Transport Committee on Feb. 24th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Monsieur Laframboise.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Strangely, I am going to continue on the same track because, for the 2010 Olympics, I see a problem with the Conservatives' view of the objective and the result.

Earlier, when I asked about security clearances in transportation, Mr. Grégoire, your answer was that you cannot put everything in place inside Canada. I understand that, there are a lot of truckers, and so on. So this will not be ready for 2010, and it was very good of you to tell us so.

Mr. Coyles told us that, as regards emergency response assistance plans, security for companies was really not a problem. He is already busy drawing up emergency response assistance plans. So safety is being included and they are going to be compensated if there are costs. That is it, more or less.

And for Quebec, for example—and I am talking about roads—there already is an inspection service. So it will not be harder to do all this. So I have difficulty understanding how it can be said that there will be more security when the Olympic Games are held. Security clearances will not be available. If we are thinking that, if there is an attack, it will come from the United States, we have to forget it. No dangerous goods will cross the border from the United States into Canada. So, if something is going to happen, it will have to come from Canada. In my opinion, the only way of going about it is to monitor the truckers, to have security clearance for truckers. But that will never be ready in time for the Olympic Games.

I understood you as long as you were not talking about the 2010 Olympics. I have a problem with the Conservatives' objective of increasing security by 2010. Can you explain that to me?

[Marc Grégoire]

There are two essential aspects of the legislation that deal with the Olympics. Let us go back to the security clearances. As I said, that will not be in place for the Olympics, but that does not mean that the RCMP will not require them, or will not search people and vehicles, the trucks and the people going into strategic Olympic venues. The RCMP is responsible for security at the Olympic Games.

For our part, we need two things in order to tackle the Olympics. First, the orders, the security measures; these are the tools that we have in other acts such as the Transportation Act, the Maritime Transportation Security Act or the Aeronautics Act that you have examined in detail. These measures can be put in place if the threat level increases at any given location. For example, if the threat increases in a given airport, we can tighten security by implementing a security measure. Possibly, instead of checking a certain percentage of passengers making their way to a plane, we would check more, two or three times more. We have no regulations for dangerous goods at the moment, no legislation that allows us to put security measures in place if a threat requires it. We have absolutely nothing except sending in the RCMP. This bill would allow us to adopt various security measures as the result of various departmental orders. As I mentioned earlier, we could stop the transportation of dangerous goods on the highway to Whistler, we could stop the transportation of dangerous goods within a certain radius of the Olympic stadium or of other Olympic facilities in Vancouver. There are measures that we can take, and, at that point, all the designated inspectors or the police could stop people from going into those places.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

The province could have done the same thing. British Columbia could have adopted the same measures.

[Marc Grégoire]

To my knowledge, no province has its own security measures governing the transportation of dangerous goods. Generally speaking, this is the act that would let people make regulations. Usually, the provinces adopt our regulations by reference.

The other important measure is the one Mr. Coyles discussed at length, the one that allows a private company to intervene in the event of an act of terrorism as long as the government pays the costs and takes the responsibility. We do not have that at all. If there were a terrorist incident in Vancouver today, for example, and we knew that a Vancouver or British Columbia company had the capability to go and deal with the chemical spill, the company would refuse to do it unless it had a guarantee, insurance coverage. This bill would allow the government to provide that, but we cannot do so today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thanks.

Going back to the relationship between the United States and Canada over security clearances, we have the bill in front of us now. Have United States-Canada negotiations taken place over the process by which the United States will accept our security clearances?

[Marc Grégoire]

I did negotiate with the administrator of TSA in the previous year. We now are negotiating security clearances and mutual recognition for port workers and Canadian mariners who board ships.

We have not negotiated here yet because we don't have any program for this. What we have now is the FAST program. But what was negotiated through the SPP was the vision to have a mutually recognizable system, mutually acceptable to the countries.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So you haven't actually negotiated the terms of what types of information are required under security clearances to satisfy the United States. We also don't know what other provisions the United States may seek in the future for security clearances for Canada.

How do we deal with this relationship? You're saying that this bill is set up to provide a mechanism so that we can provide security clearances for our own people. But we don't yet have a relationship established with the United States in terms of signing off on the details of what type of information will be required and the process of adding or deleting from that information. That's not been done yet?

[Marc Grégoire]

It has been done for the marine sector, but not for the surface sector and not for the truckers per se. We have said to our American counterparts that this is clearly our vision. As I said in the first hour, the first group to ask us to put this provision in this bill was the Teamsters. When we were consulting for the marine sector, the Teamsters participated in the consultation, and they asked that we come up with a similar program for the surface sector.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

With the marine agreement, within that agreed-upon information structure, how do you deal with changes or new requirements for information that perhaps the U.S. has for its security clearances that would impact on the relationship between the two?

[Marc Grégoire]

We don't yet have an agreement.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

For the marine you said you did, so you must have some basis of working.

[Marc Grégoire]

No, I didn't say that. I said we were negotiating with them. We had been in conversation with them over the last year, but there was a change of administrator. Actually the new administrator has not yet been appointed.

This is something that the marine sector stakeholders in Canada are pressuring tremendously to have. At both of our recent consultative committees of marine stakeholders, many labour groups asked us to put more pressure on the U.S. We did. We went to Washington. We presented our program. We explained in detail how we conduct background checks here, and that it would be the same for truckers. We were told that we were going to have to wait for the new administrator before a decision could be made. That's in the top priorities on my agenda for when a new administrator is appointed, presumably in the next month or two.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

We don't have any assurance yet that a system will be put in place that will last for these types of security clearances. This is the hope we have through this legislation.

[Marc Grégoire]

No, the hope is that it will work. Also, we think that the security clearance is an important feature for the security framework in Canada in general. It's not all about technology and boxes. We think that the human element is very important in the security framework. As we did for airports and for ports, we think we have to do something for the transportation of dangerous goods and workers as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Having grown up in a U.S. border town, I certainly know that you're going to have some challenges trying to find that medium ground for access into the U.S. and into Canada. I don't envy you your challenges, having experienced some of the difficulties some people, truckers particularly, have moving across even now.

[Marc Grégoire]

We like challenges.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Absolutely.

Ms. Hoeppner.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have a very quick question.

Manitoba is looking at establishing an inland port in Winnipeg, hoping to attract foreign and domestic transporters. I'm wondering what the impact would be. An inland port would probably be more of a holding area. Also, I'm wondering what the impact would be and whether there'd be special regulations for areas that are holding a dangerous good and then being prepared to transport it domestically or outside the country.

[Peter Coyles]

There already would be requirements, obviously, under other acts if there is stuff happening at the port. The notion of the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act is on the import, offering for transport, transport, and handling of dangerous goods, so its impact is minimal.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

I'm working and looking at establishing foreign trade zones so that we would have foreign exporters coming in and maybe adding value to certain products. Some of them are dangerous goods, and they change. Again, would this impact that, or would it be under other regulations?

[Peter Coyles]

I'm sorry, I missed the question.

[Candice Bergen, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Something I'm personally looking at and hoping to promote is establishing foreign trade zones in Canada, which would mean we would have foreign exporters as well as manufacturers in Canada taking products that could be dangerous, but changing them and adding value to them or changing the components. I'm wondering if this act would affect those people, or that would be under a different act.

[Peter Coyles]

If it's a dangerous good and meets the requirements of the act and the regulations, then the answer is yes. If it's in the notion of import, handling, transporting, or offering for transport, then it would. If you took a dangerous good and you upgraded it and it became a new dangerous good that had some value added in a different product and you wanted to sell that and transport it, then yes, you'd fall under the act.