CANADA’S NAVY WAS red-faced today after it was revealed that two of its warships had an embarrassing brush with Jamaica’s former prime minister on a fishing trip in the latter’s own waters last year.

Canadian naval reservists were participating in an American-led anti-drug trafficking operation in the Caribbean when they intercepted former Jamaican premier Bruce Golding’s fishing trawler on 27 March, 2012.

HMCS Goose Bay and HMCS Kingston pulled up alongside what Jamaican officials recently described to Canadian media as a vessel with “a retired senior political figure on board.”

No permission

They also said the warships were in Jamaican waters without permission or knowledge.

Golding, an avid fisherman who was prime minister from 2007 to 2011, meanwhile confirmed to radio station Nationwide 90FM that he was the official who had the run-in with the Canadian navy.

During the encounter, one of the maritime coast defense vessels reportedly fired its weapons.

But Golding said he was not harassed, nor searched.

He told Nationwide 90FM that a small inflatable speedboat carrying 10 men was dispatched from one of the warships and “came directly alongside me, at which time I discovered that they appeared to be foreigners, they were all white people… and they were all in uniform.”

The Canadian military was not immediately available for comment.

But officials told Postmedia News the warships had been mistakenly operating in Jamaican territorial waters, and blamed the error on outdated navigational charts that “did not accurately reflect the territorial waters of Jamaica.”

- © AFP, 2013

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