A decade after 9/11, Canada is paying billions for extra security at the expense of national childcare and other social programs, but it’s a bill that has to be paid, argues the government.
The Rideau Institute released a new report Wednesday that tabulates extra security costs since Sept. 11, 2001, and estimates Canada spent an extra $92 billion on national security since the attacks.
That’s money not spent on a national drug plan or supports for the economy, said Steven Staples, president of the Rideau Institute.
“When you look at the costs, you have to kind of put it in perspective,” said Staples.
The report, called “The Cost of 9/11: Tracking the Creation of a National Security Establishment,” calculates that in the current fiscal year, Canada will spend double what it would have—$34 billion rather than $17 billion—on national security due to increases related to 9/11.
“We think it’s a very high level, for sure, and we look at the opportunity cost,” said Staples.
Staples said extra spending has resulted in additional departments, bureaucracy, and private interests coming together to form a national security establishment. That establishment aims to perpetuate defence spending that Canadians don’t get a say in, he said, like whether to buy two fleets of military transport aircraft rather than light rail transit systems.
“That kind of choice is rarely put before Canadians.”
A Mandate for Security
But Candice Hoeppner, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, disagrees. While she doesn’t refute the report’s figures or the opportunity cost, she said Canadians did get to make a choice and they did so in the last election.
“We’ve run on a certain set of policies that don’t include some of those very very expensive social programs,” she said.
Hoeppner said the government stands behind its record on national security and that they’ve spent the money needed to make up for inadequate defence budgets under previous governments.
“We’ve certainly done things very differently,” she said. “We’re not going to try to save a buck on the back of our men and women in uniform.”
Hoeppner said Canadians showed their support for that position in the last election knowing full well the Conservatives’ position on national security.
She also argued that social programs mean little if the basic security of Canadians is not guaranteed. Despite the fact Canada hasn’t faced a terrorist attack since 9/11, there have been plots to do so and threats from terrorist groups. She pointed to the Toronto 18—an al Qaeda terrorist cell that was based in Canada and planned a series of attacks, including truck bombs—as an example.
“These things are still happening,” she said. “Any time a government thinks it can relax and not worry about a terrorist attack, I think it’s foolishness.”
Goblins under the Bed
But Staples said vague threats are difficult to quantify while the impacts of additional social spending are not. He said Canada is getting into a situation where the government thinks “there is a goblin under every bed.”
“The government will keep spending and spending to get these goblins.”
But when asked if there was an appropriate balance between the amount of money spent on social programs and national security, he would only say that the benefits of health care were demonstrable.
But if too much money is being spent on security, Staples should spell out where to trim costs, argued terrorism expert David Harris, director of the International Intelligence Program of INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc.
“It’s tremendously easy to play critic without accountability and without specifying in detail those amounts, areas, and programs to be cut,” he said.
“There certainly is an opportunity cost—any dollar of government expenditure to any end has one. To make that observation about opportunity cost is interesting but tells us nothing.”
Harris said one point overlooked in the Rideau Institute’s tabulations was the impact of defence cuts south of the border. While Canada could once rely on the U.S. to assume an expansive surveillance and security effort for the North American continent, current budget cuts have marked the end of that era.
“Some of the very social programs of which the institute understandably speaks of so warmly, have in the past been affordable because the United States taxpayer has implicitly assumed a great deal of the cost of Canada’s defence,” he said.
Harris argued that in the face of those cuts, Canada must be prepared to take greater responsibility for its own national security.
He said Canada is also struggling to cover internal security issues that never existed before. Those include surveillance associated with groups attempting to recruit for terrorist organizations in Canada.
“We have continual warning of a succession of Canadian Muslim moderates, who frequently—at risk to themselves—warn of substantial and not altogether unsuccessful efforts to radicalize Muslim youth.”
Harris noted that Al Qaeda’s chief operational strategic thinker, Abu Bakr Naji, has called for the infiltration of western security and economic organizations.
Sunday will mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the deaths of around 3,000 people. Commemoration events are planned throughout the U.S. and elsewhere around the world.
On Thursday, Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence, will deliver the keynote Canadian address to a 9/11 Commemoration Summit in Washington, D.C.
