[. . . . The] Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, and anyone who's listened to them in the past two years. . . has repeatedly tried to raise alarm in Ottawa over glaring gaps in our air and border security. Among the loopholes it's identified: a disturbing level of organized crime connections in our airports and a shocking lack of communication between border authorities and intelligence agencies on such things as terrorist "watch lists."
[. . . .] And now, yesterday, the Senate committee was back again with another stark warning: Canada is still utterly unprepared for a terrorist attack or any other major emergency.
There is still no national strategy for dealing with a national crisis, whether it's the result of "an act or God - or the Devil" (i.e., terrorists), notes the committee.
And, as committee chair Sen. Colin Kenny put it to me in an interview yesterday, a terrorist strike here is inevitable.
"Our time is coming," Kenny said, noting Canada is one of the only countries on al-Qaida's attack lists that has yet to be hit. "The next attack is a certainty. And the people who are going to have to clean up after it are very frustrated."
Those people are firefighters, cops, doctors, nurses, soldiers - a selection of whom Kenny's committee consulted across th e country, along with public health workers and officials designated full time to prepare for disasters.
