[Newsbot]

Title: Great Lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway under threat from pleasure boats: report
Category: Misc CDN
Posted By: Hyack
Date: 2012-01-23 21:04:45
Canadian

[ccga3359]

As a 12 year member of the CCG Auxiliary on western Lake Ontario I've been saying this for years. Security is laughable with many marinas customs offices being on an honour system by telephone, and not even manned. Now if I were a terrorist wanting to get into the States, I wouldn't be crossing at a land border. We had communication with our local Marine Police, if, they decided to turn that particular radio on. At SAR they were useless, their only ability was for handing out fines for no pfd's and such, just highway cops on a boat. I once had to switch to a cell phone to discuss secure details with USCG. Certainly no protcols there in that regard.

[Bruce_E_T]

The numbers pretty well tell the story. How can you regulate this?

$1:

An estimated 6.2 million small, non-commercial craft ply the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence region — 3.7 million square kilometres of water and more than 200,000 kilometres of Canadian shoreline — and all are exempt from Transport Canada’s Marine Transportation Security Regulations.