Auditing Canada’s Terrorism Initiatives

I have fairly length post up at SDA exerpting the recent Auditor General’s report on the progress made in anti-terrorism initiatives.

After three years one would expect better than this:

… criminal intelligence data are not used to screen applicants for clearance to restricted areas at airports…

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

There’s lots more. Canada has no capacity for top-secret communications in the event of a national emergency. Government departments are using excuses ranging from the Privacy Act to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to resist implementing change, anti-terrorism funding diverted to domestic crime control…

The full Auditor’s report is here.