Bad maps are being blamed after Canadian naval reservists
participating in the U.S.-led war on drugs last year sparked a
diplomatic flap by firing their weapons and intercepting fishing
trawlers in Jamaican waters — without Jamaica’s permission.
The
embarrassing incident, which has never before been publicly reported,
broke international maritime law — not the first time legal questions
have been raised about Canada’s increasing involvement in the drug war.
On
March 27, 2012, HMCS Goose Bay and Kingston were patrolling south of
Jamaica as part of Operation Caribbe, Canada’s contribution to an
ongoing, U.S.-led anti-drug trafficking mission in the Caribbean and
East Pacific.
Documents obtained by Postmedia News show that at
one point, crew members on both vessels began firing their ships’
weapons, including large 50-calibre machine guns, as part of a live-fire
training exercise.
The Goose Bay also deployed its small
rigid-hulled inflatable boat on two occasions that day to intercept and
identify 17 small fishing vessels to ensure they weren’t carrying
cocaine, marijuana or were involved in any other illicit activity.
The
Goose Bay and Kingston also reportedly pulled up alongside one vessel
that Jamaican officials said had a “retired senior political figure on
board.”
The Goose Bay and Kingston are Kingston-class maritime
coastal defence vessels that are much smaller than the navy’s frigates
and destroyers, crewed almost entirely by reservists, and generally used
for patrolling Canada’s coasts.
It was only the next day, when
the head of the Jamaican coast guard contacted Canadian authorities to
complain, that defence officials realized the Goose Bay and Kingston had
been in Jamaican territory and not international waters.
“HMCS
Goose Bay and Kingston inadvertently conducted live weapons training and
other maritime operations in Jamaican territorial waters,” the document
reads, “in contravention of international maritime law.”
The mistake was quickly attributed to the Canadian vessels’ maps.
“This
was an oversight,” according to the documents’ talking points prepared
in case media got wind of the story. “The ships were operating with
navigation charts that did not accurately reflect the territorial waters
of Jamaica. Consequently, the ships’ captains thought they were in
international waters when they conducted the exercises.”
The notes
go on to say that the Canadian Forces had “amended their navigational
charts to accurately reflect Jamaica’s claimed territorial waters, and
future deployments of ships and aircraft to the region will ensure the
correct charts are used to ensure that nothing similar happens in the
future.”
There was no explanation as to why the ships had the incorrect maps.
Canadian
military vessels and aircraft aren’t strangers to the Caribbean,
particularly since the Conservative government first launched Canada’s
involvement in U.S.-led anti-drug trafficking efforts in 2006.
Canada’s
involvement there and throughout much of the Western hemisphere has
grown substantially over the intervening years, with Canadian
surveillance aircraft, naval vessels and even submarines an increasingly
common sight during interdiction missions.
Documents obtained by
Postmedia News indicate much of this “larger, more robust contribution”
to the U.S.-led war on drugs has been driven by the military itself,
which has seen the mission as a key opportunity in the aftermath of
Afghanistan.
National Defence reports that the total cost of
Operation Caribbe has increased from $25.3 million in 2008-09 to an
estimated $282.2 million this year, reflecting that increased
involvement as more military assets are dedicated to the mission.
(Officially,
National Defence says the actual cost of participating in Operation
Caribbe was $7.4 million in 2008-09 and $9.6 million this year because
the rest of the costs would have been incurred whether the mission was
undertaken or not.)
This expanded role, which has gone largely unreported, has included
some prickly legal questions beyond the actions of the HMCS Goose Bay
and Kingston.
In 2010, for example, the Conservative government
agreed to let armed U.S. Coast Guard boarding teams ride in Canadian
military vessels despite what was described in internal notes as “the
unique nature of this arrangement and complex legal issues.”
More
recent briefing notes have indicated an interest in having Canadian
authorities actually boarding vessels suspected of illicit activities
and making arrests, which would raise other legal questions.
A
federal government program designed to send military-grade tactical gear
to Latin America, including boots, pistol holsters and boats, to help
battle organized crime groups was scrapped last month after questions
about its legality were raised.
The Defence Department briefing
documents estimate that transnational criminal organizations in the
region are worth more than $40 billion US, with cocaine being their main
source of income.
The organized crime groups are a “corrosive”
threat to governments and populations throughout the Americas,
particularly in Central American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala
and Panama, the documents add.
Canada’s involvement in tackling
this threat started in 2006 with the deployment of a maritime patrol
aircraft to the region after the U.S. military diverted half of its
surveillance planes to the Middle East and the Dutch retired its fleet
of patrol aircraft.
The Conservative government has made the Western hemisphere one of Canada’s foreign policy priorities.
