After a two-year investigation the RCMP has issued a report concluding that security at Canada's airports has been substantially breached by 58 organized crime groups involved in drug and human smuggling which implicates 298 current or former airline or airport employees:
Canada's airport security has been compromised by hundreds of workers who have used their security clearances to smuggle drugs and people into the country, according to a new police report. Project Spawn, a two-year RCMP inquiry into hundreds of police investigations at Canada's eight largest airports, has identified nearly 60 active gangs infiltrating airports, concentrating on Toronto's Pearson International Airport, Montreal's Trudeau International Airport and Vancouver International Airport. The Globe and Mail has obtained a 22-page declassified summary of the Project Spawn conclusions, which show the Mounties reviewed files from 2005 to 2007 and concluded that hundreds of people were suspected of involvement in smuggling during that time - 298 of whom were current or former airline employees.
Among the crime groups which successfully had infiltrated the airports was the Rizzuto crime family of the Montreal Mafia:
A groundbreaking 2006 crackdown against mobsters associated with the Rizzuto crime family revealed the extent that the Mafia had infiltrated Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport using airline employees, a catering company and baggage handlers to import cocaine. A 400-page RCMP affidavit filed in court revealed the gang relied on a corrupt customs agent. Usually, passengers arriving from overseas fill in a declaration card and pass through a primary inspection line, where a customs agent stamps the form. Depending on the stamp, some passengers submit to luggage inspection. But drug traffickers got a supply of pre-stamped declaration cards from a corrupt agent that enabled their cocaine couriers to avoid inspection.
Senator Colin Kenny aptly noted that if organized crime can infiltrate the airports, then so can terrorists: "Where you have fertile ground for organized crime, you also have fertile ground for terrorists." Kenny further was critical of Transport Canada for not implementing better internal controls and procedures to guard against breaching of the security systems:
The senator then expressed a harsh criticism of Transport Canada, which he argues should inspect airport workers on their way into and out of work. "There's no question the police involved feel that this could be shut down, and shut down firmly, if Transport Canada got off its ass."
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