Public Safety Committee on March 12th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

If you have a very brief—

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

On NEXUS, there was a report out within the last year specifically on renewals--people are not renewing, they are still using them, and there is fraud and abuse of that system. It was a fairly significant percentage—I think it was 10% or 20%—which suggests that the NEXUS cards are being abused. Is that fairly accurate, and if so, what are we doing to clean that up?

[Stephen Rigby]

I think there's some abuse. There are some people who from time to time attempt to go across with an out-of-date NEXUS card. Generally speaking, the key is getting the vet done right at the initial time of issuance. But when the renewals do occur, we also re-screen. So I'm reasonably optimistic that some of the issues raised we can get to in terms of improvements in re-vetting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Norlock, please.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you, gentlemen, for coming this morning.

I'd like to carry on on the theme of firearms, but also the theme with regard to what Mr. Ménard said about villages and towns on the border. Both of those are akin to the loss of innocence in our society. In the last couple of days we've heard tremendous horror stories of multiple deaths from south of the border and from Europe.

I think back to just a few years ago—I guess it's a lot of years ago now--when I was just old enough to go hunting and carry a firearm. I can recall vividly just up the valley here, being able to go down to the basement, open up the cabinet, go rabbit hunting with a couple of my friends, and just walking down the street, as it was a small town. We headed into the bush and we met people there and nobody got excited. If we were lucky, we brought home a couple of rabbits.

Today, if a couple of 17- or 18-year-olds went down to the basement and did the same thing, they'd have an OPP or a city police SWAT team out there surrounding them, although they were just going to do something we used to take for granted. That's a loss of innocence in our society, very similar to the loss of innocence in the life of a village on the border of our two great countries, the U.S. and Canada, where people didn't see a difference between going across the street, whether it was the border or not. Today, you can end up in jail or with a big fine, so I can understand Mr. Ménard's point.

I think it's important for us to see in our society, because of fear or because a few individuals in this world such as terrorists or members of organized crime have changed our lives significantly, we can no longer do the things we used to do that didn't cause a problem. Innocent people, people who just want to go hunting and people who just want to do some target shooting, are now made to feel as if they're criminals and they go through all these processes. Why? Because somebody's broken the law, and now everybody has to suffer.

Going on a little bit further, to the seizure of firearms at the border, I think Mr. Rigby touched on it. Wouldn't the reduction in the seizure of firearms also have to do with a reduction in the number of people from the U.S. coming to Canada to go hunting who just failed to have the proper documentation? Could one of the reasons be because there's a reduction in the number of those persons, or in that particular part of our tourism industry, and could another reason be because the criminals are getting smarter in their ability to hide firearms from detection?

[Stephen Rigby]

I think both of those are factors, for sure. A lot of the hunters and the casual travellers we encounter at the border who have a firearm aren't aware of our laws. Generally speaking, there's no effort on their part to substantially secrete the weapon at all. Just through a series of one or two questions, it becomes apparent they have a weapon and we have a discussion with them and we seize the weapon sometimes. We hold it sometimes or we keep it permanently.

Certainly as the criminal element has become more sophisticated, and as the market for smuggled guns becomes more acute, I think I agree with Deputy Commissioner Souccar that the sophistication we see there and their ability to move rapidly from one point to another on the border to exploit opportunistic situations is something we have to become more adept at responding to.

Ultimately, just to come back to my earlier comment, the key there is going to be the most rapid gathering, assessment, and deployment of intelligence. We can run all kinds of search procedures at the border. The problem is that the consequent hassle and lineup for legitimate travellers will be unacceptable. For us, it's a constant balance, and the key to that balance is getting good information from law enforcement.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

I was most interested in some of the things in your presentation. I just saw the end of the program on the radiation detection systems you mentioned. Could you explain to us what that system entails, what it does, and what it's designed to detect? How about a general overview? Don't give away some things somebody else might take advantage of.

[Stephen Rigby]

I'm going to defer to the expert here, but generally speaking we're talking about radiation portal monitors at our ports, which are designed to provide radiation screening of containers. But let me ask Ms. Johnston to comment.

[Kimber Johnston, Vice-President, Enforcement Branch, Canada Border Services Agency]

Thank you.

Mr. Norlock, you are quite correct. We've installed radiation detection portals at all of our major marine ports of Halifax, Montreal, and Prince Rupert in northern B.C., and we are in the process of finalizing the installations in our Vancouver terminals.

The radiation detection portals are used to screen 100% of the marine containers coming into Canada for what we call CBRNE materials--chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosive materials. This is a complementary initiative to what we call our CSI, or container security initiative. As our president pointed out in his introductory comments, we have people stationed abroad to try to interdict possible shipments of CBRNE materials prior to them coming into Canada. But this is an extra no-risk, zero-tolerance screening measure in our marine ports to ensure that any containers that might contain that type of material do not get through the port.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

I think you may have answered this, but could it also be used for the detection of weaponry?

[Kimber Johnston]

It is specifically for explosives. It may pick up a certain type of weaponry that has a certain type of explosive material associated with it, but its primary focus is chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear.

[Stephen Rigby]

The radiation monitors are complementary to what is known as Vacus technology, which is X-ray technology we have at the ports designed to identify suspicious-looking shapes within the containers. They work in tandem.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Good. Thank you very much.

Deputy Commissioner, in your presentation you mentioned that intelligence gathered in one domain often leads to identification of illegal activity in another. I wonder if you could expound on that a bit. Sometimes when people--having a similar background here--find a little problem it's like an onion; you begin to peel back various levels.

Could you give us a couple of examples of how some small piece of intelligence from one particular area might lead you into a bigger area or something more significant?

[D/Commr Raf Souccar]

Maybe I can explain it this way. There needs to be a very seamless integration between our borders and our inland teams and our international partners, our liaison officers abroad. As we get information and we start to verify it and dig into it a little deeper, we very often find ties that were not substantiated at the outset. Through our international liaison officers, through partners--whether domestic partners or international partners--we were able to tie into other pieces that were missing.

If we're referring to the borders specifically, the criminal organizations that exploit the borders do not reside at the border. They usually reside in the large centres, in the large cities. They exploit the borders through facilitators who know the borders well and do that. They facilitate work for those major criminal organizations. Here is where it becomes very important to be able to get those links and be able to push the border in and out as far as possible.

We talked about the seizure of guns, for example. A customs officer, through his alertness and discussion with someone coming through, uncovers contraband in a vehicle, whatever it may be--a gun, drugs, whatever. That's thanks to the alertness and good work of the customs officer, and that's great, if it's small--such as a gun, for example, a one-time thing.

Where they come across major shipments of something, and they have, they've done excellent work in that regard. They have done this on cold hits, without any information being passed on to them to tell them that something would be coming through the border, and that's well and good and great. They've done that because of the training they have and so on. But I view that as a failure, not on their part, but on the part of the intelligence. I always ask the question, how did that large amount of contraband--drugs, guns, whatever--get to the border without our knowing about it? Where are the pieces that are missing that should have uncovered the larger picture?

Having liaison officers who uncover links before the items ever get into North America, before they get to our borders, having inland teams who investigate those criminal organizations in Canada to find out exactly what they're up to and what exactly their intentions are, if their intentions are to internationally import or export, whether it's.... Canada is seen now as a source country for methamphetamine and ecstasy, and we have a strategy in place to deal with that. That is being exported out of Canada, mostly to the United States.

Whether it's being imported or exported, we need to be able to join the dots to be able to interrupt that activity before it gets to our borders.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Maybe we could finish later. You're well over your time.

Mr. Oliphant, please.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My questions are mostly for Mr. Rigby.

You mentioned in your statement that you annually detain about 14,000 people. That's in the same paragraph that you mention refugees. Is that refugees, or is that your total number of detainees?

[Stephen Rigby]

That is the number of detainees.

Largely, they would be detained because there is some question of criminality, a risk of flight, or some question of their identity.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

On Saturday, February 21, a group of people who had gone over to the United States the day before, a caravan of buses, many of them from my constituency, returned from the United States and were detained at the crossing at Fort Erie for nine hours. There were 20 busloads of Canadians who were detained for nine hours--men, women, and children.

When they got on their buses in Toronto and the GTA they were all required to present, voluntarily, their documentation, their citizenship papers, etc., to ensure that one person didn't detain a whole busload. They went over to the United States. They had no problem entering the United States. They came back, and all 20 buses were detained for nine hours--men, women, and children. They weren't allowed to get off the buses to go to the washroom or anything.

How could that have happened? On what basis would these people have been held? There were 1,000 people, so it must have gone up through your ranks, unless you detain 1,000 people every day. And 1,000 people out of 14,000 would be a significant event in the life of your agency, I would assume.

[Stephen Rigby]

Well, it certainly sounds like a significant issue to me. It sounds very out of the ordinary, sir. The 14,000 detainees I mentioned are people we hold in our detention centres, as opposed to people we would stop at the border for questioning over a protracted period.

On the face of what you're telling me, I find it to be a very disturbing story.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

In the end, not one of them was actually detained longer, because they did all have their appropriate papers. What is perhaps unusual about them is that they are of Tamil origin. What flags would go up, or how are your people trained, or what intelligence would they have received, and from where, to cause them to detain them for nine hours? What is your protocol?

[Stephen Rigby]

Well, again, this is purely speculative on my part, without having the details, but we have various intelligence systems that would provide lookouts to our front-line border officers for specific people for specific reasons. It may have been--may, I would stress--that one or more of the people on the buses may have been the subject of a lookout. There are myriad reasons why this may have happened. I'm very hesitant to speculate on what the reasons were, but, as I say, the fact that so many people would have been detained en masse is something I'll certainly look in to.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I happened to be in New York City that day, but my constituents tracked me down and found me. They called a number of their MPs. Luckily my colleague, Mr. Holland, was actually speeding on his way to the border--legally--to go to a meeting in Washington. They had no phone numbers to call to exercise a complaint. There was no complaint process, except to call their members of Parliament. As Mr. Holland arrived, the last bus was finally let go, because they announced to them that their MP was coming.

Would it be normal for citizens to have to call their MP to get across the border, when they all had legal papers?

[Stephen Rigby]

Admissibility into Canada is a decision that's made by the border officer. It's in the border officer's hands to determine admissibility. I don't think, in terms of the way you're putting it, that it is appropriate for someone to have to call their MP to exercise their right to come back into Canada. On the face of it, the answer is no.

However, I have to believe that there was some reasonable basis for detaining these people for a period of time in order to determine the background, the identity, or some other issue pertaining to one or more of them. Again, sir, I'm speculating here, and I'm loath to do that. I would like to look into the case that you've mentioned and find out what happened.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

What is the oversight procedure? With the RCMP there is a complaints process. With CSIS there is SIRC. What is the oversight procedure through which someone could exercise some system of natural justice to complain against such an activity?

[Stephen Rigby]

Currently, there's no formal oversight procedure. People write to me frequently with complaints. They write to the minister. They are all looked into. Many of them are investigated. We are examining internally a separate adjudicatory function that we may instal in CBSA to give people a point to write to when they have complaints, but we haven't take a decision on that.