Canada Opens Its Borders to American Police

Police officers of the American Coast Guard have held, for a few weeks, the temporary capacities of 'agents of peace' and can thus stop Canadians across the Canadian border. Capacities were conferred to them within the framework of the Shiprider pilot-program, which proceeds on the maritime-way of the St. Lawrence River, between Cornwall and Valleyfield, as well as in British Colombia.

The Royal Gendarmerie of Canada (GRC) explains that these American police officers are supervised by Canada and that some of its own agents hold the same capacities of intervention on a part of territorial waters of the United States.

According to a spokesman of the GRC, Corporal Luc Bessette, the Shiprider pilot-program aims to allow the police officers of the two countries to obtain information and to carry out operations against drug traffickers, frontier runners and smugglers of cigarettes.

The two police force bodies say they want "to disturb the border criminality on the two sides of the maritime-way, approximately 100 km on each side". It is not known when the pilot-program ends and if the police co-operation will become permanent.

At the end of the Summit of Montebello, held at the end of August, within the framework of the Partnership for Prosperity and Safety, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and American President George W. Bush had asked their respective ministers "to seek new, innovating models of applying the law, which are in conformity with our respective laws and which support integrated border operations. They stated such Canadian-United States operations for international maritime safety are in place in order to better protect our citizens against criminal and terrorist threats".

Uninformed Citizens

A Canadian citizen who was stopped inside the marina at Saint-Anicet, at the beginning of the month, Harold Leclerc, speaks of having been surprised to be stopped by the American Coastguard, armed and wearing a bullet-proof jacket, which he tried to photograph. "He looked at me in a very severe way and asked me, in English, why I was taking photographs", he reported. Mr. Leclerc affirms to have answered only at the moment when one of the agents of the GRC, accompanying the American Coast Guard, intervened.

He wondered about the presence of American police officers on Canadian soil and did not hide the fact that he was shocked to be stopped by an American Agent in Canada.

A professor of international law at the University of Montreal, François Crépeau, is keeping a good eye on this police co-operation, hoping that the American Coastguard doesn't act like cowboys.

"Where that could worry us is if one realized that the legal framework is badly defined, and that the American police officers might start to act without the respect of a certain control by the GRC. [... ] Here, we would have a problem!"

A pilot-program in 2005

The first Shiprider pilot-program took place exactly two years ago on the inland waterways in the area of Windsor-Detroit. The project, which consisted of carrying out joint operations of the application of Canadian and American law on interior waters, lasted two weeks. The GRC indicated the police officers of the American Coast Guard, aboard their ship, acted as agents of peace and that they were "at the disposal of the agents of the GRC to help them during the activities in the application of the law, where necessary, and only at the request of the latter".

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