Thank you.
It is a great pleasure for me to address you this morning.
What I'd like to do is to express my thanks and the thanks of Transport Canada for the opportunity to discuss the program with you. The approach Transport Canada has taken is to describe publicly as much as possible the nature of the program, its objectives, and how it operates.
In fact, last week Transport Canada launched an Internet site, www.passengerprotect.gc.ca, dans les deux langues officielles and the idea there is to help Canadians understand the program, its requirements, and its purposes. Through transparency and discussion we get better and more effective programs. I have spent the last two years talking to Canadians from coast to coast about the program--to civil liberties groups, to groups of certain communities who feel they might be negatively affected by the program. I have spent a lot of time also with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. And all that has been very helpful to us.
I'd just like to make certain remarks that relate to some issues that were raised last week here. First, I will begin with the point that our subject this morning is the program, but it's also aviation security. Aviation security remains an important concern for Canada, and it is with that goal of focusing ourselves on security of air passengers and, as we learned tragically in the events of 9/11, also the general public that we develop security programs. We do so in a manner to ensure that the programs have security value, are efficient, and match other Canadian values such as privacy protection.
What I'd like to do is focus for a few minutes on the question of effectiveness--I guess that was raised last week--and to make several points, maybe to elaborate on some points made last time.
When you look at security systems, you're looking at a complex system. You're not looking at one particular layer that is perfect in all respects and therefore can replace all other layers. Unfortunately, no one has found that perfect layer. No one has found that silver bullet. You need to overlay layers with other layers, and you do so with the intention that, taken together, they are stronger in their completeness than the individual parts. So we're looking at a layer and not an exclusive system unto itself.
I guess the point was made last time, because we were talking about identity, identification documents--there was a lot of discussion of those--that if someone wants to evade the system, they have to create a false identity. In general, although the program does apply both to flights between Canadian cities and international flights, the standard document used to travel internationally is a passport; and again, no documents are perfect, but the passport is among our strongest forms of identity, with some built-in security features that are always being improved. So that's one thing.
Another point to make is that the individuals we're concerned about--there aren't many of them, and that's a very good thing--are individuals who by their behaviour have demonstrated that they can pose a threat to a flight. Now, that means they're also individuals of interest to law enforcement and other organizations. Certainly one of the standard concerns of law enforcement and security organizations is to detect and look at false identification. That's absolutely one of the things they do. So the idea is that you're looking at a certain number of people--it's not a large number--and if their effort is made through false identification, well, that's part and parcel of the work of security organizations and intelligence organizations, to uncover that and try to address it. That's another point.
Another question that has been raised, as you know, is whether there have been studies showing effectiveness. Well, there's a bit of a methodological problem, and that is, if you look at various security systems, it's hard to study them because it's hard to prove a negative. When we lock our cars, do we know how many car thieves we've deterred? We don't. We're just happy that the car is still there and hasn't been stolen. On the other hand, we don't say we haven't had a study on how many car thieves this has deterred and on that basis decide not to lock our cars. So there is a bit of a methodological question.
I would also make the point that in this case, if you're looking at statistics, the statistics would be quite focused, because if a security system is able to deter one incident of the type that we're discussing, it will have paid for itself many hundreds of times over. That is the goal of security systems. The incidents we're talking about are extremely severe. We all know about those incidents, we remember those incidents.
So that's what you're looking at. If there's one time you can avoid that kind of situation, if we're fortunate enough to do so, it's a very significant matter.
In the absence of studies, what do we look to? We look to actions that have been taken in creating lists--watch lists, if you want--actions by governments, by industry, by the United Nations, by other institutions. The reason those actions have been taken is that they're seen by these entities to be effective.
That's the context in which I hope we discuss issues of effectiveness, that watch lists in a border control sense—clearly not in this sense, the program hasn't begun yet—have been able to prevent individuals with criminal backgrounds, with terrorist backgrounds, from entering countries. It's on that basis that watch list systems exist. If they had no effectiveness or no use, we wouldn't see any of them.
We also notice that we don't see countries moving away from them. We see an interest in those systems and pilot projects and others going forward to look at ways of improving and upgrading, so these systems do an effective job.
Thank you. Merci.
