$7.7 Billion Of Anti-Terrorism Initiative

Exerpts from the audit of The 2001 Anti-Terrorism Initiative from the March 2004 Report, Office of The Auditor General.

The government as a whole failed to achieve improvements in the ability of security information systems to communicate with each other. Consequently, needed improvements will be delayed by several years. Moreover, even as the government was launching programs that would create new needs for fingerprint identification, projects that would have helped it to deal with the increased demand were not included in the initiative.

... gaps and inconsistencies in the watch lists used to screen visa applicants, refugee claimants, and travellers seeking to enter Canada. There is no overall quality control of this vital function, which is spread over several departments and agencies. No one monitors delays in the entry or the quality of the data on watch lists.

... criminal intelligence data are not used to screen applicants for clearance to restricted areas at airports, meaning that security clearances are issued without checking applicants for criminal association

We found no evidence that officials of the Privy Council Office, Finance Canada, and the Treasury Board Secretariat had based their review of departmental proposals on a national threat and risk assessment...

... Other projects appeared designed to maintain the government's existing public safety and policing programs, not to respond directly to the increased need for security after September 11. [eg.] Public Security and Anti-Terrorism funds were allocated to the Solicitor General to combat organized crime and the illegal drug trade in First Nations communities, including the cultivation of marijuana...

We expected also to see a lessons-learned study that assessed how the Government of Canada had responded to the attacks in the United States. We found a wide variety of reports. In some cases, extensive analyses were carried out but never endorsed by senior management; lack of support by senior management undermines any effort to implement change. In other cases we were given basic reports that appeared to be summaries but that provided no detailed analysis.

...front-line officers at airports still do not receive passport information.

Terrorist Watch Lists ... In our initial audit work we found significantly fewer terrorist lookouts in the Service's tracking system than in Immigration's database ... Immigration's records were in such disarray that we were unable to complete a full reconciliation during the course of our audit.

Interpol Red Notices... On average, 48 days elapsed from [Interpol] publication to entry in the [RCMP] police system. At the time of our testing, the RCMP had a backlog of 162 notices to be entered in its database that were two months old, on average.

Lost and stolen Canadian passports not on border control watch lists ... the information system used on the primary inspection line cannot distinguish between active and deactivated passports ... delays between the reporting of a lost or stolen passport and the entering of the information into the RCMP database ... took 70 days, on average.

There is no system that transfers information on outstanding warrants to the border watch lists ...

Reading the report (and between the lines), there are areas of modest progress, many areas in which beaurocracies are resisting change, citing "the Privacy Act" and even the Charter "Freedom of Association" as excuses not to act, while the government funds technologies that are dependant upon other technologies that remain undeveloped. Committees meet, report and do nothing. And there remains no top secret method of communication between agencies, in event of a true national emergency.

About what you'd expect from a government that at its core, really doesn't believe Canada is a target for terrorism.

Posted by Kate at November 24, 2004 2:10 AM