Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The proposed electronic travel authorization makes sense, particularly if it provides screening for nationals of countries that are visa-exempt and who plan to travel to Canada. At the moment we don't have anything to cover them.
It helps to identify individuals who may pose a problem in terms of being allowed entry before they get on a Canada-bound plane, and it therefore saves both them and us a lot of money, time, and trouble.
It also speeds up the entry of persons who do not have a problem.
The system will not be perfect, since it's based on name recognition and leaves open the possibility that someone may gain entry by using a false identity. It will be more effective when biometric screening such as face recognition is available, and I think Mr. Bell just made that point.
One of the reasons for putting in place the electronic authorization, EA, system is that this is one of the commitments we made under the Beyond the Border action plan we agreed upon with the United States in December of last year. It will be part of more extensive arrangements with that country to facilitate the movement of people across our mutual border and identify those we need to keep out.
I would mention in this regard that the implementation of this agreement with the U.S. would bring with it substantial benefits to Canada.
A Fraser Institute paper released three months ago noted that that there had been a substantial decline in travel by Americans to Canada since the events of September 11, 2001, when the U.S. began thickening the border in terms of security measures. While some of the decline in travel by Americans might be attributed to the less favourable exchange rate of the American dollar as well as the economic crisis beginning in 2008, both of these developments started long after the decline in the number of U.S. travellers to Canada had begun.
The Fraser Institute paper estimated that roughly $7 billion per year in tourist-based receipts had been lost for the Canadian economy as a result of this decline in cross-border travel. Much of this might be regained if we implemented the screening arrangements provided for in the Beyond the Border action plan. The paper's authors also noted that the implementation of the action plan would result in savings to Canadian taxpayers of somewhere between $600 million and $1 billion annually, although they weren't able to identify how much of this amount would be due to the implementation of the eTA and related elements of the plan.
I would like to raise a couple of issues that have been mentioned in connection with the electronic authorization plan and other elements of the plan. One entails the exchange of information with the United States and whether such measures will be consistent with Canada's privacy requirements. In this regard, the federal Privacy Commissioner will certainly be consulted when the various measures are being considered
In the past, there has been some fairly robust debate in Canada concerning how much information about individuals should be made public or shared with the United States. In 2003, when the government of the day revealed that it was looking for 59 suspected war criminals who were wanted on Canada-wide warrants, the then Minister of Immigration told Ontario law enforcement officials that it could not provide the names and photographs of the individuals because to do so would violate their privacy rights.
This sort of situation occurred again in 2005 when the government was looking for 115 missing war criminals and the Canada Border Services Agency refused to reveal their names out of concern for their privacy rights. It did not, however, recur in July 2011 when the federal government released the names of 30 suspected war criminals it said had entered the country illegally and had since disappeared. With the help of the public, eight of these individuals were located fairly quickly, and by August 2011 three had been deported. The government thereupon published the names and photographs of 32 permanent residents who had committed acts of serious criminality in an effort to locate them. This indicated that while the previous government felt it was bound by privacy rules in releasing information about criminals who had gone into hiding, their reluctance apparently was unfounded.
While privacy concerns will definitely have to be taken into account when specific arrangements are drawn up on the sharing of information with the United States, it should not be assumed that we are limited by privacy restrictions in releasing information on individuals, as government authorities had assumed was the case in 2003 and 2005.
Moreover, in the event that the effective implementation of sections of the action plan that clearly benefit Canadians and enhance our security entails a review of the adequacy of our existing privacy legislation, we should be prepared to consider amending that privacy legislation. That, of course, would have to go for debate before Parliament.
Chairman, I'll conclude by flagging two other issues that have been raised in connection with the implementation of the agreement with the United States. One is the contention that in adopting the various measures provided for in the action plan, there be no discrimination between the treatment of citizens and of permanent residents in either the United States or Canada. The fact is, however, that if non-Canadians, and that includes permanent residents, are war criminals, are involved in or support terrorism, or have committed serious crimes, we do not have the same obligations to them as we do to Canadian citizens.
This is supported in international law. International consular agreements do not provide for access to non-citizens. Under domestic law, of course, permanent residents don't have voting rights or passport rights. I think we cannot automatically extend exactly the same rights to non-citizens, just because they're permanent residents, as we do to citizens.
The second issue is whether full due process has to be accorded to everyone whose right to enter Canada has been denied by the implementation of the electronic travel authority regime or by any other measures provided under the action plan. Were we to allow full due process to individuals refused entry into Canada, we would be in effect allowing any non-Canadian in any part of the world to challenge negative decisions. This might be a field day for immigration lawyers, but it would be a disaster for the Canadian legal system and a serious erosion of control over our sovereignty.
When I spoke before the committee two weeks ago, I mentioned that we already had a problem with people in Canada who weren't Canadian citizens. Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was badly drafted. As a result, a Supreme Court decision in 1985 made it possible for failed refugee claimants to delay their removal from Canada for years and even decades. So we already have a problem with non-citizens on our soil having a degree of due process that no other country allows. We certainly don't want to extend that to non-Canadians who aren't even here yet.
I just flag those two issues because they've already been raised and they'll likely come up for further discussion.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.