Tuesday, December 07, 2010

Library of Parliament Legislative Summary of Keeping Canadians Safe (Protecting Borders) Act

The Library of Parliament recently published a Legislative Summary of Bill S-13: Keeping Canadians Safe (Protecting Borders) Act:

"Bill S-13 implements the Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America, which was signed on 26 May 2009 (...)"

"The agreement makes permanent a joint Canada–US pilot program – referred to as 'Shiprider' – which was created in 2005 to address security concerns along the maritime border. Shiprider enabled armed officers from the United States Coast Guard and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to jointly patrol shared waterways and to continue to easily pursue suspects from one country to the other. Furthermore, it allowed each government to confer upon the other country’s participating law enforcement officers the authority of peace officers in order to facilitate the enforcement of their respective laws across the international border (...)"

"The purpose of the agreement is to provide the parties with additional means in shared waterways to prevent, detect, suppress, investigate and prosecute criminal offences or violations of law, including, but not limited to, illicit drug trade, migrant smuggling, trafficking of firearms, the smuggling of counterfeit goods and money, and terrorism. The Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement operations under the agreement are to be intelligence-driven, based on joint Canada–US threat and risk assessment and coordinated with existing cooperative cross-border policing programs and activities."

"In order for the agreement to be brought into force, both Canada and the United States must complete internal processes after signing the international agreement. In Canada, this requires that implementing legislation be introduced in Parliament and be passed by the House of Commons and the Senate."

It is possible to follow the progress of the bill via the LEGISinfo website. A similar bill was introduced in the previous session of Parliament but it never went past first reading in the House of Commons. This new bill was introduced in the Senate where it is currently in second reading.

Labels: , , , ,

Bookmark and Share Subscribe
posted by Michel-Adrien at 7:24 pm

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home