Auditor General Sheila Fraser has delivered a hard-hitting report criticizing Canada's anti-terrorism initiatives.
Fraser says there are "serious weaknesses" in the country's emergency response and airport security screening systems.
She also cites inefficiencies in controlling the issuing of passports.
It's the latest in a series of critiques against national initiatives intended to beef up Canada's ability to defend against terrorism, following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
Fraser finds that three-and-a-half years after those attacks, fake bombs and guns are getting through airport screeners.
"Last year, I said Sept. 11, 2001 changed our perception of how safe we are and led to higher expectations for our security," she said. "The government still has work to do to meet those expectations."
Federal officials said they've been working on tightening passport procedures to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on Canadian travel documents.
But Fraser says the Passport Office has been more focused on quicker service to cut backlogs than on improving its security measures.
Criminals may be obtaining Canadian passports because of a Passport Office (recently renamed Passport Canada) rife with inadequate watch lists, outdated technology and poor record-checking, says Fraser.
Watch lists are supposed to include names of people wanted by police, serving sentences or on parole. But Fraser says the lists are incomplete.
"There are too many weaknesses, and risks are heightened because of those weaknesses. And the potential is there for abuse," says Fraser.
She also found that the office hasn't come up with ways to check people's identity data on supporting documents like birth and citizenship certificates against the original sources of those documents.
"It's as if 9/11 never happened," reports CTV's Mike Duffy in Ottawa. "This is a damning indictment of a lackadaisical approach, and it couldn't come at a worse time," he says, referring to new border security measures the U.S. will announce today for Canadians wanting to travel south of the border.
"Their embassy will be reading this report and shaking its head saying, 'these guys really don't get it,'" says Duffy.
When it come to Canada's airports, Fraser says some security programs are going well, such as a $1-billion project to detect explosives in suitcases at airports.
But screening for other "threat" objects like knives or guns can't be judged because that information is being kept secret.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority sends people carrying phony bombs, knives and guns through security to check the system's effectiveness.
But Fraser says she's barred from reporting the results of those tests because the authority says that information is classified.
Fraser also found a big hole when it comes to training police, firefighters and medical personnel to deal with disasters.
She says fewer than 200 of 6,000 emergency personnel have been trained, and that there's a lack of funding to train them.
The report has also found inadequacies in Canada's ability to stage disaster exercises -- ironically as massive terrorism drills are set to take place in North America, involving Canada, the U.S. and Britain.
Fraser's report comes a day after Anne McLellan was officially sworn in as Canada's minister of public safety.
McLellan said we've come a long way since Sept. 11 in our readiness to defend against attacks, but Fraser has accused the Liberals of failing to learn any intelligence lessons.
She has revealed in the past that 4,500 workers in five of our biggest airports have criminal associations, and that the majority of these workers have gone undetected by the RCMP.
Other findings by the auditor general:
- Ottawa still has no plans to deal with a major power outage, two years after a blackout left much of Ontario and the northeast United States in darkness;
- a radar system designed to watch ships could cost five times as much as originally planned, and still may not work well; and
- a $43 million radar system to monitor Canada's coasts could end up costing as much as $220 million to complete.
With files from the Canadian Press
