Human Rights Organizations Celebrate the Cancellation of 'Border Security,' Canada’s Best-Worst Show

If you've ever been stuck in a shitty motel room with limited cable or been surfing channels at your parents' house after midnight you've probably come across the so-bad-it's-actually-kind-of-amazing show Border Security. It's Canada's trash version of Storage Wars but still somehow less exciting than watching pawn shop owners rifle through dead people's literal garbage. The premise of this, seriously-how-is-this-legal reality show is exactly as boring as it sounds. Canada's finest border guards do their best to keep a straight face and avoid looking into the camera while 'busting' people as they try to cross the border with such innocuous things as a handful of painkillers to suitcases full of restricted meat. As you watch you're left baffled at the legality of filming scared individuals (does anyone not get nervous at the border?) in extremely vulnerable situations, many of whom don't have a strong grasp of the language, let alone their privacy rights. The majority of episodes don't even end in busts, just an unfulfilled promise of danger that is ultimately revealed to be little more than nerves, which makes the ethics around filming even more questionable.

The show first aired on the National Geographic Channel in 2012 and billed itself as a "documentary series" rather than a reality show. Probably because hassling illegals seems like a very shitty premise for a reality show. And it turns out it IS a shitty and unethical premise! After Force Four, the production company behind Border Security: Canada's Frontline (seriously that's what it's called) was invited to film a raid at a Vancouver construction firm where there were suspected undocumented workers, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner was asked to look into violations of informed consent, as no one arrested was aware they were being filmed. Complicating the issue was the fact that then Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews had apparently signed off on shooting the raid beforehand as some sort of misguided attempt at patriotism (look how awesome these men and women are at raidin' shit!) Ultimately the episode was shelved and the footage never aired. Border Security was allowed to keep making tranquilizing television and I was blessed with four more years of garbage motel programming. But as it is in life so it is in reality TV and all dreams must eventually die. After a sustained campaign by the BC Civil Liberties Association on behalf of Oscar Mata Duran, one of the men deported in the 2013 construction site raid, the federal privacy commissioner finally agreed last week that Border Security was in violation of privacy laws and asked the CBSA to end its involvement in reality programming, which finally led to the show's cancellation. According to a statement by the federal privacy commissioner, "the 'consent' the CBSA relied on to justify the disclosure of people's private information was grossly insufficient. In large part due to the context in which filming occurs." Mata Duran's statement finally clarified a question I've always asked myself while watching this insane show, "what kind of person agrees to being filmed while this is happening?" He claims he wasn't asked for consent until long after filming had already happened and when he did sign release forms he only did so because he was worried about what would happen if he didn't. He says he didn't even read the consent form he signed. Ninety different human rights groups including Amnesty International, Idle No More and the Canadian Labour Congress have been asking for Border Security to come off the air for years. An electronic petition seeking cancellation was circulated by the mother of one of the men deported and managed to get 25,000 signatures, which is 24,995 more people than have ever seen the show. And now that Canada's best-worst show is off the air, we'll have to settle for Canada's second best-worst show, Private Eyes. Follow Amil Niazi on Twitter