TRGO Committee Report

The Committee’s recommendation to put the proposed new Transportation Security Authority (TSA) under the auspices of Transport Canada, rather than the Department of the Solicitor General, would critically undermine the TSA’s independence and capacity to carry out its mandate.

One of Transport Canada’s core missions is to promote an efficient transportation system for Canada. However, one of the lessons of September 11^th is that efficiency must be balanced with security. These two concepts, security and efficiency, are competing forces in the transportation sector. Security measures necessarily create barriers that slow down the movement of people and goods, making the system less efficient. The challenge for government is to find an appropriate balance.

The danger of putting the TSA under Transport Canada’s roof is that the department’s mission to promote efficiency will win out over security concerns, making it impossible to strike the right balance. This divergence between the department’s core mandate and the mandate of the TSA could well put the Minister of Transportation in an untenable position between conflicting priorities.

In order to effectively carry out its mandate, the TSA must be independent of Transport Canada. The security of Canadians should not be subordinated to efficiency. Thus, the TSA should not be subordinated to Transport Canada.

The New Democratic Party supports the concept of the TSA but believes that its appropriate place in the government hierarchy would be within the Department of the Solicitor General, whose core mandate to provide for the security of Canadians complements, rather than conflicts with, the aims of the TSA. The Department of the Solicitor General, not Transport Canada, is the department with the security expertise and culture necessary to balance Transport Canada’s mission to promote efficiency. Leaving transportation security under the auspices of Transport Canada only ensures that the status quo, where security is secondary to other priorities, will prevail.

Contracting Out: The Committee report leaves the door open for the TSA, to contract out airport security, potentially though airport authorities. Contracting security out to the lowest bidder perpetuates the low-wage, high-turnover conditions that airport security personnel work in. Improving the conditions of work is a pre-condition to improving the quality and expertise of the work force. The New Democratic Party believes the safety of Canadians is more important than getting airport security services as cheaply as possible and therefore condemns the dangerous practice of contracting out to the lowest bidder.

Privacy: Recommendation 3 of the report, on developing a national security database, goes too far in incorporating people’s personal information, such as passport information and travel patterns. Criminal background checks and cross-referencing terrorist advisories are one thing, but tracking the movements of people who the authorities have no cause to suspect of wrongdoing is wasteful, bureaucratic and invasive. The New Democratic Party supports the creation of a national security database, as well as Canada’s participation in any global databases that may be developed, but such databases must have reasonable limits placed upon them to protect our citizens’ right to privacy.