Great Lakes machine guns raise ire in Canada
U.S. Coast Guard conducting live-ammunition training drills
MARGARET PHILP
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
The United States Coast Guard have started to patrol the Great Lakes with machine guns mounted on their vessels and are conducting live-ammunition training drills on the U.S. side to prepare officers to combat terrorists flooding across the border from Canada by boat.
The automatic-weapon drills started earlier this year but came to light only in the past two weeks after information about the Coast Guard's move to create 34 permanent live-fire training zones in the Great Lakes was published in the U.S. federal register.
Since the beginning of the year, the Coast Guard have conducted 24 drills, each time firing about 3,000 rounds of lead bullets about a third of the size of a fishing-line sinker from light-weight machine guns in waters at least eight kilometres from the Canadian border and U.S. shores. Two more target practices are scheduled for this year.
The high-powered drills have stunned environmentalists, boaters and mayors in cities dotting the lakes in both countries who are outraged that the U.S. government would jeopardize the safety of pleasure boaters and commercial fishermen who could stray into the line of fire. Just as infuriating, they say, is the risk of lead exposure to fish and the more than 40 million people who draw drinking water from the Great Lakes
“It was a big surprise on both sides of the border. At first I thought it was an Internet hoax,” said Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, Ont., who has written a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to intervene.
“The longest undefended border in the world is gone. It's passé. And this is an example of it.”
Toronto Mayor David Miller chairs a coalition of U.S. and Canadian mayors working to restore and protect the lakes.
He said the target practice violates a treaty signed after the War of 1812 that outlaws military weapons on the Great Lakes, tampering with two centuries of peaceful history.
“This is very much the wrong direction, to militarize the border between these two countries,” he said in an interview. “It's symbolically important and practically important that the border remain open and doesn't become militarized.”
“At a time ... when there is interest in restoring the integrity of the lakes,” he writes in a letter to the Prime Minister, “it is most disturbing that the U.S. is contemplating exercises that will militarize the lakes, cause pollution and environmental degradation, restrict shipping and recreation, and change the peaceful border between Canada and the U.S.”
Far more people are killed on Toronto streets by illegal U.S. guns crossing the border, he said, than bloody-minded terrorists from Canada crossing south. “The idea that terrorists are flooding across the Great Lakes is utter nonsense,” he said. Until this year, U.S. Coast Guard vessels carried only handguns and small-calibre rifles. But anti-terrorist furor has led to a bolstering of firepower.
“We're trying to be prepared in case something happens,” said a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman, Chief Petty Officer Robert Lanier.
“I don't know what it is, but I know I want to be prepared for it when it happens. We need to conduct these live-fire exercises so we are prepared for whatever it may be. If we are not prepared for it, there are going to be questions about why we weren't prepared for it.”
The Coast Guard said the drills have so far been conducted without a hitch. By way of safety precautions, broadcasts on marine radio bands will be made repeatedly a few hours before training begins, and a second Coast Guard vessel will monitor boat traffic around the training zones during the shooting exercises.
But critics on both sides of the border say that many small pleasure boats are either not equipped with marine radio, seldom tune in, or could mistakenly wander into the unmarked firing range.
Others are raising alarms about the impact of tens of thousands of bullets made from lead, which has been linked to brain-development and behaviour problems in children. In recent years there have been efforts to reduce lead in the lakes, including the banning of lead paint and a more recent campaign asking fishermen to replace lead sinkers.
“We've spent years removing lead from the Great Lakes,” said Mary Muter, a long-time cottager and vice-president of the Georgian Bay Association, a coalition of cottage owners and boaters. “As a Canadian, these are binational waters and this is just offensive.”
The Coast Guard commissioned a study from a consulting group, stating that while lead from spent bullets could be passed up the food chain, the drills would pose “no elevated risk” to the environment or human health.
As for the shaky status of the world's longest undefended border, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ambra Dickie, said that Canada and the United States signed a written agreement three years ago articulating that moves to arm U.S. law-enforcement vessels with light machine guns in U.S. jurisdiction do not violate the spirit of the treaty. That treaty, the argument goes, was drafted to ensure peace in the Great Lakes by forbidding weapons of war such as cannons on sailing ships.
“We don't have any cannons or rocket launchers or anything like that,” CPO Lanier said.
