the private sector especially saying hey, how come our system seems to be slowing down and how come we’re not moving containers out of ports with the speed that we would like to see? We’re going to have to look at issues around the technology based on recent experience on the U.S. east coast and see what we can do about that.

The 2005 federal budget also included $433 million over five years to improve border security and management. I’m pleased to announce today that part of this funding will allow the Canada Border Services Agency to hire an additional 270 border officers over the next five years, demonstrating Canada’s commitment to ensuring public safety through continental security.

Additional funding of $88 million over five years will help launch the Container Security Initiative where we will work with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to deploy border officers overseas to identify and prevent high-risk goods from entering Canada and ultimately the United States. Ladies and gentlemen, what we want to do is push the borders out as much as possible: to try and prevent high-risk goods and people getting to either Canada or the United States. Our migration integrity officers are part of that and the Container Security Initiative is a key part of that as it relates to goods being shipped to our two countries.

All of these steps speak to our work in protecting Canada and North America from security threats. We know, however, that we must take an all-hazards approach. Recent floods in Alberta, devastating forest fires in British Columbia in 2003 have provided stark evidence of the threat that natural disasters can pose. That is why emergency preparedness plays a key role in our national security policy and why my Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness integrates emergency management with security management. When natural disasters do strike, we coordinate with the provinces and territories to provide financial assistance in the wake of disasters. We have provided over $100 million as an advance relief payment for the British Columbia forest fires with additional funds expected this fall. We have also been working with Alberta on recovery programs following recent floods in that province.

We are also acting to enhance mitigation strategies. With the very real threat of a tsunami in the Pacific region, the Government of Canada this year allocated some $850,000 to British Columbia to establish a program for coastal communities to do risk assessments and develop emergency plans to deal with tsunamis. We are also cooperating with U.S. partners who, as many of you know, maintain an excellent early warning and information system.

Hand in hand with our focus on security, the Government of Canada is working to protect and build the trade relationships that underpin our economy and none is more important than this relationship that we share with the United States of America. Close to 200 million people cross our borders each year. Two-way trade between our two countries now stands at over $2 billion a day. Twenty-three percent of everything the U.S. exports comes to Canada. And over 80 percent of everything we export comes to the United States of America.

Indeed, the trade relationship between us has been excellent. The number of irritants, when all is said and done, is remarkably few: here in the Pacific North-West, those irritants are softwood lumber and the BSE issue and I think at least in one case perhaps, the importation of Canadian beef back to the U.S., is being resolved. Softwood lumber, as all of you know, is such an important issue in the Pacific North-West and one that remains to be resolved, but I think everybody is trying to work in good faith in getting that issue resolved. And when you think about the trade that goes back and forth every day that is completely irritant-free, this is truly a remarkable relationship.

The Pacific North-West is obviously a major part of this strong relationship. Washington is the most important export market in the United States for both Alberta and British Columbia. Alaska, Oregon and Washington send more exports to British Columbia than do any of our Canadian provinces. Alberta is the largest Canadian market for the state of Montana. Through the Smart Border Declaration of 2001, the U.S. and Canada have sought to keep the border open to the legitimate and essential movement of people and commerce but closed to terrorists and criminals. We have improved the flow of people at the border through the Nexus program which pre-screens low-risk frequent travellers for speedier processing. The program now has 82,000 participants in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec. And, as some of you know, a Nexus air test project is underway at Vancouver International Airport and we will be evaluating that program and its success this fall.

The CanPass air program, which I proudly say I am now a member of, is operating at seven major Canadian airports, permitting the efficient and secure entry into Canada of low-risk air travelers, by using iris recognition technology.

Canada and the U.S. have focused on the flow of commercial traffic through the FAST program, which allows for quick border clearance of pre-approved shipments using registered drivers. FAST is now in place at the dozen border crossings that account for over 80% of commercial traffic between our two countries.

And, finally, let me mention our IBETs - Integrated Border Enforcement Teams - which have been expanded, bringing together law enforcement and border officers from both sides of the border. A total of 23 IBETs now operate in 15 regions and have disrupted smuggling rings, confiscated illegal drugs, weapons and tobacco, and have made numerous arrests. I should point out that the Pacific North-West region has been a leader in developing and implementing these initiatives: the concept of IBET was developed in this region. As well, CanPass Air was first implemented at Vancouver International Airport.

So, as you can see, ladies and gentlemen, our two countries work together very closely on a very important array of initiatives that speak to our collective security and safety and our prosperity which is in fact what the Security and Prosperity Partnership was about that the two presidents and Prime Minister Martin signed in Waco, Texas.

Let me just conclude by saying a few words about that initiative. It includes 300, at this point, concrete initiatives of either a bilateral or trilateral nature between our three countries. Many of those initiatives build on our smart borders declaration or on existing security measures. We want to take those things to another level and enhance them so that many of the initiatives in this new partnership speak to wherever it makes sense to integrate or harmonize our systems so that we’re able to identify high-risk goods and people quickly, so that the vast majority of low-risk goods and people can move across our borders in a seamless fashion.

As this relates to the prosperity side of the agenda, my colleague David Emerson has taken this up with the Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez here in the United States and what one sees is again a recognition that we have integrated markets whether it’s automobiles, steel or the importance of the energy sector. All of these are key to our shared prosperity, whether in Canada, the U.S. or Mexico, and this new partnership speaks to the importance of cooperation and collaboration, respecting each other’s sovereignty and our identities as independent nations. If we are going to continue to be the world’s largest, most successful trading block and compete with emerging markets such as China and India, we need to understand the importance of working together when it is in our mutual and best interests. That relates to security as much as it relates to prosperity and therefore I was very excited when the two presidents and prime minister were able to sign the Security and Prosperity Partnership and I know that many of you in this room were consulted on both sides of the border as it related to either the security or prosperity aspects of that initiative.

And it’s going to be evergreen. We have 300 concrete milestones right now, but that’s just the beginning. We’re going to deliver on those and we’re going to continue to develop more concrete milestones working with the private sector and all levels of government in our respective countries.

So, ladies and gentlemen, just let me conclude by saying that, again, I am so impressed by what this regional organization has done because you got it sooner than a lot of us, in terms of the importance of cooperation and collaboration and shared interest. Let me reassure you, as Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and speaking on behalf of the prime minister, at least in relation to this, we are absolutely committed to working with our closest ally, neighbour and best friend, the United States of America. We understand on this continent we have a shared obligation to our collective security and safety and that we have a shared obligation to be prepared when emergencies happen. We have a shared obligation to protect our own and each other’s peoples and there is no relationship the Government of Canada values more than that with the United States of America. And I think as we move forward together as it relates to the Security and Prosperity Partnership, this new partnership speaks to all those things.

Again, I conclude where I began which is to say it took us a while to get to the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Had we looked a little further west to PNWER - if you are sitting in Ottawa or Washington – I guess we would have understood that there were states, provinces and territories that had already gotten it and were already working on the agenda.

Thank you all very much.