A border security exercise took place Friday in Ontario.
Posted at 8:14 a.m.
The federal Minister of Public Safety, David McGuinty, announced in the evening the launch of a series of exercises led by the Government of Canada in collaboration with provincial and territorial governments to strengthen Canada’s capacity to respond to events as they arise. at the border.
The exercise, which took place in collaboration with the Ontario government, was the first in the series.
These exercises are based on Canada’s Border Plan announced following statements by US President-elect Donald Trump.
In a social media post after his election, Mr. Trump threatened to impose high tariffs on Canada and Mexico until both countries stopped drugs and illegal immigrants from crossing the borders into the United States.
The Canada Border Plan announced by the Trudeau government in December has an envelope of 1.3 billion over six years. It provides for more robust law enforcement at the border, including drones, helicopters, mobile surveillance towers and new canine teams.
During the first exercise on Friday for officials from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the departments of Public Safety Canada and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) , met with their Ontario counterparts “to discuss the best way to prepare and respond to potential situations that could arise on either side of the Canada-U.S. border,” indicates a press release from the federal government .
“Strengthening border security requires that we all adopt a Team Canada approach, and this series of exercises with our provincial and territorial partners aims to do just that,” said Public Safety Minister David McGuinty.
“Partnerships are essential to ensuring border integrity and the enforcement of Canadian laws. The type of training conducted today (Friday) helps ensure proper coordination of any response to potential border-related emergency situations,” said RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme.
The first vice-president of the Canada Border Services Agency, Ted Gallivan, also welcomed the addition of resources to protect the border.
“We have already started implementing changes to increase our capacity […] We have increased our monitoring and reporting activities and put our contingency plans into practice,” said Gallivan.
