By Gilles Rhéaume,
Special to The Windsor Star
June 30, 2010

The walls and barricades that transformed downtown Toronto and the Muskokas in preparation for the G8 and G20 Summits drove home the point that security is a regional matter, even when world leaders come together.

Understanding threats and addressing vulnerabilities at a regional level is paramount, whether protecting leaders or safeguarding critical infrastructure, such as roads, telecommunications, energy, and rail systems.

However, regional plans are unlikely to succeed in the absence of a national framework. This is why the federal government's recently-released National Strategy for Critical Infrastructure was well received by provinces and the private sector. A crucial next step is to implement the key elements of this strategy at a regional level.

The federal strategy rightly adopts a risk-management approach that deals with all hazards -- natural disasters, blackouts, oil spills, pandemics, acts of terrorism and other threats. This approach requires risks to be examined region by region. Forest fires threaten British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, coastal storms are of particular concern to Atlantic Canada, and flooding is a regular threat in Manitoba. Terrorism presents a greater threat to Ottawa and Toronto than to rural communities.

The composition of critical infrastructure differs among regions as well. Take energy as an example. New Brunswick has the Point Lepreau nuclear power station, the Irving Oil refinery and the liquefied natural gas station. Quebec has important hydro facilities and petrochemical plants. Alberta's oil sands and pipeline facilities make up a large share of the province's critical infrastructure.

Furthermore, Canada's vulnerability is linked almost magnetically to the United States. Whether it is telecommunications, energy or transportation systems, infrastructure spills over the border into America, and vice-versa.

For example, the immediate aftermath of 9/11 disrupted Ontario and Michigan auto supply chains, leading to the temporary shutdown of manufacturing plants. As Ontarians found out in August 2003, a power outage in Ohio plunged the province and most of the Northeastern United States into darkness. A transportation disruption between Windsor and Detroit would not only stall economic trade, it would also prevent some 4,500 nurses living in Ontario from getting to work in Michigan -- threatening health care delivery in Detroit.

So, critical infrastructure protection and resilience must be addressed on a regional, cross-border basis. This realization led The Conference Board of Canada in 2008 to work with stakeholders to develop an action plan for critical infrastructure protection in four cross-border regions: Maine and New Brunswick; New York and Ontario; Michigan and Ontario; and Washington and British Columbia. Our November 2009 report, Protecting Critical Infrastructure: A Cross Border Action Plan is at www.conferenceboard.org