Ensuring Security

Oops, we've opened the barn door, invited the wolves to leave to ensure our domestic livestock are safe, and that's a good start, but we've forgotten to close that same barn door.  Could be those predators are planning to steal back in again.

Although Canada Border Services Agency has a protocol whereby it keeps tabs on who enters the country it has no idea - because no exit protocol exists - who has actually departed.  Which means that although the Agency can order undesirables to leave the country it doesn't actually always know whether or not they have done so.  They do seem to gather informal  anecdotal evidence, but nothing concrete, no formal records exist

When the federal government undertook the necessary step to exert its sovereign authority to cut off diplomatic relations with a country whose human rights record is beyond deplorable, venturing into depraved territory, it made the assumption that all Iranian diplomats did leave, as scheduled.  There appears to be no mechanism whereby their visas can be stamped and their leaving verified.

This applies as well to the Syrian diplomatic mission which was closed on order of the Government of Canada in response to the Syrian regime's war on its own revolutionary opposition.  It is assumed that all those associated with both the Syrian and the Iranian regimes have dusted their feet of Canadian soil, leaving us without the constant irritant of their unwanted presence.

This does present as an unfortunate oversight.  One that should be remedied, and as soon as possible.  In instances of escorted exits there is a record.  But when, short of escorting undesirables from Canadian soil, foreign-born lawbreakers and rejected asylum-seekers have been ordered to depart, there is little in the way of a fail-safe monitoring system to ensure that they do.  The end result is that many remain in Canada illegally.

This is well enough known and deplored, non-officially and officially.  According to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, CBSA extended deportation orders for roughly 40,000 people.  Yet they could not say with any degree of certainty how many had actually left the country.  This oversight is long overdue for remediation.

Canada has obviously been lax in this area.  But with a new undertaking between Canada and the United States as part of the joint border strategy border officials on both sides will be interested in planning and co-ordinating a new system to track both those who enter and exit both countries.  The implementation of that system cannot come too soon.