The Navy

As a nation with only one international land border, yet over 240,000 km of coastline, safeguarding Canada\’s maritime approaches is vitally important to our national security. The Navy works in close cooperation with other government departments to deal with a range of security threats to Canada, including the threats of terrorism, illegal resource exploitation, pollution violations, narcotics trafficking and illegal immigration. The Navy safeguards Canadians at home by:

• conducting surveillance of Canada’s coastal areas;
• determining who is operating in our waters, why they are there and what they are doing;
• providing government with the means to find, intercept and board suspicious vessels at sea before they reach Canadian territory; and
• Providing government with the means to take military action to defeat any armed threat to Canadian security posed by other nations or terrorists.