Guarding the U.S.-Canadian Border: Serious Business or a Frat Party?
Heather, as a person with 15 years of service as a Canada Customs officer, and 3 years military police prior to that, I’d like to offer a few comments on your article.
First of all, let me emphatically state that these idiots who made stupid, derogatory, and ignorant remarks are not typical of CBSA employees and are certainly not typical of Customs officers. Personally, I wrote to the minister’s office about that issue and asked that if the allegations are found to be true, that our agency summarily dismiss these employees.
As for “partying in uniform”. I wonder – if I showed you a picture of me celebrating my military basic training graduation at the Green & Gold, CFB Cornwallis, along with the other 97 members of 11 platoon, class 8837, all of us in uniform, would you have declared the entire armed forces a defunct failure? Would my active service in the Persian Gulf be any less significant in hind sight? Now I know Heather – those weren’t your words. That’s the beauty of the power of the pen, isn’t it? You can so plainly make an implication and later exercise plausible denyability because “you didn’t say that”. Just like I’m not saying you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about – accuse me of it and I’ll deny it.
As for your cross-border romance. You display a fairly typical attitude in that you don’t acknowledge the possibility that many thousands of people before you have screwed up what might have been a simple matter through their own mis-deeds. Did you ever think that the officer asking about the ring might have had experiences in the past where someone tried to sneak in a valuable ring under very similar circumstances? Are you aware that the officer was giving you an opportunity to declare, because the law says once you’ve declared there is a point of finality and subsequent discovery of that ring would make it subject to seizure?
No – I suspect that hadn’t occurred to you. You’d rather just cast dispersions at the officer and Canada Customs in general.
Now Heather, I could go on for several thousand words telling you about the 14 year old Canadian girl who I kept from getting into the hands of a 50 year old American pedophile, the several drunk drivers I have taken off the very streets that you use daily, the guns and the drugs that I have taken out of circulation. I could go on forever about all the superb work my fellow officers and I do every day Heather, but that isn’t quite the sensationalism you were striving for. So instead I’ll just proudly put on my uniform and go to work Heather, and I hope I can stop the bad guy from getting in to your community tonight.
