Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's my first time so I hope I do what's expected of me.
I have a few comments to make about the proposed legislative changes, which seem fairly innocuous and bureaucratic. When going through them, there didn't seem to be much to sink my teeth into to begin with, but further investigation suggested there are many things to be concerned about with these changes.
The reasons for the changes are not clearly set out in the legislation itself, but turning to the background document we get a sense that these changes are being proposed as part of the beyond the border action plan on perimeter security and economic competitiveness that was signed in December 2011 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Barack Obama. The electronic system being proposed is to establish a common North American approach to screening travellers that will be in line with the electronic system for travel authorization, ESTA, that is already in place in the United States. Our ETA, electronic travel authorization, being proposed is very similar, I think, or is expected to be similar to the ESTA coming out of the U.S., so it's important to look at the relationship between these two processes.
I have several questions around the ETA being proposed, that we require a visa waiver for non-nationals travelling to Canada. The first questions are around the kind of information that will be collected.
Currently, carriers have to provide advance passenger information, which includes name, date of birth, citizenship or nationality, passport, and other travel documentation, as well as the passenger name record, which includes address, itinerary, and ticketing information. The question is what kinds of information in addition to this may be procured with the proposed ETA. There are big questions already around the ways information is being acquired and questions around its reliability.
Back in 2007 an Auditor General's report showed almost 40% of the passenger name record information that was being collected was not accurate. Another more recent report by the Canada Border Services Agency back in February 2012 also indicated great problems with the information being collected. This raises a big concern about the kind of information that is being collected already, and how this information may be used in this proposed new system.
The legislation also suggests an electronic processing system will be used, but it's not clear who will have access to this, whether this will be government driven, or whether the carriers will have access to it, and how this information will be shared among national agencies in Canada.
I'll turn now to the way the information may be shared with the United States. Since this is being introduced as part of the beyond the border plan, the big concerns are around the information sharing that may happen with the United States as a result of the ETA.
Again, the background paper identifies its aim is to establish a common North American approach to screening travellers. It's important to see what this means in light of the Canadian system around gathering information and how we understand visa waivers. Travelling may be coming more harmonized with that of the United States.
For example, we still have visa waivers for many former Commonwealth countries. Whether those will be sustained in the future or whether we will move more in line with the United States and their decisions around who requires a visa or not to enter the United States is yet to be seen. That's one concern, that as we move to greater harmonization around our processes, we'll also move to harmonization around the kinds of countries we require visas for.
Then there is the whole process around information sharing between Canadian and American agencies. The beyond the border agreement sets out the information that will be shared. A key component of the beyond the border agreement is that there be further information sharing between the two countries. There are big questions about how, when, and why that information will be shared, and under what circumstances it will be shared.
The American version, the ESTA, which was set up in 2007, is very vague regarding who has access to this information. The American version states:
Information submitted by applicants through the ESTA Web site is subject to the same strict privacy provisions and controls that have been established for similar traveller screening programs. Access to such information is limited to those with a professional need to know.
That's all they say, so it's not clear what that “need to know” is, how that's decided, and on what basis.
It does say that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State, as well as federal, state, local, tribal, and foreign government agencies can have access to this information. There's a question in the Canadian case as to whether we also will have these different organizations having access to the information, and whether we will be making this information available to the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of State in the United States. I think that's a big question around how the information will be shared across the two countries.
We have many examples in Canada of information sharing that has gone wrong. The case of Maher Arar is always brought up as one key example. The federal inquiry did reveal many problems with the way the RCMP acquired information and how it was shared. The United Nations cited this as an example of human rights infringement around the information sharing that took place.
Also, privacy issues have been identified as a key concern in the limited public engagement that there has been with the beyond the border agreement. Privacy issues have been number one in issues identified by the public vis-à-vis the beyond the border agreement.
None of these are clearly set out in the legislative changes that are proposed. There is no sense of how these will be addressed or taken care of, so again I think we need to be very careful about how these things will unfold.
The other question is around inadmissibility criteria. Again, there are questions of whether there will be harmonization around the criteria for allowing someone who is part of a visa waiver country to come to Canada. The Canadian and U.S. versions are similar to a great extent, but they're not exactly the same.
Again, the question is, will we be taking on these different kinds of rules that the United States has? For example, they specify mental health issues. We do not specify mental health in the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Whether that is something that will be taken up is yet to be seen. There are examples of people already being denied crossing at the Canada-U.S. border because of mental health reasons. There are questions around how that information is being made available to border agents.
Between Canada and the United States, we have a joint statement of privacy principles that has been signed through this beyond the border agreement. Whilst this does set out a framework of common rules for approaching how we will share information in future, there is very little in terms of how this will deal with the distinct constitutional and legal frameworks that we have in Canada and the United States. It's very strong in principle and statement, but not very clear in terms of procedure.
Another big issue has to do with appeal and redress. There is no statement about how people will know why they are inadmissible if they are so deemed, how they will be informed about these reasons, and how they will make any kind of appeal or have opportunities for redress if they are not admissible to Canada under these new rules that are being introduced. I think that needs to be clarified in the legislation around appeal, which is something that we set out as due process in Canada—