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NRP call for federal help with border yet to be answered
Posted By GRANT LaFLECHE
It looks like a long-standing Niagara Regional Police call for relief from the federal government on border security issues will continue to go unanswered.
Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day said Monday that Ottawa remains committed to working with local police services, but did not indicate the federal government would relieve the NRP of its border policing role.
“We always look at how we can do more,” Day said at a media conference in St. Catharines Monday. “There is funding transferred federally to the provinces and then onto the municipalities. We will continue to work co-operatively on the resource side with both the province and municipalities.”
NRP officials have complained for years that Niagara taxpayers are footing an unfairly large bill for local border security work.
“We are often required to be first responders to border security situations,” said Deputy Chief Gary Beaulieu of Niagara Regional Police. “We think this is a federal jurisdiction.”
Day said Ottawa has increased funding to what he called “integrated border teams,” by $19.5 million as well as funding for police departments that work with their American counterparts on areas of risk along the border.
But Day did not say the federal government will take on more border security policing in Niagara.
Beaulieu said that while the situation has not improved for the NRP, he is encouraged by ongoing talks with Ottawa on the issue.
Day also addressed two recent border incidents in which Canadian emergency crews en route to the U.S. for life-threatening situations were delayed by American customs agents.
In one incident, Quebec firefighters racing to help fight a blaze in upstate New York were held up at the border as the landmark building to which they were dispatched to burned to the ground.
Last Monday, a man being rushed across the Windsor border to Detroit for emergency heart surgery was delayed for five critical minutes when the ambulance was stopped by U.S. customs officials. That patient is recovering.
“Canada and the U.S. have a great tradition and a history … of helping each other in times of need and times of crisis,” said Day. “We want to make sure that’s maintained. That’s why I have made sure that I’ve communicated, with some concern, to my counterpart in the United States (Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff) about this.”
Day said he wrote to Chertoff on the issue, he said.
“We want to maintain this proud history we have of helping one another’s citizens in times of need,” Day said.
Day said he has been having “discussions with Secretary of State Chertoff regularly on a broad range of issues and will continue to do so.”
“This specific one I brought to his attention, these particular incidents, because they are of some concern.”
Article ID# 785045
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