Evidence of meeting #10 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was catsa.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:50 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security Group, Department of Transport
Yes, we get the results often.
10:50 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security Group, Department of Transport
For security reasons, we never discuss those results in public.
10:50 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security Group, Department of Transport
No. They are secret documents and we cannot discuss them in public.
10:50 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security Group, Department of Transport
On December 25...
10:50 a.m.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
Wait, let me finish, I know what happened.
If a similar incident occurred, would we use the same strategy here in Canada? My question is simple. We know what the problems are but never the solutions. We find the solutions when things blow up in our faces.
10:50 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security Group, Department of Transport
Listen, for a number of years now...
10:50 a.m.
Bloc
Roger Gaudet Bloc Montcalm, QC
We have been talking about this for a long time. There were the attacks of September 2001. A lot of things of this kind have happened in airplanes. Why is it that since 2001 we have not yet found a solution? In September 2011, it will have been 10 years.
10:50 a.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Safety and Security Group, Department of Transport
I have to say two important things at this point.
First of all, it was an exceptional measure on the part of American authorities that stretched out over several months, from early January until two weeks ago, the Wednesday after Easter, April 6 or 7, I have forgotten the exact date. It was impossible to predict that the Americans would come up with a measure like that.
That said, Canada is not the only country to have suffered. Canada suffered more because of the high volume of passengers traveling between our two countries. Every day, there are between 500 and 550 flights leaving Canada to go to the United States. That is 1,100 flights in both directions. Twenty-one million passengers travel to the United States every year.
Nevertheless, those who traveled to European countries, England, France, Germany or even Mexico, were affected by the chaos. There were endless lineups everywhere because no authorities in any of those places were ready to conduct secondary searches on 100% of passengers and to search hand luggage. No one was ready for that. Airline staff everywhere and authorities in various countries had to take exceptional measures to absorb the additional workload. All countries indicated to the United States how much difficulty it caused.
10:50 a.m.
Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Thank you, Mr. Grégoire and Ms. Kinney, for coming today.
I only have two minutes, so I want to zero in on what I'm interested in, and that is productivity. I know there's—
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
10:55 a.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Mr. Chair, are you going to have time to give us a report on your deliberations?
10:55 a.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
I didn't hear that. I heard you say that you accepted an apology. I didn't actually hear what the apology—
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
Basically, what....
Excuse us.
I did review it, and I asked Mr. Jean to make a formal apology, which you asked for at the last committee meeting, and I—
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I agreed that it was very grey and required the apology you asked for.
10:55 a.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Well, yes, because the apology I heard was that “if there's something that I did, I would like to apologize for it”. I didn't hear what... So we did have a breach of the--
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
10:55 a.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Western Arctic, NT
Okay. So we understand that happened. I mean, I'm making that point and I asked for the apology because I think that sometimes in the heat of debate we can do things that are not correct, and in fact, as well, through political pressure sometimes, we do things that are not appropriate.
Mr. Chair, I think you can attest to that as well.
What I wanted to come out of this incident, which has occupied a fair amount of the committee's time for this particular privilege, is that we need to very clearly lay out what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, and that we need to work with each other to ensure these things don't happen in the future.
10:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
I think we all have to be very careful with the information and how we deal with it.
Mr. Watson, on the same point of order.