:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am here to address the committee's expressed interest in learning more about the passenger protect program.
[Translation]
I am joined by Brion Brandt, who is our director of Security Policy. As you are aware, for decades terrorist groups have targeted civil aviation. As a result, countries around the world have enhanced security and Canada has been a leader in improving security. We have pioneered such initiatives as passenger-baggage match, and advanced explosives detection techniques.
One recent initiative, regarded with interest by other countries, is to provide non-passengers—workers, if you will—with secure ID, in the form of the Restricted Area Identity Card that contains biometric identifiers and is backed up by a rigorous security clearance process.
[English]
The diversity of initiatives to secure civil aviation reflects an approach that stands the best chance of success: layered security. Each layer adds something useful to make the whole better than the parts. Together, security layers have contributed to a situation in which security is adapting and improving, and public confidence in civil aviation and passenger numbers are growing once again.
The passenger protect program responds to a recent trend, confirmed by current intelligence, of efforts by terrorist groups to place operatives on board aircraft for the purpose of bringing the aircraft down, or using it as a weapon. In 2004, terrorists in Russia who boarded two aircraft caused the aircraft to crash, killing 89 people. In 2006, British authorities disrupted an alleged plot to use passengers to bring down multiple aircraft, using improvised explosive devices. That was last August.
[Translation]
The risk associated with this disturbing terrorist trend is acute, unless it is mitigated by several means, including passenger assessment. Fortunately, careful passenger assessment is more practical in aviation than in urban transit, for example.
The Passenger Protection Program will apply to flights within Canada, and to flights originating in, or destined for, Canada. Inside Canada, the program will apply to the same commercial flights for which passenger screening is required currently, that is to say in the 89 currently designated airports. These flights warrant greater attention because of their size and access to airports in larger cities. The program will also apply and add additional security benefit to flights to Canada from foreign airports, which in some cases may not have comparable screening programs.
[English]
For the first time ever, the program will require air carriers to check passenger ID on Canadian domestic flights before boarding. Until now, ID checks on domestic flights were voluntary and not always applied by the various airlines. The passenger protect program will formalize this good security practice.
Like many other aviation security programs, the passenger protect program requires a partnership between government agencies and air carriers. Transport Canada, using information from the RCMP and CSIS, will provide air carriers with a list of individuals who, if they attempt to board a flight, may pose a threat to that flight.
The list will be dynamic. As required by law, each name must be reassessed every 30 days. Names can be added on an urgent basis in response to a specific threat situation. Many countries and even private companies use watch lists, because they work.
[Translation]
One unfortunate result of the terrorist use of passengers to carry out attacks is the mistrust created between passengers, resulting in several incidents where individuals were asked to leave an aircraft on suspicion that the posed a threat. The proposed program will offer passengers on flights to and from Canada, and within Canada, additional assurance that fellow passengers do not represent a threat.
[English]
The challenges that face the passenger protect program mirror those that face other watch-list programs. The people who pose a threat may try to travel under an assumed identity to avoid detection. We must remember that the individuals we are discussing are few and far between.
Creating a false identity and evading detection require effort. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies may be able to defeat efforts at evasion, and these detection efforts can result in stopping the individual from boarding an aircraft. We should also remember that the perpetrators of 9/11 and the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, all travelled using their own identities.
The passenger protect program faces other challenges as well, in particular, avoiding mistakes. Transport Canada has worked over the past two years with the aviation industry, civil liberties groups, and community organizations to design a system that reduces the likelihood of a mistake being made. The key here is to have a list that is clearly focused on aviation security, therefore minimizing the risk of a mistake. It must be limited in size and scope--enough to do the job and no bigger.
At the same time, the system should permit the rapid resolution of cases in which your name is similar to the name of someone on the list by letting you provide additional data points--date of birth, home address, passport number--on the spot, at the airport, prior to boarding, to clear matters up. If you face repeated name-match issues but are cleared through an ID check, we will work with you before your next trip to minimize repeated inconvenience.
[Translation]
Permit me to spend a few minutes describing how a potential no-fly situation will be handled. Whether check-in is via Internet, kiosks, or at the counter, air carriers will now allow printing of the boarding pass when there is a name match with the specified persons list. Passengers refused a boarding pass at a kiosk or off the Internet will be directed to the airport counter where an air carrier agent will request government-issued identification to determine whether the name, date of birth and gender match those of a listed person.
When an individual presents government-issued identification with name, date of birth and gender not matching those of a specified person, the air carrier will issue a boarding pass.
[English]
When requesting government issued identification, the air carrier must ask for either one piece of government issued photo ID that shows the person's name, date of birth, and gender, or two similar pieces, at least of which one shows the person's name, date of birth, and gender. One of those two pieces does not have to have a photo.These pieces must be federally, provincially, or territorially issued identification. This is the identification we would request for meeting the requirements.
The program will apply to persons who appear to be 12 years of age or older, so young children are excluded from the requirement to have government issued identification.
If an individual presents government issued identification with name, date of birth, and gender matching those of a listed person, the air carrier will inform the person of the delay in processing and will call Transport Canada. In addition, the air carrier will ask whether the individual has ID that provides additional data, as we just discussed.
When an air carrier calls Transport Canada about a possible match on the specified persons list, a 24/7 operations centre, staffed by Transport Canada personnel, will receive the call. The officer receiving the call will have the task of verifying whether the individual is in fact the person on the list . The air carrier will provide Transport Canada with the data obtained from the individual.
[Translation]
Transport Canada will assess the data. If the data demonstrate that the person has been specified, the TC operations centre will inform a senior official.
A decision will be made at that time, based on the ID information provided, and any additional up-to-date information available to the department, on whether to issue an Emergency Direction to the air carrier, instructing them to deny boarding to the individual.
[English]
Transport Canada will inform the air carrier of its decision.
When an emergency direction decision to deny boarding has been made, Transport Canada will notify the RCMP national operations centre immediately to inform them of the presence of the specified person at an airport.
The RCMP will inform police located locally about the individual who is to receive an emergency direction denying boarding. Air carriers may also contact police and/or security personnel located locally.
The air carrier will inform the person that an emergency direction has been issued denying boarding, and will provide information from Transport Canada concerning the reconsideration process.
Police and/or security personnel will respond as appropriate to the situation, such as security assurance or execution of a warrant of arrest. This is a key point. Passenger protect's objective is to keep an individual who threatens a flight off the plane. This individual may be subject to arrest, but that decision is within the mandate of the police, not Transport Canada.
[Translation]
If, despite the program design elements that I have just outlined, a mistake occurs, Transport Canada is establishing an Office of Reconsideration, staffed by individuals who have had no previous role in creating the watch list and supported by independent experts, so that an individual can provide additional information to challenge the Transport Canada decision.
The Minister of Transport will consider advice from the Office of Reconsideration. The reconsideration process offers a low cost and quick approach to challenging a decision to deny boarding, based on the list.
[English]
In moving forward with passenger protect, we are making use of the provisions of the Public Safety Act, approved by Parliament after considerable debate, including creation of a watch list to protect air passengers. The proposed program also contributes to the objectives of the security and prosperity partnership endorsed by Canada, the United States, and Mexico to develop equivalent approaches to aviation security, including in the matter of passenger assessment or no-fly programs.
Passenger protect would enable us to use Canadian standards in judgments, and scrupulously respect Canadian laws including the Privacy Act, while at the same time engaging our partners in dialogue in the development of separate but comparable programs to improve aviation security. Developing appropriate security programs is always complex and often controversial. We must develop programs that enhance security while respecting privacy and efficiency.
Thank you for your time. We both look forward to your questions.
Can I ask a question? There are a whole sequence of questions about these regulations.
I concede right at the start that the purpose is the protection of the public. We all accept that. The whole process is intended to put a regime in place that will protect in as fail-safe a way as we can do it.
My questions assume that this exists. I'm going to just change the angle of questioning to look at what-if scenarios for the average citizen. I'm going to give you two or three questions here.
Give me an example, if you could, of something that would cause an individual's name to be taken off the list. I realize there's some kind of a 30-day review. But once the name is on the list, the fact that somebody reviews it and says the original information is there, the name is there, check, it stays--what would actually cause a name on the list to be removed? That's the first question.
My second question pertains to the emergency direction. If you start with the premise that the name is on the list, the only question is whether the individual presenting himself or herself at the airport is the same person as the person on the list. So there's the process of providing additional identification to try to determine that.
The regulations provide for an emergency direction from Transport Canada--this 24/7 operation. What if an emergency direction doesn't come from Transport Canada? What if they're not sure? Is not the citizen still prevented from boarding the aircraft because the same name exists on the list? What would allow the citizen to board the aircraft if an emergency direction is not issued with respect to that person?
Isn't the citizen then in a no-man's land? An identical name is on the list. Identification has been presented. Transport Canada is unable to determine what to do, so they don't issue an emergency direction. The implication for the travelling citizen is still the same. They can't board the aircraft. They are absolutely stuck at the airport. They have to go home, and hopefully it's not in another city.
Those are two questions. I'm probably getting close to being out of time.
:
However long? That could be right up until my time of one o'clock, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the generosity, but I don't know if that would be shared by my colleagues.
I'll try to be brief, but there are some things I would like to address. And I appreciate the members' interest in this particular issue, and not just this, but the good work that's done by this committee on a variety of issues.
The whole question of security, as you know, and we've said it many times, is a priority for the government.
[Translation]
It is one of the Canadian government's priorities to have systems that guarantee the security of all its citizens from sea to sea, in the streets, in the cities, across the country. That is why an additional $1.4 billion was allocated to security in the 2006 budget.
[English]
It's clearly an area of priority. This government is committed to the safety and security of its citizens. That should be the prime goal of every government.
The $1.4 billion that was indicated in the 2006 budget--there have been additions since then--provided for resources in a number of areas. I think members here are aware and will recall that we made a commitment that there will be 1,000 more RCMP officers over the next four years, from coast to coast, in areas of federal policing. To accomplish that goal, last year in the budget there was a two-year commitment of $161 million to begin the training process, the retraining, and the building of training facilities--a depot in Regina. Again, that's a very clear commitment and a demonstration of what we want to see happen related to increased security.
On borders, which is the area of interest today, a few weeks ago I made an announcement related to enhancing our capabilities at the borders, mainly along the lines of technology. So $431 million was announced, and $390 million of that is for what we call the electronic manifest.
We're fast approaching the time when a huge portion of the truck traffic, if not all of it, will be forwarding their manifests electronically to the border stations they're approaching. Those manifests will include what is on board the truck, what is being shipped, who the driver is, who the brokers are, and who they deal with.
This demonstrates that we are focused on two areas: prosperity at the border so that business and low-risk travel can happen smoothly; and security, so we aren't allowing dangerous goods or individuals to come into the country.
When you look at what's involved at the border itself--$1.9 billion a day in trade--this is huge. The amount of trade just at the bridge from Windsor to Detroit is greater than the amount of trade that takes place between the United States and Japan. These are huge numbers. In a year, some 90 million people are checked crossing the borders, and 266,000 people a day are looked at, checked, and talked to in some way, either extensively or in a superficial fashion, related to their security risk.
:
Thank you for that usual allowance, Mr. Chairman, because you cannot look at this in isolation. You have to look at it in the broad context.
As I was saying, 18,000 trucks a day are crossing that border. In a year, some 21 million cars are looked into by border officers, literally as they come to the border.
Before the day is over some two dozen drug seizures will have taken place by border officers. Five situations will arise where weapons will have to be taken from somebody crossing the border, illegal weapons, and one of those will be a firearm.
More than once a week, a missing child who has been put up on the missing child index is apprehended at the border.
All that trade, all the incidents that take place, everything that goes on at the border narrows down to something like 3,600 people, the border officers themselves. They are highly trained. They are capable and trained to do arrests and seizures. For a number of years, they have requested the ability to be properly equipped in every way, including the ability to be armed.
We know that though crime stats in some areas have gone down, many areas of serious crime, organized crime, aggravated assault--the tendency we see is for people committing grievous crimes in the United States to try to get into Canada.
Some disturbing stats show these crime rates increasing. When it is brought to the attention of our border officers, some of whom are serving in work alone situations, that there is the possibility of a dangerous or armed person approaching the border--and if you flip this around and it's someone from Canada, a dangerous person approaching the U.S. border and the notice is given, their border officers are armed and they are prepared to take care of a situation should it arise. Our border officers are not.
In those moments, as you know, there are too often cases where border officers will leave their post, because they deem the situation to be unsafe and they are not armed. They will first close the post and then they will leave it until sufficient assistance comes, either from police of a local jurisdiction or the RCMP themselves.
This causes huge economic problems. As you know, with just-in-time manufacturing these days, a border, especially a large border, only has to be shut down for two to three hours and immediately you can see manufacturing lines and assembly lines starting to close down on the other side of the border.
The costs of this, quite rightly, are a concern of this committee. All kinds of numbers have been thrown around because looking at it from a first instance a lot of variables came into play.
The training and the arming costs of this many border officers--we're talking about 4,800, 3,600 at the border and another 1,200 at other places--is about $400 million and almost half of that is in the retraining and the recertification that has to happen each year as border officers are retrained.
Other figures get added into that whole picture, giving a larger global amount. One hundred million dollars is the estimate right now for what will be required for the training facilities to be enhanced, not just for the training of border officers, but there are integrity and structural realities. There has been an ongoing need to rebuild at Rigaud, about $100 million there alone.
Then there is the cost of hiring 400 more individuals to fill in approximately 95 sites at some time during the day across the country where people are working alone.
Added to what we see as pressure on bringing the overall global prices down is the fact that CBSA is now committed to--along with the initial training that is going to be happening in Ottawa and at the RCMP base in Chilliwack, once the trainers have all been trained and once the training process starts--inviting proposals as early as this April for alternate sites, people who can provide the accommodation at alternate sites and not only speed up the process, but keep the price down, not the training itself. That will be done by CBSA, in terms of provision of the sites.
Mr. Chairman, that gives a ballpark figure of what we're looking at. I'd be more than happy to entertain questions, suggestions, and advice from committee members.
Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here.
As you know, my party supports this initiative to provide security to the border guards right across the country who are at the frontiers. But I have to say I share Mr. Ménard's concerns about the training. Let me make a statement.
I have a real sense that there are two things going on here. One is that there's an institutional arrogance on the part of the agency in feeling they are the only ones who can do this, which, quite frankly, flies in the face of all the other expertise we have, both in the RCMP and in the provincial and even a number of our large city police forces, who would be operating in a standard that would make the quality of training at least equal to what the Border Services Agency can do.
I think the other thing you're faced with, and I'm going to put this on the record, is that you have an institutional opposition to this at the upper levels of the agency.
So having made those two statements, I want to go back to the training, because I've done an analysis of this to some degree. When the OPP were here, for instance, they certainly indicated that they felt they had the ability to provide this training. The curriculum, of course, would have to be worked out, and obviously the Border Services Agency would be a key player in developing that curriculum, but so would international standards. Probably even more important would be looking at international standards and qualities, rather than just within the agency.
So I'm going to ask you--and then urge you, because I don't think your agency has pursued this well enough--whether you're going to look at that more closely. I urge you to do that.
One of the points I want to make about this is the cost. I know the figures that came out in those articles earlier this week are substantially inflated, but I have concerns over our spending the kind of capital that is being proposed to be spent at Rigaud when we have any number of facilities across the country that would allow for that training.
I think of the armouries that I have in my own riding--actually, it's the riding next to me, but it's only a few blocks from the bridge where most of these people are going to be operating after they're trained. That's shared with the Windsor Police Service. They do all their training there, both the military and the police. They have classrooms there. The facility is completely adequate for what's needed in the way of physical training.
You can repeat that with the Sûreté du Québec, with the OPP, and with a number of the municipal police forces across the country. The OPP indicated they would certainly be interested in having the opportunity to do this training. They felt they could do it.
The other point I want to make is about the ongoing cost. If we go in at Chilliwack, we will be moving our staff people across the country repeatedly every year to get that upgrade.
Again, I think of the physical stuff we have in Windsor, and I'm thinking they only have to go a few blocks to sleep in their own beds. They're away from work for much less time. The replacement worker costs are going to be substantially less. And that can be repeated across the country.
Having said all that, I guess I'd just like your comments.
:
Let me be specific with the numbers on that question.
There are incidents that are recorded when border officers have difficulty at the border. One of the things that's very hard to pin down is the deterrent factor. For instance, most Canadians may not be aware that the rate now, in Canada, is that there are about 13,260 individuals in the private sector who have sidearms, working for security firms. Generally it's the armoured-car services. I want you to think about that for a minute. There are over 13,000 people, right now, with firearms, across Canada, protecting bags of coins, and they're walking into malls every day. They're walking on our streets. We see them. They pull up to high-rise buildings, they walk in there. It happens from time to time, but it's very rare. So the flip side of the question is: if they didn't have those firearms, what would be happening?
The question we face with the border officers is that we know there are times when in fact, because they don't have firearms, the wrong people are coming to the border. The wrong people are thinking they can get across the border. We know there are times when people get across the border from the United States, and they do harm. I'm not blaming Americans. I'm just saying the same thing happens, from time to time, that Canadians get across the border and do damage in the United States, kill people and do other things.
So the number of incidents that occur where there's some kind of physical interaction, if I can say that, they're rare because of the professionalism of the border officers. If you've been to--I'm sure you have--what they call the “secondary sites” where somebody is sent, they have to be both ambassadors and policing-type officers at the same time, because they're telling people.... They're asking them to get out of their car. They're saying we're going to search your car. And as I said, about two dozen times today, the person getting out of the car knows they have drugs in the car or the truck, and they know there's a chance that's going to be found. It's a very sensitive and dangerous situation.
So we have to weigh out the deterring effect. But in terms of number of incidents, it is rare. We of course hope that with firearms preventing people, there will be a message to the criminal and possibly the terrorist community. There will be a message that it's going to be difficult to get past a Canadian border officer.
:
The request has been long outstanding.
As for your observation about the gun registry, I'll leave that to you and Mr. Lee to discuss, but--
An hon. member: I'm glad he spotted the connection.
Hon. Stockwell Day: --I'm sensitive to your point.
All the surveys are showing that the vast majority, whether you go with the Northgate study, with CEUDA's own study, or with the somewhat anecdotal study that was done by management itself at CBSA.... They did a report that was anecdotal, in that they talked, as I said, with groups of individuals or one-on-one, just asking what they thought.
There will be a percentage of people.... First of all, the number saying they absolutely don't want a firearm, according to the Northgate and CEUDA report, is very low; it's somewhere in the range of 2%. There will be those who will not be able to physically pass the test, whether it's eyesight or whatever it may be, in order to qualify. In those cases, there are both regional and administrative positions that can certainly accommodate those who are saying that they absolutely don't want to do this.
However, it will be part of the professional package. Everybody now coming into CBSA would not be able to entertain the prospect of not having a sidearm, just as a firefighter couldn't sign up to enter the profession of firefighting and say they never want to ride on a fire truck. That person would be excused from the beginning.
Some accommodation will be attempted to be made, but the overwhelming majority want this, and in terms of your question of how long it has been out there, they've been asking for this provision for literally years.
I don't want to get into a political partisan thing. You know how much I dislike partisanship, but we looked at this before the last election, and now, as the new government of Canada, and for all the reasons I've stated, we see this as absolutely necessary for the ongoing safety, security, and prosperity of Canada, first of all, and secondarily for our friends to the south.