Evidence of meeting #49 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was person.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Okay, I'll go back to Mr. Comartin's point. This isn't going to do anything to protect us, because you're relying on information that's provided by the person who's planning on travelling.
Have you had any experience with face recognition biometric lookout systems and face recognition technology?
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
I've heard of them, and I'm familiar with the concept of biometrics and those sorts of things.
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Have you seen a demonstration of face recognition technology?
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
Not live. I've seen a film variety.
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Okay. Do you think that's something that could help improve the situation? Right now I have no confidence whatsoever in what you're doing to keep Canadians safe.
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
Just to be clear, as I say, the idea here is when we ask someone to produce identification at the airport, there's a process that needs to be followed. If someone produces identification that there's some question about their identity, and so on and so forth, against that match, there's a process with the air carrier and Transport Canada to resolve that issue.
On your question about other programming that might be useful, from a security point of view, there are all kinds of ideas out there. We're aware of many of them, maybe not all of them. We are examining them to the extent that we can to determine, on balance--based upon risk, based upon privacy, based upon efficiency, privacy, security--how we take a look at these to see what is practical and useful in an aviation security environment.
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Okay, so you agree that we need to improve ways to clearly identify the bad guys and not focus on inconveniencing innocent regular travellers.
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
This program does focus on people whose actions have determined that they are people you wouldn't want to get on an aircraft, and it's not designed to target innocent travellers.
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
Okay. I'm about as frustrated as Mr. Comartin was. Thank you very much.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
I thought maybe you would draw some parallels between how the money being spent on this is as useful as the money being spent on the gun registry. Has it come back to--
Conservative
Gord Brown Conservative Leeds—Grenville, ON
I would leave that to you, Mr. Chairman. I assume you would be doing that.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Thank you so much.
I just want to get this straight. So right now is your definition of “aviation security” just in terrorism situations? Or would “aviation security”, for instance, include something that's a health risk?
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
We're looking at it from the point of view of the guidelines we have. If you're referring to recent situations--
Liberal
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
If we had information indicating that someone could be reasonably suspected of undertaking action that would threaten aviation security, passengers, aircraft, air crew, and so forth, we would consider whether or not that person's name should be placed on the list.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
That's obviously not something you're going to get from CSIS or the RCMP, so who are you consulting for that information?
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
Well, as I say, from the point of view of protecting the aviation system, the Minister of Transport has broad powers to do that. If there were circumstances outside of this program, where the aviation system was seen to be threatened by some kind of a potential event, we would expect those authorities who have responsibility in those areas, whether it be health or any of the others, beyond a CSIS and RCMP to bring to—
Liberal
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
—our attention those circumstances. Although it might not be under the provisions of this program, there is authority there for the Minister of Transport to respond, if necessary, to those types of circumstances.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
All right. I think there are a lot of questions about that and it's very problematic. I really do believe you're getting into incredibly complex territory right there, if you're adding in health.
I really don't get this. You're saying that you're going to have potential terrorist threats or aviation security threats. Okay, so the person comes to the desk. If they don't get their boarding pass, what do you say to them? Goodbye, go home? What's going to happen here? Are you supposed to call the police, or do we let them go and wander around? They're too dangerous to get on a plane and fly, but they can just go home and contact your reconsideration board?
This isn't a joke.
Director, Security Policy, Department of Transport
Excuse me for interrupting, but what I wanted to say is that there is a very clear process where, if the air carrier believes someone on the specified persons list is going to present themselves at the check-in gate, they can contact security and the police.
Also, when they contact Transport Canada—and this is another important part of the program—to verify that the person is in fact on the list, at Transport Canada we will have people 24-7 to contact the RCMP to advise them there is someone on a specified persons list who will be appearing at an airport, so they can make use of that information to carry out the functions they would deem necessary.
The purpose of this program is to prevent people who pose a threat to aviation from boarding a flight. That's the key—to keep them off the flight. And if the RCMP or any other police force of local jurisdiction have reason to believe there is something else, such as a warrant against this person, or something like that, they should be enforcing; it's up to them to enforce it.
Our role, really, is to make sure that the person who represents the threat does not get on the flight.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
I dread to think this summer of how my MP constituency office is going to be dealing with the phone calls coming in with the false identifications. Has there been any thought to providing MPs with information on how we can contact somebody to be of assistance? Because I'm sure we'll get these calls about false positives.
