Intelligence report says Ottawa sees security threat in ‘terrorist travel’ by sea

A declassified intelligence report is fresh evidence the federal government is working to counter Canada's longstanding reputation as a destination for war criminals and would-be terrorists.

The March 2013 report, obtained by the National Post under access-to-information legislation, singles out human smuggling, especially by sea, as an area of "particular concern."

The sudden appearance of two ships carrying illegal migrants from war-torn Sri Lanka "focused the Canadian intelligence community's attention on human smuggling," says the Canadian Security Intelligence Assessment, previously classified top secret.

The MV Ocean Lady, carrying 76 Sri Lankans, arrived off Vancouver Island in October 2009, while the MV Sun Sea, with 492 passengers and crew, showed up in August 2010.

[ Related: Toronto becomes Canada’s first ‘sanctuary’ for illegal immigrants ]

Among the Sun Sea's passengers were 11 members of the Tamil Tigers, which fought a two-decade unsuccessful civil war to carve out a separate state on Sri Lanka, an island off the southern tip of India. The Tigers were defeated in May 2009 when their last enclave was overrun in bloody fighting.

The Tigers were deported for war crimes or belonging to an organization the Canadian government has labeled as terrorist, the Post said.

The declassified report warns Canada is "vulnerable to terrorist travel" and that the “potential for inbound travel to North America to support or participate in terrorist operations is a high priority threat to Canadian and allied national security.”

It goes on to say “illegal migration poses a range of threats to Canadian sovereignty, border security and security," the Post reported.

Canada has never had a great reputation when it comes to rooting out evildoers, as George W. Bush used to call them.

Many suspected Nazi war criminals made it into Canada after the Second World War, gaining Canadian citizenship and living unmolested for decades. If they were exposed, they tied up efforts to expel them for years in the courts.

A report earlier this year by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel gave Canada a failing grade, lumping it in with nations such as Latvia, Ukraine, Australia and Hungary as “countries in which there are no legal obstacles to the investigation and prosecution of suspected Nazi war criminals, but whose efforts [or lack thereof] have resulted in complete failure… primarily due to the absence of political will to proceed," according to the Canadian Jewish News.

Canada has also been criticized for the time it's taken to expel accused war criminals who've come from places like Rwanda and Guatemala. For example, it took a decade to deport suspected Rwandan war criminal Jean Leonard Teganya after the Immigration and Refugee Board rejected his asylum claim in 2002, the Post reported last year.

[ Related: Border agency’s ‘Most Wanted’ website threatened by privacy concerns, red tape ]

Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has created a most-wanted list of illegal immigrants, including those suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The CBSA has credited the online wanted poster compilation with helping capture several people who've ducked deportation orders, including a Sri Lankan wanted since 2006.

But the practice has been controversial. The Canadian Press reported last year that a ministerial briefing note prepared by the CBSA in advance of the list's debut warned putting deportees on a "wanted war criminals" list could put them at risk if they're deported.

Critics have warned the notoriety of individuals who end up on the list could put some at risk of torture and death when they are sent home. They also contend the most-wanted list is largely a public-relations exercise intended to reinforce the perception the Conservative government is tough on crime.

"They put more priority on the message that they were seeking to send out as opposed to the actual implementation of the policy that they were trying to achieve," immigration lawyer Lorne Waldman, who represented a Pakistani deportee on the list who then-immigration minister Jason Kenney linked to terrorism, told CP.