When Sarnia, Ont., Mayor Mike Bradley first spotted an unusual, unmanned vessel in the St. Clair River, he says he thought it looked “like something from Mars.”
Then he found out it was one of several surveillance sail drones deployed to the Great Lakes this summer by the U.S. Coast Guard to “gather critical weather data for emergency response planning, track illicit activity and keep maritime borders safe.”
The U.S. Coast Guard, which operates under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, told CBC in June the vessels aren’t there to surveil Canadians. But Bradley isn’t convinced.
“We have thousands of boaters on the river St. Clair, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and now they’re going to be photographed and watched,” he told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal.
“Even though they’re saying right now it’s benign, I don’t have the trust down the road, especially with the rapidly deteriorating relationship with the U.S., that they won’t use it for other purposes.”
CBC has reached out to the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards for comment. Both said they could not respond by deadline.
The vessels are called Voyager unmanned surface vehicles, and each one is affixed with 360-degree high-resolution cameras, advanced radar, and automatic identification systems.
They are owned and operated by Saildrone, a private U.S. company whose $15.5-million US contract with the Coast Guard is funded by U.S. President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”
“This Voyager fleet will help the Coast Guard maintain persistent, scalable maritime domain awareness across these expansive waters, identifying threats in real time and enabling focused, high-impact interdiction,” Saildrone president John Mustin said in a press release.
The U.S. Coast Guard now has two sail drones on Lake Erie as a part of a new program that launched in May. (U.S. Coast Guard)
York University researcher Petra Molnar says Canadians should be concerned that this data is being collected by a private company and sold to the U.S. government.
“This is a very troubling arrangement from a privacy and accountability standpoint,” Molnar, the author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, told the Guardian newspaper.
“We have very little public information about data retention, who can access what data is collected, or how people using the region recreationally [can] be swept up in a data system built for border enforcement.”
Saildrone did not respond to requests for comment from CBC.
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The U.S. Coast Guard has said drones are nothing for Canadians to worry about.
“They’re just out there for awareness,” Lt. Junior Grade Samuel Rodriguez Garcia told CBC Windsor in June, when the vessels were deployed in Lake Erie. “Think of them as mobile cameras that kind of help us gain a better insight into what’s going on live on scene.”
He said the vessels’ cameras are monitored 24/7 by U.S. Coast Guard staff, who can also manually move the drones when necessary. But the footage isn’t recorded, officials say.
U.S. and Canadian agencies, including law enforcement, could have access to the drone technology after going through the proper channels, he said.
The Canadian Coast Guard told CBC Windsor it works closely with its U.S. counterpart, but has no involvement with the drone sail program.
The U.S. Coast Guard first announced the Voyager project in May in a press release issued by the U.S. Department of War.
But Bradley says this is the first he’s heard of it.
In fact, he says he only learned what the vessel in the St. Clair River was when he was contracted by the Detroit News, which has been reporting on the drones.
As mayor of the largest city on Lake Huron, he says being kept in the dark is unacceptable.
“If the Canadian government knew and agreed to it, that, to me, is a big issue,” he said. “They should have let Canadian cities, Canadian mayors, know that this was happening.”
CBC reached out to Public Safety Canada for information about the drones, and was redirected to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
The CBSA did not respond to questions about Bradley’s concerns, saying the RCMP is responsible for “enforcing Canadian legislation between ports of entry, including on the water.”
The U.S. Coast Guard sail drones will be deployed in Lake Erie and be pulled from the water once ice forms. (U.S. Coast Guard)
Bradley says it’s no coincidence the project comes during a period of heightened tension between Canada and the U.S.
With both countries locked in an impasse in the trade war, Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly framed the Canadian border as a dangerous security threat.
However, the numbers tell a different story. A U.S. Border Patrol officials told Congress in June that drug seizures and arrests of undocumented immigrants are both down along the U.S-Canada border.
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Bradley called the drones “an answer to a problem that doesn’t really exist.” He called on the Canadian government to “show some backbone” and push back.
“The Elbows Up movement seems to have died away, and I was a big supporter of that because I know the American psyche so well from 40 years of dealing with them,” he said.
“If you don’t stand up or push back they will just walk all over you.”
