Customs Union on Paul Martin's handgun announcement

NEWS RELEASE

CUSTOMS EXCISE UNION DOUANES ACCISE (CEUDA)

******************* Liberals fail border security test

Making handguns illegal almost pointless if border remains porous and unarmed

OTTAWA – Customs Officers aren't equipped with sidearms and Canada has a complete absence of pre-emptive enforcement along the border between border crossings.

Ron Moran, CEUDA's national president, says, "If the Liberals want to be taken seriously about stopping crime and murders from handguns in Canada, they have look at the flow of those guns across the border; they have to make our border more secure. Simply making handguns illegal is almost pointless when the border is so porous and unarmed. All we hear from them is they've spent in the neighbourhood of $9 billion on security since 9/11, but who’s kidding who?"

UNARMED CUSTOMS OFFICERS: Making the border more secure means the border must be armed and there must be a clear and direct mandate to stop people who are armed from entering Canada. Under the Liberals, Customs Policy remains to order Customs Officers to let armed and dangerous persons into Canada with the naïve hope that police will catch them once they’ve been released into our backyards.

Moran asks, "What kind of Government stands up to say it is serious about border security and crime on handguns yet has a Border Policy ordering its Customs Officers to let armed and dangerous people into our communities? Canadians want armed and dangerous felons stopped at the border, not to see the border as a wide-open door, and the border must be armed if we’re to stop dangerous individuals carrying handguns at the border!"

THE UNGUARDED BORDER: 232 roads from the U.S. into Canada are unguarded. Closed RCMP Detachments along the border in Ontario and Quebec, Detachments closed or closing along the border in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and police response times three and four hours in some areas along the border. The Canada Border Services Agency says 1,600 vehicles forced their way into Canada in 2004 by blowing through Customs, and this happens without CBSA tracking them or their passengers or what they were carrying into Canada, and police don’t have a mandate to catch them. CBSA doesn't know how many are brought back to the border. Three Customs boats serving 716 marine locations: two in B.C. and one in Quebec.

Moran says, "If you're in the gun smuggling business, you’d be bringing guns into Canada using an unguarded road or by water or just blowing through Customs where the likelihood is that no one would ever chase you. With no one patrolling the border, Liberals can't honestly expect Canadians will take them seriously about wanting to stop the haemorrhaging of handguns into Canada by simply making guns illegal. Canada needs an Armed Border Patrol to enforce the border between border points. While we agree more needs to be spent on intelligence, there needs to be people on the ground to gather that intelligence and to play a pre-emptive role enforcing the border."

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