Evidence of meeting #50 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 airport.
A recording is available from Parliament.
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Voices
Oh, oh!
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Conservative
Brian Jean Conservative Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB
Sold. That's one of my favourite activities. I'd be happy to.
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Executive Vice-President, ICTS Europe Holdings B.V., ICTS Europe
I think there are two areas that still need to be improved and put on the agenda in the North American environment. One area--
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Conservative
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Executive Vice-President, ICTS Europe Holdings B.V., ICTS Europe
One is the service element. Obviously, commercial security service at the airports is still perceived as being an obstacle, and this is a perception that has to be changed and analyzed. That being said, with the assumption that the regulators set the standards, they are the right standards, they're not disputable, and so on, the way it's being delivered still has to be upgraded.
If the measurement is waiting lines and you compare it to Walt Disney, where you have the most impatient society of people waiting in lines—the kids--they're willing to wait in line because they know they're achieving their goal. They're doing it somehow better there, because we don't have the same perception with three billion other people. So this is the first area: the perception of service.
Area two is still the issue of cargo screening. It has been mandated to happen, and there is still a large debate about what should happen. What are the regulations? What are the protocols and so on? You're virtually stripping the passengers, on the one hand, and on the other hand, 67% of the air cargo is being flown on passenger airplanes and being screened by the paperwork. I don't need to tell you how easy it is to prepare paperwork.
The car wash was one of the represented solutions two years ago. They said, “If we move the cargo through like the car-wash industry, we'll able to screen it”. But again, as with the whole-body scanners, there is no technical solution yet to mitigate the risks and identify the components of prohibited and dangerous items in cargo.
So the hit list is not five items: it's two items. One is service on the level of the passenger and the other one is cargo.
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
Thank you to our guest. Hopefully you'll see what you've offered appear somewhere in a future report on airport and air safety from this committee. Thank you very much for your time today.
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Executive Vice-President, ICTS Europe Holdings B.V., ICTS Europe
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to everybody for the questions. I hope you don't mind my blunt answers.
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Conservative
The Chair Conservative Merv Tweed
Thank you.
Just for the information of the committee, we are asking that members submit their amendments to Bill C-33 by Monday, March 7, no later than midnight. We'll see you this afternoon at 3:30. Thank you.
The meeting is adjourned.