Public Safety committee  That is correct. There are places where the border is essentially field or scrub. I've been to a lot of places throughout Canada. The border runs through backyards, through schools, through the middle of forests, and so on. So yes, there are places where you could cross with an

Public Safety committee  I think you raise a very good point. I think there are times when we could be more aggressive in publicizing some of this information, and it's something that I hope we can do in our regular plans and through other fora. There are times when we would choose not to, largely becaus

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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

Public Safety committee  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

Public Safety committee  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 c

Public Safety committee  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 pe

Public Safety committee  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 serie

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  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.

Public Safety committee  Just the same, Mr. Comartin, I want to see, in the near term, a better correlation between our seizure rates and the general thinking in terms of the level of crime that's being committed domestically with smuggled guns. Our emphasis is going to be on the following: more intellig

Public Safety committee  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 reason

Public Safety committee  I guess in broad-brush terms I don't disagree with the assumption, but like yourself, for me it's a bit of an assumption. I think one of our problems is we have to build up better databases in terms of what the quantum of the problem is and we have to understand a bit better the

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  No.