Real security requires creativity, not cash: CTA
TORONTO — Throwing money at border security (and adding more barriers to entry into the U.S.) is not the solution to North America’s border security woes.
That’s the upshot of a U.S. homeland security study released in April by two university professors — one from Ohio State and the other from the University of Newcastle in Australia.
The study provides the first cost-benefit analysis of spending on U.S. homeland security since 9/11.
It’s also being echoed by the CEO of the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) David Bradley, who says the study "found the cumulative increase in expenditures on homeland security during the period exceeded a trillion dollars."
Bradley says it’s time the U.S. rethink its post-9/11 border security strategy.
The study, using common risk-assessment and cost-benefit approaches, determined that the expenditures were "excessive."
It accused officials of having "engaged in various forms of probability neglect by focusing on worst-case scenarios; adding, rather than multiplying, the probabilities … and inflating terrorist capacities and the importance of potential terrorist targets."
In Bradley’s view, this hard look at security couldn’t come at a better time.
The U.S. and Canada are in the middle of revising their perimeter security agreement.
"Adding more and more programs and barriers to entry is not the answer," Bradley says.
In some ways, Bradley says, it appears that attitudes toward border security haven’t changed much since 9/11, despite the northern border being much more secure, stable and safer than the Mexican border.
A report released by the American Government Accountability Office (GAO) in February set off alarm bells in Washington over terrorists from Canada in a report that found the "northern" border — after all the measures introduced and the billions of dollars spent — to still be porous and "vulnerable for exploitation."
In July, Rep. Candice Miller who hails from the Port Huron, Mich. area and sits on the House Homeland Security Committee and chairs the Sub-Committee on Border and Maritime Security was quoted as saying "I like to remind people that we have two borders and both need to be secured."
While this sort of rhetoric has prompted speculation that we could see even more border-security measures introduced at the Canada-U.S. border, Bradley hopes that U.S. politicians are coming around to the view that tight budgets mean Americans will want value-for-money.
The business community stateside is more vocal now than it has ever been on the fact that there has been very little return on its investment in the so-called "trusted trader" programs like FAST and C-TPAT.
Turning the page does not mean less security, Bradley says.
"It means moving to the next chapter, taking what we’ve learned and looking at how we can do things better in the cold, stark reality of today.
"It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the coming months."
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