Infrastructure / Special reportUnprepared: Canada lacks plan to protect critical infrastructure, II

Yesterday we wrote about growing concerns among security experts in Canada that the federal government has not implemeted various plans to bolster cooperation among the federal government, the governments of the country’s ten provinces, and private industry — cooperation which would offer the country’s critical infrastructure in the case of a terrorist attack of natural disaster. Ian MacLeod writes in the Ottawa Citizen that some of the building blocks are in place for critical infrastructure protection, but that the problem is more coordination and governance. Here is what Canada already has in place:

• The Integrated Threat Assessment Center (ITAC), comprises several government departments, security agencies, and major police services, produces comprehensive threat assessments distributed within the intelligence community, government and others
• A Cyber Incident Response Center co-ordinates the government response to attacks
• The National Energy Board Act was amended to give the board increased safety and security powers over the operation of inter-provincial pipelines and international electricity lines
• The new Emergencies Management Act emphasizes critical infrastcuture protection (CIP0; a key provision amended the Access to Information Act prohibiting disclosure of industry information shared with the government about infrastructure vulnerabilities and other sensitive corporate information (Alberta has similar provincial legislation)

The decentralized structure of the Canadian government complicates matters for Public Safety. Various ministries, from Natural Resources Canada to Transport Canada to Health Canada, regulate each of the ten critical infrastructure sectors. The provinces also have constitutional jurisdiction over areas such as energy, manufacturing, and water. Beyond those complexities, however, the senior federal bureaucracy, Public Safety and the Privy Council Office (PCO) in particular, do not believe there is a serious threat, from terrorists especially, says Martin Rudner, a leading Canadian critical infrastructure expert and founding director of the Canadian Center of Intelligence and Security Studies. Yet terrorists, he notes, now routinely strike Western critical energy infrastructure overseas, often with skills honed on the battlefields and oilfields of Iraq. Last week, the Yemen headquarters of Calgary-based Nexen Inc. was shaken by a bomb blast. No one was hurt. That followed a weekend mortar attack that broke windows at a compound housing Americans and other Westerners in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. A threat assessment by ITAC, obtained by the Canadian Press in October, said Canada’s international — and domestic — oil facilities represent an “ideologically attractive and strategic target,” to al-Qaeda. Rudner says, however, that the issue “is seen in Public Safety and at the PCO as a risk management problem. But people who are involved with counterterrorist don’t regard counterterrorism as a risk management. You’re not saying, ‘three bombs are OK, it’s eight bombs that are problem,’ which is what risk management is. To attack a major oil pipeline going to the United States, it doesn’t even have to succeed to drive up oil prices maybe $10 to $20 a barrel.”

Public Safety Canada refused McLeod’s request for an interview, but did issue a 136-word e-mail describing its efforts at general CIP. It made no mention of the proposed national strategy. In early 2005, federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for public safety and emergency management met and agreed to a work plan for a national CIP strategy. Public Safety is believed to have made as many as three previous attempts at formulating the strategy. In April 2007 federal officials told the standing Senate committee on national security and defense that the strategy was being finalized. There was also a plan to roll it out last summer, according to briefing notes prepared for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day in February 2007 after Al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula called for attacks against Canadian energy infrastructure. Nothing happened. On 28 January this year, Scott Broughton, senior assistant deputy minister of Emergency Management and National Security at Public Safety told the committee officials “will try to finalize” the strategy in the next few months. Industry insiders say the effort has been bogged down for months in contentious federal-provincial-territorial talks. Senator Colin Kenny, the committee’s chairman, is not buying Mr. Broughton’s assurance. “They’re planning and liaising and communicating and evaluating and preparing and adjusting and assessing,” he said this week. “And they’re really not doing very much at all.”