Public Safety Committee on June 14th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

All right, thank you.

Monsieur Ménard.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I would like to add to that question and Mr. Cullen's question. If we leave Ottawa going to New York, in the United States, and our name is on the American list, but not on the Canadian list, we will not be able to board the plane. Is that correct?

[Allan Kagedan]

Exactly. That is an American decision. It is a question of American sovereignty and Canadian sovereignty.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Are there children on your list?

[Allan Kagedan]

I do not think that children have committed acts against other people or been involved in a terrorist group. Those are the guidelines for our program. I do not know. It is unlikely that a child will have committed acts like that.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

That was the case for the American list. Maher Arar's children were on the list.

[Allan Kagedan]

I cannot speak for the Americans.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I understand the explanations you gave me regarding Senator Kennedy and Bill Graham. I gave you two other names and you did not answer. I am wondering why you did not prepare for this. It is too bad that John Williams is not here. From what we understood last time, he gave a good report of the problems he had getting his name off the lists. Apparently, he could not board the plane, because his name was on the list.

I gave you two other names: John Williams and Yusuf Islam, that being Cat Stevens' new name. That is a significant point, of course, because with a name like Yusuf Islam, you are dealing with racial or religious profiling. I will not argue Senator Kennedy's or Bill Graham's case further, because there was in fact a mistake in their cases. Nonetheless this is of concern to us.

John Williams was not a minister, but he was a member of the House of Commons. He has a fairly common name. I think there is a famous musician who is also called John Williams.

Are you claiming that all these cases that have been identified as mistakes on lists of undesirable air passengers are merely cases of matching names, that can easily be resolved by presenting identification papers showing date of birth and so on?

[Allan Kagedan]

Thank you.

I am not familiar with John Williams' case. It may have been another case of two matching names. I am not certain.

I have read that the Cat Stevens case was different. That is a question of guidelines. How can we decide whether a person will endanger a flight? It is difficult to answer that question. It is a question of judgment. Mistakes can be made, and that is why we have an office...

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

We do not have much time. I am going to ask another question. Are there categories on your list?

I will give you an example. Hezbollah members of the Lebanese parliament might apply to enter Canada. Because they are members of Hezbollah, which we consider to be a terrorist organization, would they necessarily be on the list of passengers who may not come to Canada?

[Allan Kagedan]

Thank you.

The fact that an individual is associated with a fairly serious terrorist group is not in itself sufficient. It must have been determined that the individual intends to do something. It is a question

of the behaviour of that individual, not only membership in a group and not only association. It is certain behaviour against a certain possibility in the realm of law enforcement intelligence and transportation security. That's the gist of it.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Okay.

I would come back to the first explanations and arguments you gave us today. There is no single thing that can be done that can completely guarantee security. Security is best ensured by a set of measures that complement one another. I understand that argument perfectly. That is not where the question lies.

The question is what additional protection this gives us as compared to the disadvantages. I am still wondering what danger a terrorist who has been searched, and who we are sure has nothing on him or her, or in his or her luggage, can present once on board a plane. Can you give us an evaluation, that will necessarily be very subjective, of the additional security that no-fly lists provide as compared to security measures consisting of searches and examinations before boarding?

New technologies enable us to take the equivalent of x-rays, but in millionths of a second. They can even detect plastic weapons, in the same way as current technology can detect metal weapons. What more does this give us? The person may indeed be a terrorist, but if the person is not carrying a weapon, what danger does he or she present?

[Allan Kagedan]

Okay, merci.

I would just draw this distinction. I think, again, one has to be very careful when talking about the nature of exact security measures and about exactly how each one works and so on. One has to be careful.

I would say broadly that the security we have in Canada is more robust, perhaps, than security elsewhere. I don't how many have travelled internationally. In terms of the machines, they're of various natures. There have been instances when, internationally, people who were supposed to do screening looked the other way, and people got on planes and the planes went down. There have been those instances.

What this would do is say to air carriers, here you are, you're the air carriers, you are taking responsibility for this flight; join us, work with us, work in partnership in relation to keeping certain people off the plane. But relatively speaking, the more security you have.... And I agree with you there. Each layer has a different function, but they all work together; they all benefit in reinforcing one another.

One thing, for instance, under this system and so on is that there is a moment when you have a person, their ID, their boarding pass, and the fact that they have a seat on the plane, and it all comes together at one point. It's just very basic common sense. This is the person who is supposed to be getting on the plane. They have valid ID.

It is an additional help, but I would put it to you that internationally it could even be, relatively speaking, of even greater help, given the different level of robustness of a particular layer in a particular place.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you, Monsieur Ménard.

We'll have Mr. Brown, please.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I think I speak for all members around the table in saying that security of air passengers in Canada is a paramount consideration. In the last meeting we had, and I'm sure you've reviewed the records of that meeting, there were concerns about a name-based program. There have been arguments by some around the table that this program is not going to be effective because of the potential for assumed identity and because of people with multiple passports. How do you plan to deal with that?

I, for one, am an advocate of face recognition technology and using other identification with biometric indicators that may enhance the ability to protect people and minimize the number of false positives. How would you respond to that?

[Allan Kagedan]

Thank you.

Again, this is one layer. As we said last time, there are many layers. The layers complement one another. Each layer has its own financial costs and efficiency costs, as well as challenges in terms of privacy and human rights. I'm just saying that one has to look at all those things when looking at any one of them. They all complement one another.

In terms of falsification of ID, I would like to offer a distinction between the ID falsification by a kid trying to get into a bar if they're not quite old enough, which is one sort of thing, and the sort of thing we're talking about. We're talking about something fundamentally different. We're talking about different individuals who are of concern to the international community. They are of concern to security intelligence organizations, who are very concerned that they will use false ID to try to do something. That's absolutely one of the concerns.

You deal with falsification of ID by trying to overcome the falsification. You're not dealing with dime-store.... Again, the consequences of what we're talking about, if we just consider for a minute, are very much different in terms of false ID for getting into a bar and false ID for trying to bring down an aircraft. Consequently, the amount of attention that's paid to individuals like that is going to be greater. If they try to use false ID, greater attention will be paid than to ID used in other contexts.

All security measures have to be looked at from the point of view of efficiency. People still want to travel, and they don't want to be inconvenienced. Also, do they raise issues for privacy and human rights? You have a blended system, a system with a number of different aspects that work together to deliver the desired result, which is safe travel. We have a healthy aviation industry; we have more people travelling. That's very positive, and we certainly want to support that.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

There are many ways to purchase a ticket. Are you considering different ways to ensure that airlines don't sell to people who are on your name-based list? For example, right now I could go on one of the various travel seller sites--Expedia, Travelocity, and others--and purchase an airline ticket. It may not be at that point, but is there a way to have it so that the airlines would be in a position to have that name recognition at that point, when the ticket is purchased?

[Allan Kagedan]

Thank you.

There are many different airlines in the world. They are at different levels of sophistication in terms of computers. I myself have had experiences in which some were okay with my telling them who I am, while others needed a paper ticket. We have different levels of that in the developed world, and still more different levels in the developing world.

What we have done with our system--and again, we're looking at a dynamic industry--is that we have not focused on the ticket sale. The ticket sale is often at three or four removes from the air carrier. It depends on who is selling it and what the conditions of sale are. We're looking at the boarding pass, that document of whatever size or shape that entitles an individual to actually get on the plane. That's the one we're focusing on.

What we hear from air carriers is that depending on their business model and how it works, they know who's getting on the plane when someone arrives at the airport and is given a boarding pass to get on the plane, so we focus ourselves around that. As you go outward in the ticket selling realm, it gets less and less clear as to who, what, where, and when, and it gets much more difficult from an operational point of view and a business point of view.

That's why we are focused on the boarding pass as a document of entitlement, and on the question of denying a boarding pass to individuals of concern.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

On the list of ID that you'll accept, I don't see the NEXUS card. Of course, NEXUS deals with cross-border flights to the United States. Is that something you might consider? I know there's a chance to expand the use of NEXUS. I know it's expanding regularly at border crossings and for flights. Is that something we might also use domestically for frequent travellers?

[Allan Kagedan]

We'll look into it, and I thank you for the suggestion.

We are looking at cards that are issued by government--I think NEXUS is, I'm not familiar with it, but I think it is--cards that are related to an ID of a particular individual, not a group of individuals, and cards that enable that individual to do something, so if it fits into that category.... I would welcome suggestions of other cards that fit into that category. As the point was made here, people do like clarity; it helps them, so the more government-issued IDs we could actually list, the better. That's not to say that they're government IDs; some that are not there may be valid, but people do want them to see what they are.

We'll look into NEXUS and anything else you care to suggest. That's welcome.

We are getting suggestions from different parts of Canada and we're examining each one. We're trying to make it as easy for people as possible to comply with the rule.

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much, Mr. Brown.

We will now go to our next round. Mr. Chan, please.

[Raymond Chan, Liberal, Richmond, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have to say that you're not convincing at all today on all the arguments that you're trying to put forward. I have three major concerns with this system.

One is the ID process. Regarding the list that you showed us, many of these could be easily falsified. It would be tremendously impractical to get someone from the airline to know how to identify false IDs just on this list, never mind additional IDs that might or might not be acceptable. As for training someone to identify what is a falsified driver's licence from across the country, there are 10 provinces that have 10 different drivers' licences issued, health cards. Even on your list there are a lot of holes to allow falsification.

You identify a passport as something that would secure the idea of people, yet on the other hand, there's a long list of IDs that are acceptable. So your argument that using a passport is a good one falls down the hole.

The other issue is about this security thing. Even if I agreed with you that if you can catch one incident it's worth troubling about 80% of Canadians—I don't agree with that, but even if I do—I'm worried that this system has such big holes to try to catch a small fish that it would have no added value to the layers of security that you're talking about.

If someone can falsify any two pieces of ID and buy an airline ticket off the Internet through somebody else, and they just pick up that ID and they take it to the airport, there's no way you can catch him, unless he has been tailed by the security officers all along. And if he has, you don't need a no-fly list, but at the same time about 20 million Canadians will be disturbed in this process.

And what's worse, you're creating a false sense of security for the public, while actually this has no value at all to the layers of security that you talk about. That's the first concern that I have.

The second concern is, how does someone get on the list? There is an opportunity that people who are not convicted will be on the list--suspects. The first criterion that you mentioned--a terrorist suspect, no matter where the suspicion comes from, could be on the list. Mr. Arar could have been on the list.

The problem I have is that they trample on civil rights. And the reverse onus on that individual to prove that he doesn't have some kind of guilt to be on the list violates our basic principles, the fundamental judicial right of due process for Canadians. That's what I worry about.

The third thing I worry about is that the airline could share this list with other authorities, and that impedes the privacy of Canadians.

So far, listening to all the responses that you have to the different parties, I'm not convinced. You're not convincing me how this could be worthwhile, and at the same time you're causing a lot of headache to a majority of Canadians. With any approach of any system that we want to impose, we have to balance between the effectiveness and the usefulness of the system and how much trouble it will create for Canadians and how many rights we have to trample on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you, Mr. Chan. You're over your five minutes.

I didn't detect a question there, but do you have any response to any of these?

[Allan Kagedan]

Yes, and I appreciate very much and certainly agree with the need for balance. On the question of ID and passport, if you travel to the U.S. or internationally, you must use a passport.