The Dominion - Matthew Davidson

Cameras, Cops and Crime

dawn — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 11:43:08 +0000

Police, business and the city of Peterborough collude for more closed-circuit television cameras

PETERBOROUGH—Even though surveillance cameras seem to be everywhere these days, their effectiveness in ensuring safety and lowering crime rates is still contested. That debate is heating up in Peterborough, Ontario, where city council recently considered joining the ranks of other medium-sized cities in Ontario that have installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras.

On Monday, June 20, the Peterborough-Lakefield Police Service made a presentation to the Peterborough city council, requesting support for a plan to install 12 closed-circuit television security cameras in the downtown core. The following week, council debated the request, which would see the initial cost of the cameras be provided by a Civil Remedies Grant Program from the Ontario Attorney General's office.

On top of the initial $150,000 grant, the proposal would require the city to shell out an additional $5,000 each year for continued operation of a system that opponents and even some of its backers admit may not prevent crime.

A number of other medium-sized municipalities, such as Cornwall, Belleville and Barrie have already installed CCTV cameras with funds from the same grant, and it is expected that other towns and cities will follow suit. The city of Barrie, which only has six cameras, spends double what Peterborough proposes to spend on the operation and maintenance of its cameras.

Despite the increasingly widespread use of this surveillance technology in Ontario, Peterborough residents are questioning the value of being watched around the clock. Some of these opponents are concerned about the general privacy implications of such cameras, making reference to the dystopian police-state vision of author George Orwell.

Other concerns are much more immediate, like those of one Peterborough homeowner who asked to remain anonymous. She noted that in her experience working at a women’s clinic in another city, cameras near the clinic became a barrier to women accessing important services. Similar services, such as the Kawartha Sexual Assault Center, are located in Peterborough's downtown core, and she is concerned that such services may be forced to move to more inaccessible locations if the cameras are installed.

Some backers of the plan appear to be banking on the cameras' ability to simply displace crime and other "antisocial behaviour" to other less-visible areas of town. Councillor Bill Juby stated that pushing crime out of the downtown core and over to the next street would be a good start.

This seemed to spark some outrage in the packed council hall, with one attendee shouting that he lived on that next street. The approval came despite 13 presentations opposed to the cameras, and only two in favour.

The two people who spoke in favour of more cameras downtown were both board members of the Downtown Business Improvement Area (DBIA). In A Report on Camera Surveillance in Canada, prepared by the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queens University, it was found that local Business Improvement Associations are largely responsible for the proliferation of cameras, with the political impetus and funding often coming from them.

The same report found “camera surveillance has never been extensively debated as a national policy issue.” What doesn't happen nationally, however, is unfolding on the local level, as illustrated by events in Peterborough.

In an interview, Paul Raino of the Peterborough DBIA stated that "people shouldn’t be overly concerned” about being watched by cameras, noting the “international dangers out there.”

While acknowledging that the cameras will likely not act as a deterrent to crime, Raino thinks that they are a good idea, saying that the DBIA stands behind the idea in order to “support the police.”

According to Peterborough Police Chief Murray Rodd, the Peterborough-Lakefield Police Service made the request to city council on behalf of the DBIA, though he denied that the police were doing the bidding of business at the expense of other communities. Rodd maintained that regardless of the concerns brought up in regards to the system, “New tools will always help the police do their job.”

Redge Smith, who works in Peterborough's downtown core and attended the meeting at city hall, disagrees, arguing that these tools will be disproportionately used against marginalized communities. When interviewed a few weeks after the council debate, he also spoke of the lack of consultation with people who may be impacted, including downtown residents, people who work downtown, the homeless and others who shop and visit the downtown area.

The report given to city council is endorsed only by the police and the DBIA, and indicates no other consultation.

“There is a shockingly transparent partnership between political power in the city, businesses and the police,” said Smith. The money could be much better spent to address underlying causes of crime, says Smith, such as poverty and marginalization. “Instead, it is being used to watch us.”

Matthew Davidson is a community organizer based in Peterborough, Ontario.

Surveillance

Enriched Hypocrisy

Moira Peters — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:40:37 +0000

Before criticizing Iran's nuke program, Canada should look within

PETERBOROUGH—Eight of the world’s most powerful leaders are meeting in Huntsville, Ontario, this June to discuss Iran’s nuclear power industry. Concerned over Tehran’s enrichment of uranium, Prime Minister Stephen Harper intends to use Canada’s leadership of the Group of Eight (G8) to push for sanctions against the Middle Eastern country. Anti-nuclear activists, citing the prominence and recent growth of Canada's own nuclear industry, are pointing out contradictions between domestic policy and Harper's intentions at the G8.

Reacting to Tehran’s February 9 announcement that Iran had successfully enriched uranium at its Natanz nuclear facility south of Tehran, Harper announced in a February press release his intentions to push the G8 to adopt harsher policies against Iran. “Canada will continue to work with our allies to find strong and viable solutions, including sanctions, to hold Iran to account.”

Harper said he aimed to reach an agreement amongst the G8 countries prior to the G20 meetings, as “the sting of a co-ordinated approach is always felt more strongly.”

Canada hopes China, also a nuclear supplier and one of Iran’s leading trading partners, won’t want to risk isolation from the other major industrialized economies and will therefore be pressured into supporting sanctions. (A similar strong-arm tactic was used against Russia in 1997 to gain support for the G7-led invasion of Serbia.)

Two days after Tehran's February 9 announcement, General Electric (GE) was awarded permission to enrich uranium in Peterborough, Ontario—an activity in which the provincial government had invested $15 million last November.

Peterborough’s GE plant, located in the heart of the city, already produces nuclear materials in partnership with the Japanese company Hitachi. GE-Hitachi submitted an environmental assessment proposal in 2007 to produce "low enriched uranium fuel bundles." This would require an upgrade of the plant’s status to “nuclear installation,” in turn requiring higher insurance costs.

Residents are concerned. The facility is immediately adjacent to residential areas and the Prince of Wales Elementary School, where 120 parents showed up to the only public meeting on the issue. Notice was given to parents just two days before the meeting, while residents were not informed at all.

The Environmental Assessment Report (EAR) submitted by GE stated the facility is located among “the most vulnerable catchments in the city for floods.” (The facility had in fact flooded during a city-wide flood in 2002.) The EAR also noted that in two years out of ten, water contamination from radiation reached a level 20 per cent above Health Canada’s 2006 safety levels. At the January hearing on the EAR, it was also noted that radiation contamination levels in the air at the plant had been steadily increasing over the past few years.

None of the parents, nor any other residents interviewed for this article, had been aware of this. All expressed the assumption that governmental regulations would keep them safe.

At the public hearing on GE's submission (which was scheduled for the afternoon of a weekday in Ottawa), the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC—the federal nuclear regulating agency) ruled in favour of GE-Hitachi’s proposal, in spite of a number of written submissions from Peterborough residents to the CNSC, opposing the the proposal.

According to The Arthur, Trent University’s student newspaper, Canadian government approval of a nuclear plant is a “slap in the face” to the residents of the City of Peterborough, given the success of a recent mass mobilization against uranium mining. In 2008, local organizing succeeded in having the city council pass a motion calling for a moratorium on the mining of uranium in Sharbot Lake, 150km to the east. The Arthur wrote that some Peterborough residents felt the Sharbot Lake ruling should have been an indictment of the entire nuclear industry.

According to Roy Brady, an activist with anti-nuclear group Safe and Green Energy (SAGE), if Canada is serious about nuclear non-proliferation, all aspects of the uranium cycle must be examined, including our own domestic uses.

This was not the case for GE, Brady said in an interview, given the proposed plant’s environmental assessment states that GE lacks a decommissioning plan.

In his recent book, Atomic Accomplice, Paul McKay, founding editor of the now-defunct (and Peterborough-published) Nuclear Free Press, said Canadian-built CANDU reactors were designed as part of the infamous Manhattan Project in the development of the nuclear bomb. The CANDU reactors produce more plutonium, the main reactive material in the nuclear bomb, than any other reactor type. The uranium bundles to be produced in Peterborough are destined for such CANDU reactors.

Craig Severence, who recently authored Business Risks and Costs of Nuclear Power, in lambasting the economics of the nuclear industry, pointed out the only “legitimate” reason to enrich uranium is for use in a nuclear power plant.

“The continued promotion and sale worldwide of civilian nuclear reactors gives nations the excuse to operate uranium enrichment programs,” Severence wrote in his report, pointing to Iran as an example.

According to McKay, Iran's nuclear ambitions can even be linked to Canada's export of nuclear technology to India, one of Iran's regional rivals. Canada provided India with nuclear material despite knowledge that the country was attempting to build an atomic bomb—which India certainly did, conducting the first successful test in 1974.

Critics of Canadian foreign policy point out that despite commonly-held beliefs, Canada's non-proliferation record is questionable. Yves Engler noted one example of this in his book, Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, stating that Canadian military jets stationed in Europe were armed with nuclear warheads during the Cold War—even after all American nuclear silos were removed from the country. As McKay said, “Canada’s nuclear record is far from innocent.”

Leading up to the G8 summit in Huntsville this summer, Canadians might wonder if the G8 would be worrying about nuclear non-proliferation issues now had countries like Canada kept a distance from nuclear trade with the Middle East in the first place.

The hope among nuclear critics is for G8 and G20 countries that have strong nuclear industries to realize how closely their nuclear programs play into Iran's.

Matthew Davidson is a student of history and international development at Trent University. He is actively engaged with both anti-nuclear and G8 resistance organizing in Peterborough.

Nuclear Bud

Nuclear Kids