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Helicopter Bases to Enhance Canadian Border Enforcement.

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by admin 2 views

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What does everybody think of our stepping up the Canadian border issue even more? Now those draft dodgers won't be able to get through the forests anymore and the human smuggling will stop. It will, of course, strengthen American gang activity by giving them an even greater market share in the drug trade, but I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/08/20/border.patrol.ap/

6 replies

by jamesrl

The cameras are pointed at your side of the border - go to it.

You know when Canadian law enforcement wanted co-operation in the cigarette smuggling cases a few years back we got nowhere. Canadian cigarette companies were selling them into the states to wholesalers - where provincial and federal taxes didn't apply. Then these wholesalers would smuggle them back into Canada, where individuals would sell them to convenience stores.

There was a great deal of evidence that the cigarette manufacturers were fully aware of what was going on. The Quebec governement filed a recent lawsuit against one of these companies for loss of tax revenue, and rather than fight it, the cigarette company declared bankruptcy. The fine for this one company, in one province, was about a billion and a half. Consider the millions lost over the years. These cigarettes were smuggled across the border, in many cases by native Canadians and Americans, by truck, boat and plane.

But you have the right to do what you want with your side of the border.

James

by admin

He was all about tearing down walls, not building them. The Republican party sure is evolving quickly down here. :(

by jamesrl

You know, if it means that we have fewer complaints about Canada being the soft underbelly that terrorists use to get into the US, then I am all for the helicopters. I do think at the same time that we have to try and ensure that commercial traffic can be both secure and speedy in going across the borders.

As for Reagan and Canada, not sure it was all it was cracked up to be. Reagan had good relationship with Conservative Prime Minister Mulroney - the two of them sang "Irish Eyes" together etc. But before he was elected 2 of the 3 candidates for the conservative leadership, including Mulroney, came out against free trade. I don't think that Mulroney converted without some pressure, and certainly we know the pressure on the deadline came from Reagan.

I will concede that even between Reagan and Trudeau, the Liberal predecessor to Mulroney, relations were much better than today, despite the fact that the two men couldn't be farther apart intellectually. Reagan focussed on the relationship between the two countries, not the person.

James

by oz_media

Drugs are smuggled across the border usually by those in charge of enforcing our national security.

The MAJOR deals are so big they are practically government deals,although they are not.

It will curb the wannabe's and small timers but with the tonnes of BC Bud shipped globally each year, helicopters and new bases aren't going to do much, perhaps on a small time scale but not at the top of these billion dollar operations.

by admin

Perhaps the "practically government" is just taking out the small time newcomers and destroying true capitalistic enterprise with their helicopters in your view?

I do believe that the destruction of Capitalism is bad for our country. Everytime we try to regulate a trade that some people are morally against, we get new gangs, new powers of evil. I personally don't care if the "BC bud trade is shut down" or not, but on a social level, for one, I hate paying for people that are not dangerous to society to live in our ever growing prison population.

Unfortunately, at the rate it's going, prisons will become our new welfare system soon and I don't even like the old one.

I also hate all the violence and money going to evil purposes. We in the US would recover HUGE amounts of wealth by STOPPING this senseless War on Drugs and if we have to tax anything to effect good regulation, this seems to be a prime industry. Instead, by making it illegal we drive the price of goods sky high and almost guarantee that the money involved will support crime.

I'm not too sure this is the reason they have the helicopters there now though...

by rexworld

I used to live in the Pacific Northwest, Idaho specifically, and have gone back-and-forth across the border up there a few times. It is way too rugged and mountainous to be readily defended or guarded, unless we're prepared to place a couple army divisions up there like India and Pakistan do along the Kashmir region.

A couple helicopter patrols is nice, maybe it looks good the one time they catch a plane smuggling cigarettes or something. But it's a tiny drop in the bucket--the only way to secure a border like that is on the ground, with troops. Flyovers won't cut it.

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