Boats with guns — on our lakes — Part Two

Last week, I noted that the U.S. Coast Guard was set to embark on live fire exercises on the Great Lakes with their new machine guns. Today, the Globe’s Margaret Philp goes deep on this whole subject, noting many objections by Canadians concerned about the optics, about safety, and about environmental pollution from the lead slugs fired by the training Coast Guard crews.

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“It was a big surprise on both sides of the border. At first I thought it was an Internet hoax,” said Mike Bradley, the mayor of Sarnia, Ont., who has written a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper asking him to intervene.

“The longest undefended border in the world is gone. It's passé. And this is an example of it.”

Toronto Mayor David Miller chairs a coalition of U.S. and Canadian mayors working to restore and protect the lakes.

He said the target practice violates a treaty signed after the War of 1812 that outlaws military weapons on the Great Lakes, tampering with two centuries of peaceful history.

“This is very much the wrong direction, to militarize the border between these two countries,” he said in an interview. “It's symbolically important and practically important that the border remain open and doesn't become militarized.”

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“We've spent years removing lead from the Great Lakes,” said Mary Muter, a long-time cottager and vice-president of the Georgian Bay Association, a coalition of cottage owners and boaters. “As a Canadian, these are binational waters and this is just offensive.”

Shortly after I saw the notice in the U.S. Federal Register, I asked Chris Sands about this issue. Sands is a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. He heads up the centre’s Canada Project. Here’s an edited excerpt from some e-mail exchanges we had:

On threat perception, I think that there are a couple of things at work. First, [the U.S. Department of Homeland Security] conducted an inventory of vulnerable targets and created an expansive National Critical Infrastructure Plan in 2005. Things like the Ambassador Bridge made the list, as well as (for example) the Fermi II nuclear power plant in Michigan which is right on the shores of  Lake Erie.

The US Coast Guard has responsibility to protect this infrastructure (shared with other agencies at DHS). Second, some of the shipping on the lakes, particularly of chemicals and fertilizer, is explosive and the USCG must be prepared for a lake ship being used in an attack on Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc. This may seem far-fetched, but so did planes used to attack buildings once upon a time.

Third, the lakes are not hard to cross in a small boat, and Congress is insistent that we patrol the US borders. Can the USCG rule out an individual terrorist, or human smugglers with a small boat full of illegal aliens, crossing by water? And if not, it would be irresponsible to assume that such a boat could be stopped and boarded without resistance.

Fourth, the USCG has been changing in recent years, in a process that parallels the one that various branches of the US military have undergone, and in a manner quite similar to the changes in US Customs and Border Protection. Once, USCG recruited locally and a career with the Coast Guard was stable — that is, you tended to stay on the Lakes, or on the Atlantic seaboard, or in the Gulf of Mexico if you wanted to do so. Now, there is more rotation through various duty locations for individuals in the Coast Guard, and the USCG has tried to standardize the equipment across the various classes of ships that it has in the fleet. This factor would have placed pressure to upgrade the weapons on the Great Lakes fleet.

The Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1817  [More info here](subsequently ratified by the US Senate in 1818 to give it the status of a formal treaty) was negotiated between the United States and Great Britain to end a local naval arms race following the War of 1812. It covers naval armaments (not forts on the coast) and the provisions allow for armed vessels for policing and customs purposes. The US Coast Guard is not a naval force (it does not operate in the open seas) and its ships on the Great Lakes have always been eligible to be armed — during the Prohibition era, they chased rum runners, for example. In the Great Lakes, the USCG performs many of the functions that the Border Patrol handles on land borders and so it is logical for them to carry some armaments. Given the increased risk during war time, it makes sense for the USCG to train for all eventualities.

A correspondent who serves with the Canadian Forces — and who prefers to remain anonymous — sent along some information about the guns on the Coast Guard boats:

“the USCG is planning to mount 7.62 GPMGs, but may in the future add .50cal HMGs:“