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Canada Home to 50 "Terrorist" Groups: Canadian Former Security Official
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WASHINGTON, April 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – In the latest development in the “war on terror” and on ever tightening immigration laws, a former high-ranking Canadian intelligence official asserts that “Canada is unwittingly playing host to at least 50 ‘terrorist’ groups.
The official went on to insist that some of them “may be targeting the U.S.,” news agencies reported.
"We've established through out intelligence service and other means that we have 50 terrorist organizations now on our soil," former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service David Harris said in an interview Sunday.
"They range in scope from the [Irish Republican Army] IRA to Hezbollah, Hamas ... certainly al-Qaeda," Harris said, speaking on the CBS television network's "60 Minutes" program. He said he had "no doubt" some are targeting America.
The program, broadcast Sunday, charges that it is all-too-easy for would-be attackers to slip over the 8,850-kilometer (5,500-mile) border from Canada into the United States.
Former executive director of Canada's Immigration Service, Joe Bissett, said the generous Canadian support system available to immigrants, fails to establish with clarity their identity.
Bissett said that of 15,000 refugees accepted into Canada since the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, "2,500 come from ‘terrorist’ countries, Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan ... most of them, we don't know who the hell they are."
He said Canada's system, which allows people to claim benefits while waiting for their refugee application to be processed is "much too generous."
With only five percent of those who arrive in Canada detained, the remaining 95% are released and told to appear for an immigration hearing "sometime in the next year."
Lack of paperwork means that performing an identity check is "not easily done."
And a former immigration official at Montreal's Dorval airport, speaking on the program, said in his experience, around 80% of people arriving in Canada to seek refugee status had no documents with them.
Steven Gallagher, a professor of political science at Montreal's Concordia University called Canada "the only country where when you arrive you can work and in addition you can collect welfare, health benefits, you can enroll your children in school."
Canada's deputy prime minister, John Manley, on Thursday had defended his country's openness to immigrants, saying it is not a haven for
terrorists.
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