Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Canadian government's efforts to curb piracy on the high seas have proven so futile that a "gone-fishing" sign appears on Davy Jones' Locker every time a Canadian warship appears in the seas off Somalia to join in the fight against Somali pirates.
That fight originally showed some promise of sweeping the pirates from the sea. The HMCS Winnipeg, which patrolled the waters off the Somali coast for months, did brave work in that elusive war and would have continued to do so except it became too good at it. In the spring of 2009, it thwarted a pirate attack on a Norwegian oil tanker in the Gulf, hunted down the pirate boat and captured the brigands aboard.
This was more success than Ottawa could bear under its catch-and-release policy of dealing with pirates. Fearful of violating international regulations by charging the pirates under Canadian law, the politicians and bureaucrats ordered HMCS Winnipeg to release them. All pirates, said Ottawa, unless they were caught in the act, were to be released to go a-pirating again. "No detainees would be taken."
The Ottawa milquetoasts who decided to take no prisoners were moved neither by a UN resolution calling for "all states" to pursue and prosecute the Somali pirates, nor by the example set by Canada's allies in the Somali seas. French and American warships and commandoes both stopped and boarded pirate ships, defending themselves with deadly force and delivering captured pirates to African or European jurisdictions for trial.
Canada did nothing. This same hesitation can be seen in Ottawa's wrestling with the problem of what to do about boatloads of illegal Tamil immigrants from entering Canada. Once they are in Canadian territorial waters, they become entitled to all the protections and benefits guaranteed to them by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This makes deporting them time-consuming, expensive and unfair to refugees who go through legitimate channels.
The obvious answer is to intercept and turn back the ships on the high seas before they enter Canadian waters. The Americans and Australians do this already, but Ottawa's hand-wringers cringe at the thought of a possible violation of international law and of the snakeheads' charter-given right to smuggle people. Life on the open sea, it seems, is free and fair sailing. Ho! Ho! Ho! It's a pirate's life for me. (Snakeheads also welcome.)
- by Tom Oleson
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 11, 2010 H2
Source: Winnipeg Free Press