Public Safety Committee on April 29th, 2010

[Chantal Bernier]

I am not personally aware of how they have fixed it. We have received assurance that they were fixing it.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Your conclusions are in paragraph 84. You have four different conclusions here. You say there are “some important privacy vulnerabilities that warrant Transport Canada's management attention”, and you list four. These are very significant and serious, so the same question will apply for each one of them, since you indicated they are in the process or that they had been fixed--

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Don Davies]

Mr. Kania, you have 30 seconds.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Whether you can finish now, or maybe you can advise the committee through correspondence, I would like to know how these have actually been solved.

[Chantal Bernier]

Absolutely. We will be happy to get back to you as to exactly how they have been solved. Yes, for sure.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Don Davies]

Madame Mourani, you have seven minutes.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Bernier and Mr. Tassé, I thank you for being here today.

I would like to ask Ms. Bernier a few questions. In your report, I did not read anything about evaluations of the criteria for the recommendations. Perhaps I misread it. What leads the RCMP and CSIS to decide to recommend to the department that the name of some person be added to the list?

[Chantal Bernier]

In fact, it is not our role. This verification was focused on measures intended to protect the personal data that was gathered. We did not study the effectiveness of the program. In fact, we agree entirely with our colleagues that its effectiveness has not been demonstrated, and it should be. We are therefore expecting a position on this issue to be developed over time. It must be evaluated. It is not up to us to assess the criteria that are used.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

This was not part of your mandate. Could this mandate be given to you?

[Chantal Bernier]

As I said at the outset, we deal with all privacy issues that come under those four main criteria, which include effectiveness and need. In our opinion, the program must continue to be observed from that perspective. Over time, we will have to assess whether or not that is appropriate. If not, that means we are talking about a breach of privacy, which is not acceptable.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I agree with you entirely.

Mr. Tassé talked about the Secure Flight Program. He said that the Department of Public Safety was going to create a similar program. What do you think of all that? If I understand correctly, the airline companies will send all of the passengers' data to the Department of Homeland Security in the United States and to the Department of Public Safety. They would decide who could fly or not. Is that correct?

[Chantal Bernier]

I have not yet received the proposed Canadian measures to adjust to the Secure Flight Program. However, I have received assurances from Transport Canada and the Department of Public Safety that they will send us this information so that we can study it. We will do the necessary analysis at that time. However, I think it is important to note, for the purposes of this discussion, that the sovereignty of a state extends to its air space. We will have to study the issue in that context.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I wanted to speak to you about Canadian sovereignty. It is funny that I, as a sovereignist, should raise the issue of Canadian sovereignty. I feel that every state should be sovereign. I feel that with the American list and all of the Secure Flight concepts, Canadians are not sovereign on their own territory. They cannot come and go as they wish, because the American list is used by the airline companies, even for domestic flights that overfly American territory for a few minutes. That is unacceptable for a state.

[Chantal Bernier]

If I understood correctly, domestic flights that only fly over American territory for a brief period are not affected. What we are discussing, for the near future, are flights that spend a much longer time over American territory. We would be talking about a destination outside of Canada. We will be analyzing the issue in terms of privacy rights, together with the Department of Public Safety and Transport Canada.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I have been told that currently, domestic flights have been rerouted because a person is flying over the United States in order to go to another Canadian province. They are asked not to board the plane.

Mr. Tassé could perhaps tell us about examples that appear in the report.

[Roch Tassé]

I mentioned the case of Abdullah Almalki who, last December, was not allowed to board a plane bound for Windsor from Toronto. Air Canada clearly explained to him that this was because his name appeared on the U.S. list. I imagine that the flight crossed Detroit airspace. So Mr. Almalki was unable to give a speech at the annual meeting of the Canadian Council for Refugees.

There is also the case of Adil Charkaoui who, last fall, was escorted by two Canada Border Service Agency agents as he toured eastern Canada. He was wearing his GPS ankle bracelet, and he made it to Halifax or Saint John, I forget. On the way back, the plane was ordered to turn back to Saint John or Halifax, even though Mr. Charkaoui was accompanied by two agents from the Canada Border Services Agency. He was told that it was because his name appeared on the U.S. list.

It seems, once again, that Air Canada was using the Secure Flight list. The passenger information had been sent and the plane was turned back, despite the fact that the Canadian government, that is, the Canadian Border Services Agency, had authorized the flight to go ahead. The government's agents were even with Mr. Charkaoui. This was before the Federal Court made its ruling.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

These cases show that Canada's sovereignty has been sorely tested by the U.S. list.

My other question is about minors. I have heard of these cases. The minors were allowed to board their flight, but they were searched.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Don Davies]

Madame Mourani, trente secondes.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I questioned the department's officials a little earlier. They seemed to indicate that minors are normally not searched. However, there are cases, like the one involving Alistair, for instance, who could not go anywhere because his parents were afraid of his taking the plane because of the risk of exchanges with other countries. His parents were afraid. What do you think of this? Are there minors on the list? What's going on?

[Chantal Bernier]

The official from Transport Canada told us there were no minors on the Canadian list. I haven't seen the list, but I am assuming that what he said is true.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Oh, you have not seen the list.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Don Davies]

I'm going to ask my questions from the chair, if I might.

I have to say I'm disturbed. I'm very disturbed by this U.S. secure flight program and I'm not entirely sure what the answers are, but what I hear the witnesses saying is that we don't really have any clear basis for even having such a program. There's been no evidence that's really demonstrated that Canadians need to provide this information, that there's any valid security concern that will come from it.

We risk complete abdication of our sovereignty to a foreign government that will determine where Canadians travel pretty much anywhere. And Canadians have no real redress to challenge this. There's no democratic accountability of the U.S. regulatory authorities to Canadians. There's no way for Canadians to challenge the decisions. We have no idea in any way what criteria would be applied by the U.S. authorities to deny a Canadian an opportunity to travel to Mexico, South America, or Europe.

But I do think that my friend Mr. MacKenzie has made one valid point, which is that this is U.S. airspace and they control it. And even though that disturbs me, I'm wondering how we get around that. If the U.S. demands that we provide this information to them as a condition of flying through their airspace, do you have any suggestions for us as to how the Canadian government ought to proceed in the face of such a demand?

[Micheal Vonn]

This is the political and diplomatic dilemma. Yes, indeed, we have sovereignty over our airspace, but every other country does as well. So I think the point here, as little as it suits me to discuss with parliamentarians what parliamentarians should do relative to diplomatic relations, is that surely this an issue the world over.

What we've seen in the kind of security hysteria since 9/11 is none of these things getting smaller. They only get bigger. The rebalancing around security and liberty only appears to be happening in one direction and it seems to us time that we reached out to our allies the world over who are also facing these kinds of dire sovereignty issues to formulate some alliances and to look for some international solutions to these dilemmas instead of letting them be driven by, as we sometimes euphemistically put it, the international forum, but we actually know where that is coming from. So that's my immediate suggestion.

The other thing is of course we need to let Canadians know what's happening. There is so little awareness around these kinds of issues, and if we're going to lobby this country to try to maintain a view of what sovereignty means in terms of these issues, then first we have to have some awareness.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Don Davies]

I take it you would like to see the Canadian government take a more robust position with the American administration in order to have this program scrapped, I suppose. Would that be your advice?

[Micheal Vonn]

Certainly that is ideal. I'm suggesting that we would be on a good footing, I think, with countries the world over who are facing these same dilemmas relative to the mobility rights of their citizens.