Transport Committee on Feb. 24th, 2009

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

That is fine by me, except that, unless any legal counsel in the room corrects me, I understand that a person will need security clearance to transport dangerous goods in Canada. That is how I understand it.

[Marc Grégoire]

In addition, the bill stipulates that this section will not go into effect at the same time as the rest of the bill. This section will not be enacted right away, at least not before the regulatory framework is in place.

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

So you are telling me that I should focus on the date the bill is to come into effect. You want to have it in operation in 2010. If you apply it to all transportation of dangerous goods, you will never be able to meet that objective.

[Marc Grégoire]

That section cannot be in effect before the Olympic Games; it is impossible.

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

That is what I wanted to hear.

[Marc Grégoire]

But the rest of the bill should be.

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

Fine.

My second question is about the emergency response assistance plans. I am sure that you discussed this with the industry. Was a cost analysis done? We are in a deep economic recession. Is everyone comfortable with the costs that could be associated with this?

[Peter Coyles]

Emergency plans do not result in increased costs for the industry. There are two aspects to the authority given in the bill. First, if we ask someone in an industry with an emergency response assistance plan to respond for the government, we have to have a way to pay him. That is included in the bill. Second, the industry asked us to provide it with protection and indemnity. For example, if they drove over the lawn here in front of Parliament, they wanted to be sure that the government, not the industry, would have to repair it. The industry therefore is reimbursed for all of the expenses needed in order to put the plan into operation, as well as getting the necessary insurance.

As for the plans, they already exist. They have been in operation since 1985. They have been validated by the previous department. The only costs are to keep them up to date, which is necessary for safety. The issue is whether we can use them if a security-related incident ever occurred. That is the objective of this bill: being able to activate the plans if a security-related incident happens in Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mr. Minister, for joining us again.

This is a very important bill, but my questions will probably be in the same vein as my colleague from the Bloc. I'm concerned about the provisions under proposed section 5.2, the transport security clearances. The bill was presented so as to refer to the international movement of goods, in that we have some responsibility to take over security requirements there. I think that's a very positive step. But what this bill does is to open up grounds under proposed section 5.2 to cover any part of our transportation industry that handles dangerous goods. In many cases, with common carriers, only part of their efforts involve dangerous goods, and many of their efforts are in other areas.

So the transportation security clearances under this would apply to much of our transportation industry. And since the regulations may be put in place to match the requirements that the United States is putting forward or has in place already, we may find these regulations to be overdone for a common carrier in Canada, or for part of our transportation net within the country, and might not be appropriate.

So that's one of the bases of the concerns we have. In Canada, as well, we are governed by our civil liberties and our rights of privacy. So how do you see these powers being prescribed to an international situation in the future? Or is this going to allow ministers in future days to continue to ask for more transportation security clearances for a variety of carriers in our industry?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'll go first and then I'll ask my colleagues if they have anything to add.

I think the whole notion of how we deal with security is very different from what it was ten years ago. I do think that in Canada we have had a different balance of security versus civil liberties versus privacy. The same debates that we have in Canada, they have in the United States.

We have a new administration in the United States. Neither Secretary LaHood or Secretary Napolitano has given any clear indication of what type of appropriate balance they will strike. I think that balance will likely be fluid and change in our lifetimes, from time to time, or at least in our professional lifetimes, and that's appropriate.

I do think we always have to be vigilant that we don't just automatically sign on to anything that happens in the United States. At the same time, if you have trade issues, to a degree you're more handicapped than you might like to be.

I would choose the word “comparable”, as in not just simply adopting everything that the United States does, but to have a comparable regime. In a number of pieces of transportation and security legislation, they speak to that. So they would have to be satisfied with us. That's just my overall thought.

I think it's a fair concern, and frankly I think it goes far beyond any regulation-making capacity under section 5. We're always going to have to be vigilant. We have a charter in this country, and we have case law that is very different from that in the United States. In the United States, on privacy, I think they have pretty strong case law as well.

I'll turn it over to my colleague.

[Marc Grégoire]

Yes, I'd like to add a few things, Minister.

First of all, the way I read it or understand proposed section 5.2, the way it's written now, is that all of this would be prescribed in the regulations and be contained within them. So this would be specified by the regulations. For me the whole thing applies there. So the regulations would specify all of the parameters, and I would expect that the process would be similar to what we've done in the marine sector for the ports, in that we would entertain a very wide and large consultation process, and we wouldn't impose these regulations in places where they were not required.

So for the ports, for instance, we started with the three main ports and then enlarged this to a few secondary ports. We wouldn't cover every person in the TDG sector. It's just not possible.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Okay. I understand that your intentions right now are very good, but we're passing legislation that gives the minister the authority to do much more than that. Your intentions are really not what is in question here; it's the actual bill that we're dealing with. And when you talk about regulations, is the minister going to pass the regulations, or are they going through a Governor in Council in this bill?

[John Baird, Conservative, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

A Governor in Council.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

A Governor in Council, yes. If the purpose of this bill is to deal with our international relationship and to provide the security clearances, can we see some clarification in the bill that this is what it's going to be used for?

[Marc Grégoire]

We wouldn't want to have it limited to international. This is where the request started: the teamsters actually were the first ones to request that we put this piece in the legislation to eventually replace the FAST card. So the idea from the teamsters.... Okay, you understand this one. But we wouldn't want to limit it to that, because we may have security reasons in the future--not right away, but in the future--to request that in Canada.

[Peter Coyles]

Would it be okay if I added something just for clarity, Mr. Bevington? Just so you understand the process now, if you were a truck driver and you went to CBSA, you would have to make an application--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I understand that process.

[Peter Coyles]

--and then it goes to the United States. They do a review. Under the bill, you're enabling that the individual can come home to Canada and have a right of recourse and a right of appeal for his security clearance. If you leave it as it is now, you will find that--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

But that's not the question I'm trying to get to. The bill is laid out in a fashion that the security clearances could in the future be put onto our national transportation net. Is that not correct?

[Peter Coyles]

Correct.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

As the bill's written.

[Peter Coyles]

Yes, it can.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

That was my question. I understand the provisions within the bill to deal with the issue of international travel, but of more concern to me is how this is going to impact our local and our national carriers, not today, but in the future as well.

[Peter Coyles]

Everything that we do is risk-based, so our intent is clear and our consultations were clear on how we were going to move forward with this particular provision. That would still be the way we would move forward. Granted, the authority is larger, and if there is a security risk that is determined that would require something larger, it would probably make sense for the Department of Public Safety to have the authorities to be able to do it.

We cannot unilaterally move to make any decision that would not be done through regulation and through wide consultation. So anybody who would have an impact because of that enlargement should there be a risk or a security concern would have an opportunity to be consulted on that prior to it becoming enforced.