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Anti-Terror Money Would Be Better Spent Fighting Serious Risks, Critics Say

Posted on: Saturday, 30 July 2005, 15:00 CDT

OTTAWA (CP) - The billions of dollars Canada is spending to protect people from the remote threat of terrorism would be better used fighting far greater risks such as disease and smog, critics say.

Ottawa has allotted more than $10 billion for enhanced public safety since the 9-11 attacks in New York, while thousands die from air and water pollution.

"I think we're investing a lot of money on feel-good programs, that we could be saving a lot more lives in some of our environmental problems," said David Schindler, a prominent ecology professor at the University of Alberta.

He said far more people are killed by air and water pollution than by terrorism, citing an estimate by the American Microbiological Society that 100,000 Americans die annually due to waterborne disease.

"That translates into about 10,000 (Canadians) sickened by plain old pathogens, nothing that a terrorist puts into our water supply. The terrorists are us, you might say."

The Ontario Medical Association estimates that smog causes 5,800 premature deaths in Ontario alone and the problem is expected to get worse.

The federal government is stockpiling pharmaceuticals in the event of a bioterrorist attack, which many experts consider extremely unlikely.

"In my opinion they are scaring the hell out of the public, there's no need for this," said Shiv Chopra, a microbiologist who used to work for Health Canada.

He said there is no way to efficiently distribute a biological agent in a way that would infect massive numbers of people. Anthrax released from an airplane would simply disperse in the air.

The deliberate distribution of anthrax in the United States in 2001 caused five deaths.

On the environmental front, damage from severe weather events such as floods, droughts, storms and heat waves have been growing yet the federal program to deal with climate change - believed by scientists to be the root cause - is in disarray.

Insiders say there is no way Canada will meet its objectives under the Kyoto accord. Greenhouse emissions have been rising rather than falling.

In 2002, the Meteorological Service of Canada was forced to close its Eureka observatory in the High Arctic, considered one of the best sources of information about the effects of ozone depletion in the Arctic. Although determined university researchers were able to temporarily restore the facility its long-term future remains in doubt.

Ron St. John, director general of the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness and Response, conceded the risk of bioterrorist attack is low, but said the consequences are high.

St. John said it cost the United States almost $6 billion to respond to the anthrax attacks, and the reintroduction of small pox, which has been eradicated, would be a global disaster.

"Even one case is not tolerable from a public health point of view."

So should small pox and anthrax get priority over smog and clean water?

"It's a matter of perspective and priority-setting," said St. John.

He quoted a U.S. official as saying that the hardest thing about disaster planning is explaining why you didn't do it.

"Emergency preparedness is something not something too many people think about until there's an emergency and then they're glad it's there."

Timothea Gibb, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety and Preparedness, said the government's emergency planning is aimed at all hazards, not just terrorism.

She said the overarching framework for all planning is the National Emergency Response System (NERS), designed to facilitate co-ordination among different emergency responders.

The system is modelled on a similar system in the United States, and designed to mesh with the U.S. system. She said the government must be prepared to deal with all threats even if they are unlikely.

"I think it's important that Canadians are prepared. Is it better to prepare for something that never happens than not to prepare and have it happen?"

Steve Staples, director of the Ottawa-based Polaris Institute, said the Canadian response to terrorism has basically mirrored that of the U.S.

"We just seem to be importing ideas from the United States and we have not been able to define what our own response to terrorism is."

While Ottawa steps up its commitments in Afghanistan, he said, the Coast Guard is underfunded, and the federal port police force has been disbanded at despite reports that organized crime has infiltrated Canadian ports.

He is distrustful of the closely tuned co-operation being sought through NERS.

"We already have seen the costs of integrating security with the United States and I think it's name was Maher Arar. He was very much a victim of the cross-border information sharing."

Source: Canadian Press

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