The Globe and Mail

The Tamil migrant vessel Ocean Lady, which brought 76 asylum seekers to Canada last year, was altered to remove its tracking device in order to travel undetected, according to the Canada Border Services Agency.

The Ocean Lady entered Canadian waters on the morning of Oct. 17, 2009. The Ocean Lady’s harbinger, the MV Sun Sea, was equipped with an Automatic Identification System, which allowed authorities to track it as it brought 492 Tamil migrants into British Columbia on Aug. 13.

The Automatic Identification System allows for live monitoring of the ship’s destination, speed, identity and communication between other vessels. It also can provide raw intelligence on its past courses, Canada Border Services Agency intelligence officer Russ Mac Neil said. If acquired, the AIS would provide information on where the Ocean Lady was anchored when the 76 men boarded the vessel to come to Canada. (Since the Ocean Lady’s arrival, interviews with the migrants have revealed the ship began its trip in Thailand.)

In an exchange of e-mails, acquired under access to information legislation, Mr. Mac Neil asks the Canadian Coast Guard to assist in locating the AIS on the Ocean Lady.

“We’ve been asked to seek profession [sic] assistance in the locating and dismantling of the vessel’s AIS system. As I am not an expert in this type of Activity, I’m hoping that assistance from the Canadian Coast Guard can be obtained to locate this very important piece of evidence,” Mr. Mac Neil writes to the coast guard on Dec. 11, 2009.

“The reason we were looking for it is in the hopes, on this particular vessel, of being able to track its route through the AIS. We never did that,” Mr. Mac Neil said in a telephone interview this week.

But CBSA spokeswoman Shakila Manzoor told The Globe, “there was no AIS on board the Ocean Lady when it arrived.”

“We would have gone and reviewed the ship and all I can tell you is that the AIS was not onboard the ship,” Ms. Manzoor said.

The exchange of e-mails continues for several months between Mr. Mac Neil and CCG, but for reasons unknown to Mr. Mac Neil, who is based in Victoria, the search for the AIS was called off by his superiors in Vancouver.

“I am hoping that should further migrant vessels arrive, we would be able to request CCG’s assistance to find the AIS much earlier in the operation,” Mr. Mac Neil wrote to his CCG counterpart on March 19. More than five months later, the MV Sun Sea would arrive in Canadian waters.

Neither CBSA nor Mr. Mac Neil would comment on the AIS onboard the Sun Sea, but security experts say the equipment is crucial as authorities are aware of other groups wanting to follow in the wake of these two vessels.