# "Whistleblower" on CTV



## NavComm (25 May 2005)

Did anyone catch the story (CTV news last night) of the young man who moved to Canada from France when he was 9 years old and is having problems with his security clearance? He thinks it's unfair that his application should be held up just because he wasn't born in Canada and has lived here for half his life. (no mention of whether he continues to have ties in any foreign countries)

Seems like a case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" to me.

I realize this young man more than likely doesn't pose any security threat to Canada. But can you imagine the hue and cry of the media, the finger pointing in Ottawa and the outrage of the Canadian people if we didn't  investigate (for the purpose of security) all people applying to the military? Gawd forbid if somewhere down the road a young soldier emerges who was indoctrinated into some Al-Quaeda type organization from early childhood, applied for and gained entry into our military, then passed our military secrets on to terrorists?

When I filled out my application I was given a list of countries and asked to mark off any I'd visited, had relatives in, lived in, etc. I would fully expect if I had family ties, investments or had lived in many of these countries, my security clearance would be still winding it's way through the various divisions and departments of CSIS. And rightfully so!

Personally, I'd rather see us err on the side of caution than cave in to media pressure and regret it later.

Here's the story:

Whistleblower: Post-9/11 rules delaying army recruits

Kathy Tomlinson and Margo Harper, CTV News

Marc Bucaya is a frustrated Canadian soldier in waiting.

The 17-year-old, from Toronto, dreamed of a career in the Canadian military. He and his family were thrilled when they heard that this country wants to hire 10,000 new soldiers and reservists. But when Bucaya went to sign up, he was told that he faced a possible wait of two years before he could even begin basic training.

Because Bucaya was born in France and came to Canada fewer than 10 years ago, new post 9/11 rules make him a "security risk."

That means he needs a special clearance to join the military. And the back-log in getting those clearances can run two years, or longer.

"I was nine years old when I came to Canada and right now I should be able to join cause I have no criminal record," says Bucaya.

His mom Tess Abad is equally frustrated.

"He was so excited when he was applying," says Abad.

"If you are 17 years old and never had a real job and you are excited, all the energy is there and then you get so disappointed."

That disappointment is being felt by hundreds of potential young recruits every year, say insiders in Canada's military recruiting offices.

Because of the new rules, all Canadians in the country less than 10 years must go through the security clearance process.

Recruiters estimate that up to a third of all new applicants, especially in diverse cities like Toronto and Vancouver, are being turned away because of the backlog.

It represents a tremendous loss of potential for Canada's military -- at the very time the force is looking to expand and represent the changing face of Canada.

"To have a basic recruit having to wait up to two years for a security clearance is absolutely ridiculous," says Scott Taylor of the military magazine Esprit de Corps.

"To have this type of draconian measures keeping everybody out of the system is ridiculous and that's what they have to wake up and realize they need to apply some common sense here."

Taylor says the Canadian military will not be able to meet its current recruiting with the current restrictions. And he says there are plenty of internal security mechanisms in place to deal with an unsuitable soldier.

"They can weed them out once they are in the system," explains Taylor.

"Even if they had evil intent and wanted to join for nefarious purposes once they get into the militia and into the regular force they find out they are only being trained on a very secure supervised setting and they don't have access to their weapons."

The minister in charge of expanding Canada's fighting forces, Bill Graham, didn't want to answer questions on the military recruiting back-log. He referred Whistleblower to the Minister in charge of CSIS, Anne McLellan.

McLellan defended the system of checks, even for potential soldiers who came to this country when they were children.

"The reality is we have to be thorough, because we cannot afford mistakes," says McLellan.

"What we need to do is ensure that we have the human resources and the technical resources to do the security checks as quickly as possible but you must never sacrifice the thoroughness of the security check."

Prospective soldiers and their families don't buy the minister's explanation.

Anna Belyntseva and her family immigrated from Russia eight years ago. Belyntseva's older son got into the Canadian navy before 9/11. But her youngest son Nikolei, now 17, is now caught up in the bureaucratic black-hole of the security check. His mother says her son's dreams of a life of service are now on ice.

"It was awful. It drove him crazy," says Belyntseva of her son's experience at the recruiting office.

"He said Mom why did they do this to me, why didn't they mention this before? He was only nine years old when we came here. I don't understand what kind of checks they are doing. He was in elementary school when we moved here ... are they checking with the teacher?"


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## beach_bum (25 May 2005)

I watched that as well.  Interesting how people seem to believe it's their "right" to serve.  It's not a right it's a privilege.  Sadly, we don't all get what we want.


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## DBA (25 May 2005)

This seems to come up all the time with people wondering why background checks take so long. If they ask a Canadian a question during a background check that individual can be prosecuted for uttering a false statement if they lie. If they directly contact a foreign national there is nothing to back up that person's truthfullness. More sources of information must be used including going through that foreign national's own government. You can probably guess what priority one country's government gives to helping do background checks for another. So yes it's a lot faster if everything involved in dong a background check involves Canadian sources.


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## Pieman (25 May 2005)

This is bull. I studied outside of Canada and had to do a pre-security clearance. So I had to wait a long 8 months for that to clear. I survived the wait because I want in no matter what,   so will this kid if he really wants in that bad.

I can relate to his frustration and disappointment, but that is life. If he wants in so bad the two years (if it really does that that long for him) will fly by. 

The only real crime here is that the people doing the security clearances don't have enough resources to conduct them at a reasonable rate.


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## Slim (25 May 2005)

I have little or no sympathy for this kid, his mom or the press who once again rally to our cause!


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## NavComm (25 May 2005)

Pieman said:
			
		

> The only real crime here is that the people doing the security clearances don't have enough resources to conduct them at a reasonable rate.



Yup. I agree. It is unfortunate and I'm sorry for the long delay for you.


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## Pieman (25 May 2005)

> Yup. I agree. It is unfortunate and I'm sorry for the long delay for you.


No worries, I am almost at the end of the appication process now. Just waiting to hear back from the selection boards.


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## canadianblue (25 May 2005)

I also saw the report on CTV. I think that it's just part of life, the safety of the country must always come first, and the forces have to make sure that their are no security risks. Perhaps those who want to join the forces should wait a few years till the policy doesn't apply to them.


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## aesop081 (25 May 2005)

If this kid expects sympathy, he can find it between shit and syphylis in the dictionary.  I am a serving member of the CF, have been for over 12 years now, and my application for level 3 has been in the pipe for going on 2 years  !! Vigilance demands thet these clearances be done properly.  As mentioned by others, it is sad that the people doing theses checks do not have the resources to do it more efficiently but thats the way it is.


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## childs56 (25 May 2005)

2 years to wait, well lets see, it took me about a year and a half to get into the reserves, lost paper work and stuff, after 5 years in the reserves applied to the regs and waited another year or so for that to go thrue. so really waiting two years to get into the regs really isnt all that bad. if you want to complain then you can always use the door and leave. the system may be mismanaged and stuff but if you really want to be a member then you  should realize that the military has standards that have to maintained. so letting in foreign nationals has to be scrutinized. if you dont like it then why even join in the first place. just my two cents


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## Cloud Cover (25 May 2005)

CTD said:
			
		

> if you want to complain then you can always use the door and leave. the system may be mismanaged and stuff but if you really want to be a member then you  should realize that the military has standards that have to maintained. so letting in foreign nationals has to be scrutinized. if you dont like it then why even join in the first place. just my two cents



LOL: While mismanagement may be the intent or perhaps even the optimal outcome for some government programs, I am sure you would agree it is not an acceptable standard for the CF.  

Look, the bottom line is this: if two years is the standard period of time to wait given the resources available, then thats way it is. Nothing can be done about that overnight.  But that standard must equate to a uniform baseline of reliability, and at that point I am willing to sacrifice the sense of entitlement supposedly owed to the many in order to have the "best of the few" putting up and shutting up and gearing up. A whiner, even a eager and patriotic whiner, is not what is required.

The requirement is one army, one standard. Nothing less will do. Nothing less should be expected.

Cheers.


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## CBH99 (25 May 2005)

Hmmmmm...

A 17yo kid is trying to join the Canadian Forces, so he can serve his country - Canada - the country he chooses to call home.  Yet, instead of encouragement and constructive suggestions, all the rank and file on this board so far have done nothing but chastised him for circumstances which are beyond his control.  (i.e., the fact that his family decided to move here from France when he was 9yo).  Way to go guys, pat yourselves on the back for that one.


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## aesop081 (25 May 2005)

CBH99 said:
			
		

> Hmmmmm...
> 
> A 17yo kid is trying to join the Canadian Forces, so he can serve his country - Canada - the country he chooses to call home.   Yet, instead of encouragement and constructive suggestions, all the rank and file on this board so far have done nothing but chastised him for circumstances which are beyond his control.   (i.e., the fact that his family decided to move here from France when he was 9yo).   Way to go guys, pat yourselves on the back for that one.



I was born outside the country as well.....i am IN the CF and i have been waitng 2 years for security clearance to get done......Yet you dont see me whining to the press do you ?  Thats why he gets no sympathy from me.

You should be able to see why we object to his whining !


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## Bruce Monkhouse (25 May 2005)

CBH99,

Although yes I am glad that he wishes to be a Canadian, that is not the point, at least to me.
Take any 17 year old and tell him to go down to Nortel/Magna /GM/ etc and apply for a job that pays equivelent and see if he/she EVER gets a phone call.

Why is it people still think the military should just sweep you off your feet?


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## Pieman (25 May 2005)

> Why is it people still think the military should just sweep you off your feet?


Its much more romantic that way.   ;D


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## Michael Dorosh (25 May 2005)

CBH99 said:
			
		

> Hmmmmm...
> 
> A 17yo kid is trying to join the Canadian Forces, so he can serve his country - Canada - the country he chooses to call home.  Yet, instead of encouragement and constructive suggestions, all the rank and file on this board so far have done nothing but chastised him for circumstances which are beyond his control.  (i.e., the fact that his family decided to move here from France when he was 9yo).  Way to go guys, pat yourselves on the back for that one.



I agree completely.   I got into the reserves in less than 3 months back in 87.  I was a university student and needed the money.  How many 17 year olds are going to stick around for two years?

They did that to my dad - in 1960 or so he tried to join the regs - there were no openings for Gunners right then (he was a Bombardier in the Militia) so he went into Seismic.  Its 2005 and he is still working seismic, despite reaching 65 last year - mostly cause he loves it.  Never looked back.

A 17 year old ending high school, getting into University or looking for a full time job isn't going to wait two years.  And they wonder why the numbers are down?

What exactly does a security check involve and why could they be done in 3 months 15 years ago and in 2 years and up now?


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## Bruce Monkhouse (25 May 2005)

Quote,
_They did that to my dad - in 1960 or so he tried to join the regs - there were no openings for Gunners right then (he was a Bombardier in the Militia) so he went into Seismic.  Its 2005 and he is still working seismic, despite reaching 65 last year - mostly cause he loves it.  Never looked back._

...and never went on national news to cry about it either I'll bet.


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## Cloud Cover (25 May 2005)

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> What exactly does a security check involve and why could they be done in 3 months 15 years ago and in 2 years and up now?



Having just had the musical ride in my house last week asking questions about an applicant to whom I agreed to be a reference, I could tell you but then a black chopper would be over your house and mine.

If this is an indication, the investigator was a retired RCMP earning a little post retirement income, one little itsy bitsy file at a time. I thought computers and such were supposed to speed this sort of thing up, not slow it down.  

Seriously, I know one of the impediments is privacy legislation, both public and private. It seems corporations and different levels of government do not like to share information with the feds because doing so exposes them to liability that didn't exist 15 years ago for you Mike, and 20 years ago for me. It seems Private is no longer a rank, it's a right. [IIRC the entire recruiting process for YTEP took about 2 weeks before they put you on a plane to Greenwood and a bus to the Cornwallis hack.]
Cheers.


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## Michael Dorosh (25 May 2005)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Quote,
> _They did that to my dad - in 1960 or so he tried to join the regs - there were no openings for Gunners right then (he was a Bombardier in the Militia) so he went into Seismic.  Its 2005 and he is still working seismic, despite reaching 65 last year - mostly cause he loves it.  Never looked back._
> 
> ...and never went on national news to cry about it either I'll bet.



Nope - I shouldn't have said "did that" to my dad - it was a legitimate case of there not being a vacancy.  I meant to use him as an example to illustrate that there is nothing impetuous there - he just needed a job, and wasn't going to wait for his trade to open up.  He did pretty good for himself otherwise, I suspect a lot of potential recruits know that from the outset.  Too bad.

What could a 17 year old Al Queda operative really do while taking his basic training?  I mean, can't they grant conditional security clearances to troops in training?  Too easy to boot him out while he's on his course if he's thought to be a risk.


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## Britney Spears (25 May 2005)

> Too easy to boot him out while he's on his course if he's thought to be a risk.



Or report him to the authorities, seeing as how we don't really like Al Qaeda operatives much around here.......

I am curious about the breakdown of Reg vs Reserve when it comes to these kinds of problems. How many of these sob stories are about reservists? 

Man, do I ever have an awesome story about my own personal recruiting process/security check.....


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## Michael Dorosh (25 May 2005)

Britney Spears said:
			
		

> Man, do I ever have an awesome story about my own personal recruiting process/security check.....



Spill it, before the morning sickness overcomes you again....


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## Cloud Cover (25 May 2005)

Michael Dorosh said:
			
		

> What could a 17 year old Al Queda operative really do while taking his basic training?



Shit ... I'll take the bait: kill a medic like that 17 year AQ op did in A'Stan?


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## nULL (26 May 2005)

> What could a 17 year old Al Queda operative really do while taking his basic training?  I mean, can't they grant conditional security clearances to troops in training?  Too easy to boot him out while he's on his course if he's thought to be a risk.



Upon thinking about it, quite a bit. I remember being on the rifle range for the first time a few months ago, holding a C7 loaded with a 30 round magazine, and thinking _"I wonder if one of the training staff by the MLVW has a loaded rifle on hand in case one of the recruits goes nuts?"_ 

Speaking from my limited experiences only, if a 17 year old recruit (who was also an Al Queda operative) were in that position, he could potentially wipe out his senior course staff and impede the training of all those recruits who would follow him. Such an incident would surely be detriment to the Canadian Forces recruiting as a whole, and would give cause for the civilian population to reconsider their own safety, thereby affecting government foreign policy.... 

...or perhaps I think I too much.


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## Bruce Monkhouse (26 May 2005)

...no, I think your thought process, in this instance ;D, is fine.


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## Michael Dorosh (26 May 2005)

Good points, I appreciate the replies.  Might keep the range safety staff on their toes though eh....

I guess I was thinking more of intelligence gathering rather than sabotage.   I mean, backwards and forwards action of a C7, or how to do WW II frontal attacks on a Soviet trench system is stuff you can read on the internet anyway....


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## Acorn (26 May 2005)

There've always been bottlenecks in the system, but they were exacerbated by the decree that CSIS would be the only agency to conduct the clearances (the CF had responsibility for our own until about 10 years ago - used to be an SIU job). Of course CSIS didn't get any extra manpower or budget. Add to that the difficulty of conducting the clearance process for those with less than 10 years landed in Canada. Unfortunately, a cookie-cutter legislation/regulation for this creates absurdities at the outside ends of the spectrum, like the 18-year old with 9 years in Canada who suffers because CSIS has difficulty investigating his activities 10 years previously - when he was 8.

Like the whole immigration process (or the CF entry medical process) that is much maligned, it requires nothing less than manpower, pure and simple. 

Acorn


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## George Wallace (26 May 2005)

Another point for you Michael, is the fact that today one needs a minimum Security Clearance of Secret to operate some of our equipment.  When you and I both joined, way back when, very few had Security Clearances above Confidential.  Today, everyone needs a much higher clearance, and with the requirements of higher security Clearances to operate TCCCS, we are still doing those clearances with the same amount of people who did it twenty and thirty years ago. 

I ask you to take someone you know, from outside of Canada, and try to research their past.  How much time will that take you?  Now stack your desk with six feet of files and try to sort them out.  Unless we are going to drastically increase the staff to do this, there will be no end to the back logs and in a year or two we may see the waiting times increased two or three fold.


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## NavComm (26 May 2005)

CBH99 said:
			
		

> Hmmmmm...
> 
> A 17yo kid is trying to join the Canadian Forces, so he can serve his country - Canada - the country he chooses to call home.  Yet, instead of encouragement and constructive suggestions, all the rank and file on this board so far have done nothing but chastised him for circumstances which are beyond his control.  (i.e., the fact that his family decided to move here from France when he was 9yo).  Way to go guys, pat yourselves on the back for that one.



I seem to recall a W5 or similar type show earlier this year where 2 brothers from Ontario, raised in Ontario but holidayed in the "old country" annually. One of those boys is now a U.S. prisoner because he was implicated in the plan to bomb a commuter rail system in Manilla. Anyway, the long and short is, this kid and his brother were going to Al Quada training camps while their parents thought they were just visiting with relatives! Seems they had been identified at an early age by recruiters. His father was totally flabergasted that his 'good boy' could be involved. These kids had Canadian passports and that in itself made them very desirable to the terrorists.

I am glad we take the time to check these applicants out. Unfortunately the good ones suffer for the few bad apples, but that's the world we live in today.

Also, I totally agree with the comments of other posters here that this kid is just whining to the media. What kind of soldier is he going to make? Every time he gets a blister his Mom's going to call CTV and bitch?

As far as 17 year olds not waiting around 2 years for their clearance, there are plenty of things he can do while he waits....further his education, keep fit, get a job, join the cadets, etc. Lot's of 17 year old take more than two years to accomplish goals they set for themselves. Patience is a virtue.....


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## Kat Stevens (26 May 2005)

Bruce Monkhouse said:
			
		

> Why is it people still think the military should just sweep you off your feet?



Swept of their feet? They'll never even get a reach-around... ;D

Kat


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## McAllister (26 May 2005)

I thought the 'whistleblowing' was gonna be about the grindng slow pace, not the foreign backround check.


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## c4th (27 May 2005)

I agree with Whistleblower, Scott Taylor and the kid and his family that 2 years is ridiculous.  As for serving in the military being a right or a privilege, it's crap.  Service is service.  Look it up in the dictionary.  Any youth in today's modern Canadian society who wants to do his duty by serving his country deserves a slight bit more consideration than "it's between crap and sympathy".  Anyone stating that the system is working because his or her security clearance also took two years is simply reinforcing failure.  

I, for one, hope that AQ is using operatives to infiltrate the Canadian Forces that were trained in European countries when they were under the age of ten.  If that is their grand plan then we might have a chance of winning the war on terror.  

Increasing a the bureaucracy of a system as a knee jerk reaction to a single terrorist attack on the US may look good to the press and public, but let us not forget that civilians are thick.  Does anyone really believe that a recruit sworn in on 9/10/01 with a 5-year basic security clearance is any more of a "risk" than the one applying on 9/12/01 and having to fill out a 10-year history?  I would be surprised if there was even one incident of an AQ operative being found in the recruiting system.  The screening process seemed to be good enough through two world wars, and the cold war.  Even though Britain and Ireland were targets for IRA terrorism, we kept letting the Irish in, and never changed our screening process.  Even though we took no increased security measures not one of our recruits blew up a post office , tried to assassinate a member of the monarchy, or even once wipe out a firing point on a small-arms range.

I for one have run countless ranges, both conventional and field fire.  Never have I felt a threat from any recruit I trained.  In fact the most dangerous weapons handling I ever witnessed was in the hands of a reserve engineer Captain, who undoubtedly as a requirement of his rank had an enhanced security clearance.

The point:  Bureaucracy does not serve national security or the public good.  It serves only itself.  Risk assessment should be more intelligent than a knee jerk reaction to watching CNN.


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