New Ontario border security initiative 'huge support' to RCMP, official says
OPP are committing officers from their emergency response team as part of Operation Deterrence
The RCMP's superintendent for border integrity in Ontario is praising the province's new border security initiative.
Operation Deterrence is "a huge support in the province of Ontario to the RCMP," Dale Foote said.
The Ford government announced Operation Deterrence on Tuesday, saying OPP have begun using their 200-officer emergency response team to help enhance border security.
Those officers have conducted more than 6,000 hours of focused patrols since Dec. 6, the province said.
It did not say how many officers are deployed at any one time or how many are deployed in the Windsor area.
Ontario hasn't allotted any new money specifically for the operation, according to a spokesperson for the solicitor general's office.
But OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique told CBC that increased investments in the force's emergency response team, weapons enforcement unit and other units over the past three years have given the force the "surge capacity" to carry out the operation without diverting resources from other departments.
"We're currently in the planning process now over sustainment plans," he said.
"This needs to be a long-term solution. This is not a short-term fix to border security, border integrity, and we're currently working with the ministry and with the province and with our federal partners on what are the long-term investments that are required."
Carrique did not provide detailed statistics on the number of individuals, weapons or the quantity of drugs intercepted by the program since Dec. 6.
Its main objective, he said, is deterrence.
"One of the performance indicators for us in terms of having that visible presence is simply the number of hours that have been spent focused on activities around borders," he said.
However, he described an incident he said was indicative of the program's effectiveness: a small aircraft preparing to land at an unsupervised airstrip aborted its landing after its lights illuminated the OPP cruiser on patrol, Carrique said.
The OPP officers will support an existing complement of 250 dedicated RCMP officers that patrol the border in Ontario, 50 of whom were added in the past few months, Foote said.
More than 30 of those officers are in the Windsor area.
RCMP also support those officers with additional resources, Foote said.
"We also have RCMP units that work outside of that uniformed presence, national security teams and other intelligence people in and out of the Windsor offices on a regular basis," he said.
"We have a large marine component, large vessels and assets in all of our detachment areas, all seven of those areas on the borders in Ontario where we are located. From those vessels, we utilize drones as well."
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The more officers, the more technology and the more funding the force has, the more it can do, Foote added.
But he said, "We are doing what's necessary and required in all of our areas right now."
Brian Masse is the Canada-U.S. border relations critic for the federal NDP, and MP for Windsor West.
He said it was about time the province provided support for border security and accused the Ford government of "living off the backs of municipalities and taxpayers like Windsor."
"Doug Ford and the Conservatives still haven't reimbursed the City of Windsor, nor has the federal government, for its cost of unblocking the border during COVID," Brian Masse said, referring to the cost of clearing the convoy protest from the Ambassador Bridge.
CBC put Masse's comments to a spokesperson for the Solicitor General's office, but did not receive a response.