Tag Archives: Canada

U.S. may turn to Canada for help with new NATO force

NATO flag flies at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels during a NATO ambassadors meeting o

By Robin Emmott and Wiktor Szary

BRUSSELS/WARSAW (Reuters) – The United States could turn to Canada to help it establish a new NATO force in eastern Europe as a deterrent against Russia because it is struggling to win support from its European allies, diplomats say.

Despite its show of force with a military exercise across eastern Europe this month that involved more than 20 NATO and partner countries, the alliance is moving slowly in its efforts to build a rotating force of 4,000 troops on its eastern flank in Poland and the Baltics.

Only Britain and Germany have said they are willing to contribute, by providing a battalion of about 1,000 troops each. The United States will provide a third battalion, leaving NATO requiring one more country to provide a fourth.

“European allies have reasons why they can’t come forward. They’re thinly stretched, at home, in Africa, in Afghanistan. They just don’t have the money,” said a senior NATO diplomat involved in the discussions.

The reluctance of some European governments to help the military build-up, the biggest since the end of the Cold War, reflects internal doubts over whether the alliance should be more focused on combating militant groups and uncontrolled flows of migrants, mainly from the Middle East and North Africa.

“There are divisions within NATO,” said Sophia Besch, a European defense expert at the London-based Centre for European Reform think tank. “Some allies feel the focus should be on the south.”

Unity is crucial for NATO as Moscow and Washington accuse one another of intimidation close to the NATO-Russia border. NATO and Russia feel threatened by each other’s large military drills and are at odds over the crisis in Ukraine.

Any sense in the United States that Europe is unwilling to pay for its own defense could be damaging. U.S. President Barack Obama has suggested European powers were “free riders” during the 2011 Libya air campaign, and U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has accused them of not paying their fair share.

A senior Polish diplomatic source familiar with the negotiations said NATO would not allow the build-up to fail as it had already been announced, and because Russia might exploit it as a sign that NATO is unwilling to defend Poland.

“The summit in Warsaw will be President Obama’s last (NATO summit) and the U.S. wants it to be a success. It will ensure that the fourth framework country is found, possibly by leaning on Canada,” the source said. “Washington will bend over backwards here.”

“PERSISTENT” PRESENCE

Former communist states in NATO want to bolster its eastern defenses without stationing large forces permanently, worried since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine that Moscow could invade Poland or the Baltic states in days.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed such an idea this week, saying he saw no threats in the region that would justify the area’s militarization.

Russia has also said the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s large-scale military exercise in eastern Europe undermines trust and security, and that it is concerned by the movement of NATO’s military infrastructure towards its border.

NATO defense ministers will next week formally agree on the plan for four battalions to be involved in the new force, part of a deterrent made up of forces on rotation and warehoused equipment ready for a rapid response force in case of attack.

That force includes air, maritime and special operations units of up to 40,000 personnel.

While saying they seek to avoid a return to the Cold War, when 300,000 U.S. service personnel were stationed in Europe, NATO generals describe it as a “persistent” but not a “permanent” presence to avoid breaking a 1997 agreement with Moscow limiting the deployment of combat forces.

Britain is likely to deploy to Estonia, Germany to Lithuania and the United States to Latvia. The United States will also supply an armored brigade to rove around the eastern flank. Only Poland appears to be left out at this stage.

While the United States is increasing its military spending in Europe to $3.4 billion in 2017, defense cuts in Italy, Belgium and France during the euro zone debt crisis complicate military planning.

France says it is focused on fighting militants in Syria and Mali, while there are also tensions with Poland’s new right-wing government, which is seeking to rescind on a $3 billion helicopter tender with Airbus <AIR.PA>, diplomats say. Airbus was provisionally selected by the previous administration.

Spain is leading NATO’s special “spearhead” force that can deploy in less than a week. Smaller countries such as Denmark say they do not have the resources to deploy a battalion.

Italy, a major buyer of gas from Russia — on which the European Union depends heavily for energy supplies — is wary of taking a tough line on Moscow.

Rome is also upset with central and eastern European states for not showing more willingness to take refugees fleeing North Africa across the Mediterranean and into Italy.

That leaves Canada, which has 220 armed forces personnel in Poland.

“Canada is actively considering options to effectively contribute to NATO’s strengthened defense and deterrence posture,” said a spokesperson for the Canadian Department of National Defence.

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz told reporters in Warsaw on Thursday he expected any problems with the NATO plan to be “resolved in a positive manner.”

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Pawel Sobczak in Warsaw, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Better weather expected to damp down Canadian wildfire

A flock of birds fly as smoke billows from the Fort McMurray wildfires in Kinosis

By Nia Williams and Eric M. Johnson

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Firefighters battling a wildfire that has threatened oil sands facilities north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, looked to cooler weather, a change in winds and the promise of rain to help them on Thursday.

A shift in wind direction from west to east is expected to push the fire back toward areas it has already burned, limiting its growth, wildfire information officer Travis Fairweather said on Thursday.

“That should hopefully result in a little less activity than we’ve seen in the last couple of days,” he said.

The fire, which hit Fort McMurray in early May, destroying entire neighborhoods, surged north on Tuesday, forcing the evacuation of 8,000 oil sand workers, destroying a work camp and prolonging a shutdown that has cut Canadian oil output by a million barrels a day.

Fairweather did not expect the fire to damage any oil sands facilities on Thursday.

The fire covered 483,084 hectares (1.2 million acres) as of Thursday morning, up some 61,000 hectares from the day before. Fairweather said cooler weather and the chance of rain on Thursday also would help contain the fire.

Some of the 90,000 evacuees who fled Fort McMurray as the massive blaze breached the city may be allowed to return as soon as June 1, officials said on Wednesday, if air quality improves and other safety conditions are met.

Some oil sands operations directly north of the city remained shuttered, although firefighters held the blaze back from Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada facilities on Wednesday.

The fire destroyed a 665-room lodge for oil sands workers on Tuesday but officials said on Wednesday they were not aware of further industry damage.

Tuesday’s evacuations were a setback for producers, suggesting production may be suspended for longer than companies and analysts had previously anticipated.

The province’s plan to gradually allow residents back into the city offered hope but also trepidation.

“It’s exciting news but you are also scared to see what you get when you get back,” said Fort McMurray resident Ria Dickason, adding that she was concerned about smoky air.

The air quality health index, which usually stands between 1 and 10, hit 51 on Wednesday morning, before improving to 11.

“We won’t go back if it’s anything close to the levels it’s at now,” Dickason said. “My daughter has asthma so we are more alert to it.”

(Additional reporting by Allison Martell and Ethan Lou in Toronto; Editing by Bill Trott)

Hot weather, winds, complicate battle to control Alberta wildfire

An aerial view of Highway 63 south of Fort McMurray, Alberta. Canada, shows smoke from the wildfires

By Nia Williams

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Hot and dry weather and strong winds were expected to push a massive wildfire near Fort McMurray, Alberta eastward on Wednesday, threatening facilities and work camps in the prized oil sands region.

The fire, which began in early May, forced the evacuation of thousands of workers on Tuesday, prolonging a shutdown that has cut Canadian oil output by a million barrels a day. It destroyed a 665-room lodge for oil sands workers, then blazed eastward toward other camps.

Winds forecast for Wednesday were expected to push the blaze further to the east, putting oil operations in its path, officials said late on Tuesday. Heat and lack of rain also are complicating efforts to control the 355,000-hectare (877,224-acre) fire, which was also stretching toward the Saskatchewan border.

“We expect the fire to spread on the easterly side,” Alberta wildfire manager Chad Morrison said on a Tuesday call.

The latest forecast showed temperatures were expected to reach a high of 24 Celsius (75 Fahrenheit) in the Fort McMurray area on Wednesday, though there was also a 60 percent chance of rain on Thursday.

The wildfire is taking a toll on Alberta’s economy, with one study estimating that the lost oil production will cut the Western Canadian province’s gross domestic product (GDP) by more than C$70 million ($53.91 million) a day.

About 8,000 workers were evacuated from camps and facilities north of Fort McMurray on Tuesday, with both Suncor Energy Inc and Syncrude, majority owned by Suncor, removing all but bare essential staff from their major operations.

None of the oil sands have caught fire, and the industry has redoubled efforts to ensure facilities are well-protected. Officials said facilities have been cleared of vegetation and have lots of gravel on site, reducing the fire risk.

The Canadian supply disruptions have helped boost global oil prices, though Brent crude prices eased on Wednesday as the lost Canadian production was tempered by rising supplies elsewhere. [O/R]

In one encouraging sign for producers, cogeneration electric plants around Fort McMurray increased their output overnight with the restart of Suncor’s Firebag units, the operator of the province’s power grid said on Wednesday.

The roughly 90,000 residents of Fort McMurray are growing frustrated over the lack of an estimate for their return to the oil sands hub, which they were forced to flee about two weeks ago.

Officials told a town hall meeting late on Tuesday that they were narrowing down return dates which they hoped to share “very, very soon,” but added that the city remained unsafe.

($1 = 1.2984 Canadian dollars)

(With additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Vancouver, Scott DiSavino in New York and Jeffrey Hodgson and Allison Martell in Toronto; Editing by Paul Simao)

Canadian oilfield workers readying return after wildfire

Burned out homes from Canadian Wildfire

By Nia Williams and Ernest Scheyder

CALGARY/LAC LA BICHE, Alberta (Reuters) – Workers for one of the largest oil sands companies affected by a wildfire in northern Canada will begin returning to the shuttered facilities on Thursday, a union official said, the latest indication the key petroleum production area was slowly coming back online.

Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, the premier of the province of Alberta and the head of the Canadian Red Cross announced that residents of Fort McMurray, the oil-boom town that was evacuated last week because of the fire, would be offered direct financial aid.

In Ottawa, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau established an ad hoc cabinet committee to coordinate federal relief efforts. Trudeau will tour the fire zone on Friday.

Ken Smith, president of Unifor Local 707, the union that represents 3,400 Suncor Energy Inc workers, said the company would start to fly employees back to its oil sands base plant from Thursday.

“It will take a few days to get the plant up and in condition to start handling feed,” Smith said.

Facilities north of Fort McMurray that had been shuttered largely because of heavy smoke rather than fire were likely to come back on line first, in a matter of days in many cases.

Roughly 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of output were shut down during the fire, about half of the oil sands’ usual daily production.

Late Wednesday, Enbridge Inc said it had restarted its 550,000 bpd Line 18 pipeline, which carries crude from the company’s Cheecham terminal 380 kilometers (236 miles) south to the regional crude trading hub of Edmonton.

Enbridge also said crews were on site at its facilities in the Fort McMurray region and confirmed its terminals were not damaged by the wildfire.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc was the first company to resume operations in the area, restarting its Albian Sands mines at a reduced rate. The facility can produce up to 255,000 bpd.

Syncrude, controlled by Suncor, restarted power generation at its oil sands mine in Aurora, north of the city, on Tuesday as it began planning to resume operations. The site has a total capacity of around 315,000 bpd.

Dozens of repair trucks and other vehicles headed for the oil fields on Wednesday, driving north along the main highway into the area, a Reuters eyewitness said. Some were towing heavy equipment.

Still, some projects to the south and east of Fort McMurray remained unreachable as the fire threat persisted.

The town remained shut to residents.

“The area is still very … dangerous with some hot spots still throughout the city and areas of concern,” said Kevin Kunetzki of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Around 300 RCMP members are patrolling the town and have found 100 homes showing signs of break-ins. This could be a result of concerned residents trying to check on neighbors, rather than burglars, he told a news conference in Edmonton.

The size of the fire was little changed on Wednesday at roughly 229,000 hectares (566,000 acres) and moving away from the community.

There are 700 firefighters, 32 helicopters, 13 air tankers and 83 pieces of heavy equipment units working on the Fort McMurray fire, the government said.

Alberta is making cash available immediately to the 90,000 evacuees from the fire zone. The funds, C$1,250 per adult and C$500 per child, would be distributed by debit cards beginning immediately to evacuees in Edmonton, Calgary and Lac La Biche.

Canadian Red Cross Chief Executive Conrad Sauve said his agency was making C$50 million in funds available to the relief effort now, out of C$67 million that had been raised so far. The money will be distributed as electronic funds transfers of C$600 for each adult and C$300 for each child, he said.

“This is the most important cash transfer we have done in our history and the fastest one,” he told a news conference with Alberta premier Rachel Notley.

The local government council held its first meeting since the evacuations in Edmonton on Thursday. The mood was somber and defiant.

Authorities in Lac la Biche, a small town south of Fort McMurray where many evacuees are staying, opened its fishing season four days early to provide temporary residents “with a well-deserved family recreational opportunity,” a statement said.

(Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa, Liz Hampton in Calgary and Allison Martell in Toronto; Writing by Dan Burns in Toronto; Editing by Alan Crosby)

Temporary housing first step for wildfire ravaged Fort McMurray

A charred vehicle and home are pictured in the Beacon Hill neighbourhood of Fort McMurray

By Rod Nickel and Liz Hampton

FORT MCMURRAY/LAC LA BICHE, Alberta (Reuters) – Reconstructing Fort McMurray will be easier than first feared since much of the city’s critical infrastructure remains intact but the once booming oil town will be smaller than before, according to its mayor.

The first priority is getting new temporary housing so companies can resume shuttered oil production.

Fort McMurray Mayor Melissa Blake said the fire is a chance to “right size” the city after the energy slump left it with vacant houses and unemployed workers well before wildfires hit last week.

With 10 percent of the city burned and more than 90,000 residents evacuated, the combination of a glut of prefire homes and quick-build housing are a solution as the government and oil executives try to jump-start rebuilding.

“If I look at what the circumstance gives to us, I think it’s an opportunity to right-size the community,” Blake told Reuters. “I recognize that this horror is probably going to get some people reconsidering what their futures are, whether it’s in the region or not.”

The fire may have been the final push that some residents needed to leave the isolated northern city, but major oil producers need it back on its feet quickly to restart some 1 million barrels per day of shuttered production.

The wildfire, which has spread over 229,000 hectares (566,000 acres), is still burning, though favorable weather overnight was seen helping firefighters.

While many companies have work camps at the site of their oil sands projects around Fort McMurray, workers from across Canada and around the world moved into the city with their families when the sector was booming years ago.

If energy companies can’t house workers and their families quickly, they risk losing them permanently.

The industry will support efforts to rebuild the hospital, pipelines and electrical distribution center, Suncor Inc <SU.TO> Chief Executive Officer Steve Williams said on Tuesday after a meeting of industry and provincial officials.

“FIRST WAVE”

A recovery will be easier due to the city’s largely intact infrastructure and downtown, but people are already fighting over available housing because several major residential neighborhoods were destroyed.

“We’ve got banks, companies, restoration companies, engineering companies all looking for space now. People need to stay somewhere,” said Bill de Silva, construction manager of Liam Construction, one of the city’s biggest builders.

He said the “first wave” is already trying to secure space in hotels, condominiums and apartments undamaged by the fire, but the approval process in the still-evacuated city isn’t easy.

“We’ve got to get there as quickly as we can. We can play a big role but they have to let us in. All the government red tape doesn’t help us now,” de Silva said.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley said officials need to finish damage assessments, set up a welcome center and transportation plan and secure food and supplies before anyone can start moving back in.

“There are hazardous materials and broken power lines. Basic services, gas, water, waste disposal, healthcare and much more needs to be re-established,” she said.

“The city was surrounded by an ocean of fire only a few days ago but Fort McMurray and the surrounding communities have been saved, and they will be rebuilt.”

The province is already speaking to temporary builders.

“They’ve been asking very general questions about what kind of temporary housing solutions we can provide (and a) rough timeline of how long it would take to be installed,” said Troy Ferguson, CEO of Redrock Group, which builds modular work camps and homes in Alberta.

Marc Roy, who was chief of staff for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, sees parallels between the two disasters, including the total destruction of some homes.

Longer term, Roy said, authorities need to allocate resources carefully, because some residents likely will not return.

“Are you building with the hopes that you build a field of dreams and people come to fill it, or are you using your resources as wisely as you possibly can at the moment?” he said. “You just can’t put it back exactly like it was and make that your plan. That does not work.”

One wrinkle may be home insurance policies that do no pay out in full unless homeowners rebuild.

“If a customer chooses not to repair or replace, they will receive the actual cash value of the building at the time of the loss,” said Intact Insurance, Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer, in a statement. Because of the oil downturn, that cash value could be less than owners hope.

Debra Bunston, an Alberta realtor, said the disaster may fill vacant homes or spur sales of homes that are already on the market, “a bit of a silver lining in this horrible cloud of smoke.”

(Additional reporting by Allison Martell and Andrea Hopkins in Toronto and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Wildfire destroys homes in Canadian City – delays hit evacuation

Flames rise in Industrial area south Fort McMurray Alberta Canada

(Reuters) – An out-of-control wildfire destroyed much of one neighborhood in the remote Canadian city of Fort McMurray and badly damaged other areas, the local government said on Wednesday, hours after it ordered all 80,000 residents to leave in the biggest evacuation in the area’s history.

Firefighters in the northeastern Alberta city at the heart of Canada’s oil sands were bracing for another tough day. Hot, dry weather has made it difficult to being the fire under control. A forecast for potential fire intensity showed much of the area around at class 6, the highest possible level.

Some 44,000 people had fled the city by late on Tuesday, but evacuations were delayed by gasoline shortages, local officials said. No injuries or deaths were reported.

In a bulletin posted on Twitter in the early morning, the regional government said 80 percent of Beacon Hill, a residential area at the south end of town, had been lost. Two other neighborhoods, Abasand and Waterways, were listed as “serious loss.”

By early Wednesday morning Shell had closed one oil sands mine and was in the process of closing another. Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said the company’s priority was safety, and to support the community. Henry said upgraders, which process oil sands to produce crude, would operate for a few more days.

Alberta Health Services said in a statement that all patients had been successfully evacuated from Fort McMurray’s hospital.

The fire broke out southwest of the city on Sunday, shifting aggressively with the wind to breach city limits on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Canada sounds alarm over aboriginal teenage suicide epidemic

File photo of a tattered Canadian flag flying over a teepee in Attawapiskat Ontario

By Rod Nickel

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Canada’s parliament will meet in emergency session on Tuesday night over a rash of suicide attempts by aboriginal teenagers in a remote, poverty-stricken community whose people feel isolated from the rest of the world.

Over the past weekend alone, 11 people of the Attawapiskat First Nation in Ontario tried to kill themselves, then a second group was brought to hospital Monday night after suicide attempts, prompting Chief Bruce Shisheesh to declare a state of emergency.

An 11-year-old child was in each of the groups treated over the past few days and the attempts follow a total of 28 attempted suicides in the month of March, some of them adults, health officials said.

The reasons for people trying to end their lives are varied but Attawapiskat leaders point to an underlying despondency and pessimism among their people as well as an increasing number of prescription drug overdoses since December.

Living in isolated communities with chronic unemployment and crowded housing, some young aboriginals lack clean water but have easy Internet access, giving them a glimpse of affluence in the rest of Canada.

“We feel isolated – we don’t feel part of the rest of the world,” said Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, who represents 30 aboriginal communities. “The basic needs are astronomical.”

Canada’s 1.4 million aboriginals, who make up about four percent of the population, have a lower life expectancy than other Canadians and are more often victims of violent crime. The problems plaguing aboriginals gained prominence in January when a gunman killed four people in La Loche, Saskatchewan.

Since December, Attawapiskat has seen a rash of prescription drug overdoses sending youth to hospital in “a fairly new phenomenon,” said Deborah Hill, vice-president of patient care at Weeneebayko Area Health Authority, whose region includes the community. Seven youth overdosed together on Saturday.

“An individual attempt at suicide is bad enough itself, but if there seems to be a group thing, it’s even more cause for alarm,” said National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations, Canada’s main aboriginal political group.

In Attawapiskat, a community of 2,000 people located near a diamond mine, this weekend’s state of emergency was the fifth since 2006. The community has previously sounded the alarm over flooding and raw sewage issues, poor drinking water and a housing crisis.

Resident Jackie Hookimaw-Witt, whose teenage niece committed suicide last autumn, said it was the third attempt for one 13-year-old girl who survived on Saturday. She said the girl had been challenged to kill herself on social media.

The emergency parliamentary session was requested by New Democrat legislator Charlie Angus whose constituency includes Attawapiskat. Angus is demanding Ottawa do more “to end this cycle of crisis and death among young people”.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called this weekend’s suicide attempts “heartbreaking”, took power last year promising to tackle high levels of poverty, bad housing and poor health among aboriginal residents and promised a new “nation-to-nation relationship”.

Last month, Canada said it would spend an extra C$8.37 billion over five years to help the aboriginal population deal with dire living conditions.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp and Ethan Lou in Toronto and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; editing by Amran Abocar and Grant McCool)

Canada divided as 25,000 Syrian refugees settle in

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadians remain divided about the resettlement of Syrian refugees, with some saying Canada should accept more despite a series of racist incidents that have marred a mostly smooth arrival of nearly 25,000 migrants, a poll showed on Friday.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected in October on a promise to accept more Syrian refugees more quickly than the previous Conservative government had allowed, but the original deadline for accepting 25,000 by the end of 2015 proved too ambitious and the timeline was extended by two months.

During his election campaign, Trudeau said a Liberal government would work with private sponsors to accept “even more” than the immediate goal of 25,000, and Immigration Minister John McCallum said in December the government could double the intake to 50,000 by the end of 2016.

A poll by the Angus Reid Institute released on Friday showed 52 percent of Canadians support the plan to resettle 25,000 refugees before the end of February, while 44 percent opposed the program.

The poll also showed that 42 percent of respondents want Canada to stop taking in Syrian refugees, while 29 percent said Canada should stop at 25,000 and 29 percent said the country should accept even more.

Some 21,672 Syrian refugees – sponsored by both private citizens and the government – have arrived in Canada since November, dispersing into more than 200 communities, according to the Immigration Department.

While the arrival has been smooth for privately sponsored refugees supported by families or community groups, hundreds of government-sponsored refugees have struggled to find housing and remain in hotels in Toronto, where the housing market is tight and expensive.

There has also been a scattering of racist incidents, including one last week in which graffiti was sprayed on a school in the western Canadian city of Calgary urging “Syrians go home and die” and “kill the traitor Trudeau.”

The prime minister responded on Twitter: “Canadians have shown the best of our country in welcoming refugees. That spirit won’t be diminished by fear and hate.”

In January, a group of Syrian refugees were pepper-sprayed by a cyclist in Vancouver, an attack Trudeau also condemned on Twitter.

(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Canada’s Syrian refugee plan draws U.S. Senate panel scrutiny

WASHINGTON/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada is proceeding with plans to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees, but the country’s background-vetting program is under scrutiny by a U.S. congressional panel, with a hearing set for Wednesday, amid lawmaker concerns about U.S. security.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee has questions about the Ottawa government’s intake of refugees by the end of February and the possibility that violent militants could mix in and cross the long, largely porous U.S.-Canada border.

At the public hearing, senators will question U.S. and Canadian experts and a U.S. Border Patrol officer on Canada’s “fast track” resettlement program. Canada’s government turned down an invitation to send a spokesperson to the session.

“We have been in frequent touch with members of the U.S. administration who are satisfied with what we are doing … if the U.S. Senate wants to engage in these activities, that is their right, of course,” John McCallum, Canada’s immigration minister, told reporters on Tuesday.

Initial inquiries show Canada’s background checks on refugees are less rigorous than the 18- to 24-month vettings done by U.S. authorities before letting any Syrian refugee set foot on American soil, congressional aides said.

Canada’s new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has already delayed his government’s program. It had targeted resettlement of the 25,000 by the end of 2015. Now the target is February.

Still, congressional aides said, U.S. officials remain wary of Canada’s screening, noting it is nearly impossible for foreign governments to verify the backgrounds, and identities of refugees, given Syria’s dysfunctional government.

One way Canada is trying to allay concerns about infiltration of the refugee flow by violent militants is by limiting refugees it admits to women, children and lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender individuals.

Canada can vet would-be refugees in U.S. and Canadian law enforcement and intelligence databases, but congressional aides said these databases may omit critical and derogatory information on would-be immigrants’ previous lives in Syria.

Canada’s public safety minister, Ralph Goodale, told reporters on Tuesday that Canada had been “very strong in putting together the security system” used to vet the refugees, and had made a strong effort to keep U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and President Barack Obama fully informed.

(Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Andrew Hay)

Canada stops sharing some spy info with allies after breach

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada has stopped its electronic spy agency from sharing some data with key international allies after discovering the information mistakenly contained personal details about Canadians, government officials said on Thursday.

Ottawa acted after learning that the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) agency had failed to properly disguise metadata – the numbers and time stamps of phone calls but not their content – before passing it on to their international partners.

“CSE will not resume sharing this information with our partners until I am fully satisfied the effective systems and measures are in place,” Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan said in a statement.

Sajjan, who has overall responsibility for the agency, did not say when Canada had stopped sharing the data in question.

Canada is part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, along with the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. CSE, like the U.S. National Security Agency, monitors electronic communication and helps protect national computer networks.

While the agency is not allowed to specifically target Canadians or Canadian corporations, it can scoop up data about Canadians while focusing on other targets.

Sajjan, blaming technical deficiencies at CSE for the problems, said the metadata that Canada shared did not contain names or enough information to identify individuals and added: “The privacy impact was low.”

He made the announcement shortly after an official watchdog that monitors CSE revealed the metadata problem. The watchdog said CSE officials themselves had realized they were not doing enough to disguise the information they shared.

An NSA program to vacuum up Americans’ call data was exposed publicly by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 and prompted questions about the CSE’s practices.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Diane Craft)