Faulty Planning, Perverse Reasoning

Well, that's an inconvenient discovery.  For all of official Canada's bluster about sanctioning the Islamic Republic of Iran and ensuring that nothing slips through the sanction process to benefit the Republic in its search for technological elements that might be useful in the building of their nuclear programs, it seems shipments intended for those very same nuclear programs are indeed getting through. 

And Iran is most appreciative. Although it remains discreet about the situation, not wishing to raise too much notice over the fact that Canada border and customs agents are so busy with all manner of official business that they tend to somehow on occasion overlook the shipments that manage to evade scrutiny.  Canadian technology is very much valued by Iranian scientists.  Isn't that flattering?

The vaunted tightening of sanctions makes the West feel as though they're accomplishing a great deal in the fight against terror and Iran's relentless push-and-shove to acquire nuclear weapons with all the accompanying dangers of setting off a tinder-box of others in the Middle East scrambling to acquire them as well, to protect themselves from ... who else? 

Anything that could help the Republic perfect its inexorable mission to become nuclear-proficient is outlawed.  Along with goods used in the petrochemical, oil and gas industries, and items used to build ballistic missiles.  One almost wonders incredulously why Iran would even attempt to acquire all these advanced technologies through the West when they've got Russia happy to supply them.

And North Korea and china and Pakistan and Venezuela. 

And on the financial front, ensuring that their finances remain bolstered, there are the large British financial institutions which have been helpfully currying favour with Iran and making bundles of profit for themselves, and taking issue with the United States government for holding them to account, threatening to boot them out of U.S. financial transaction venues.

Iran, let's see now, that's the country in the Middle East, Muslim though Aryan, not Arab, that periodically issues those threats promising to annihilate Israel, right?  Not nice, not a bit of it, and quite adversarial to the values of the United Nations.  Oops, hasn't Iran just written to the Security Council to complain about Israeli threats to bomb Iran's nuclear installations, characterizing them as a violation of the United Nations charter?

No matter, the Canada Border Services Agency, to be sure, is doing its best with what it has at its disposal.  And at its disposal is, evidently, insufficient numbers of personnel.  The agency's counter-proliferation intelligence section has produced a paper claiming that since July 2010, fourteen shipments valued at $3.96 million were apprehended and seized.

"These shipments were prohibited because they were to listed entities, involved prohibited (listed) goods, or involved prohibited (oil refining and gas liquefaction)," according to the paper.  "Other seizures involve nuclear dual use goods."  But alert and on-the-job as the agency is, in halting an additional sixteen other shipments, a number slipped through.

"The number of CBSA staff dedicated to export control are very limited (approximately 53 staff members).  The number of export shipments that the dedicated export teams must target and examine is overwhelming (8,000 to 10,000 per day)."  Yet "most of the efforts of CBSA's export control program are focused on Iran and known transshipment areas."

And where are those known transshipment areas?  Why, nuclear procurement networks emanating from Syria, China and Pakistan, which also operate within Canada.  And then there is the issue of monitoring and preventing the export of Canadian technology and goods to Iran.  

"Despite the latest rounds of international and Canadian sanctions, Iranian procurement agents have still been able to export items, albeit with more difficulty, greater costs, but effective nonetheless."

And, with this background knowledge, despite insufficient monitoring personnel and the issue of sanctions being rendered ineffective, this government is proceeding with plans to slash the border agency's budget over the next three years and eliminate over one thousand positions.