Public Safety Committee on March 31st, 2015

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

That is so kind of you, Mr. Chair. I am glad to get back to where we left off.

When the Air Transport Association was here and they were asked the question, they admitted they were not consulted in advance on this bill. As I said at the meeting that day, I find it really shocking that the airlines, which are so responsible, weren't consulted on a bill of this type. Regardless of that, you will recall I asked them at committee, if they had any suggestions on amendments, to forward them to the clerk, and that we would have a look at them and, if we thought so, we might move them.

The one I am moving is indexed. The last three numbers are 359. Because it is not in the package, I'll read it:

That Bill C-51, in Clause 11, be amended by replacing line 8 on page 14 with the following: (b) the requirement to alert the Canadian Airport Transport Security Authority of the screening of a person before they

This amendment would make it necessary that the Air Transport Security Authority be alerted about the screening of a person. There are other amendments that will follow up on that to draw more merit to it. In the evidence, I said to Mr. Skrobica, “What I am hearing is that you are responsible, but you are not ultimately in charge”, and he agreed. I think the description that he gives in the minutes outlines it well. He said to us as a committee:

You will recall the reports of an individual who was travelling with a pipe-bomb. CATSA handed the pipe-bomb back to the individual and allowed him to travel. Under this bill if CATSA were to be in error potentially we would be responsible. That's not equitable in our view.

The airlines can be fined, and this amendment, therefore, would give them an alert as to a situation with somebody who is being screened. I think that amendment eminently makes sense.

I so move.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you, Mr. Easter.

Yes, Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I want to ask the officials who are here with respect to this amendment. Sorry, what was the witness' name? He represented a very small group. They were not like the major airports with international flights and so forth. They were a small, more domestic—

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Yes, I can give you this. They were headed up by a Mr. McKenna. The one who answered this question was Mr. Skrobica. When you go back and look at the minutes, you'll find that the National Airlines Council of Canada—we didn't raise the same questions with them—also weren't consulted on this bill. I think that's a problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Yes, go ahead, Ms. James.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I think the larger airline said they welcomed the changes in the bill. They had specific concerns about that one clause, that one section that we've already amended, that the government put forward the amendment on.

I am wondering if the officials could answer a question for me with regard to the current process for the passenger protect system for individuals who are an imminent threat to the aircraft itself. How does that work currently with the smaller airports, such as the one of the representative from this organization? I am trying to figure out whether the passenger protect system applies to those types of locations as well, just to get more insight on this.

[John Davies]

It is not really location-based; it's more the size of the planes. Planes with fewer than 20 passengers are exempt from the passenger protect program. Every other plane and every other carrier need to screen their manifest for the specified persons list under the passenger protect program.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I want another clarification on this one, for the size of the aircraft. How would the requirement to alert the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority be beneficial to this bill? Do you see it as problematic for the bill?

I'm curious, because we have just seen this. We may have to come back to this amendment specifically to review it in more detail later on in the committee's clause-by-clause examination. I'm just trying to understand what your perspective on this amendment would be, with respect to this bill.

[John Davies]

To echo your comment, we just got this five minutes ago—Public Safety, on the policy lead with Justice—and hadn't a lot of time to look at it.

A gut reaction is that this already happens. Transport Canada already works hand in glove with CATSA . Adding a legislative amendment like this would probably not be necessary, but we would probably want to go back to Transport Canada and talk to them to confirm that. But I'm pretty confident in my conclusion.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Personally I would myself prefer to be able to look into this a little more deeply before making a decision on whether it's something I see as advantageous or beneficial or necessary to the bill.

I'm going to ask the committee whether we could come back to this later, leaving this amendment to a later point, possibly today or tomorrow, so that we can take a look at it more closely rather than make a decision right off the bat.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Well, we can consider that, but first of all we have two other speakers here; then we can go to that.

Mr. Garrison, you have the floor first.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Mr. Easter for the work he did with the witness. Because of the rushed schedule we have been on with this bill, we run into situations such as this, in which we have a witness appearing on the last night with a deadline for submitting amendments to include in the package of 9 o'clock the next morning. I appreciate Mr. Easter's having followed up with him.

It seems to me—I know I'm not allowed to talk about the other three in that package and so can only talk about the first one now, but one can assume that my opinion is the same—that these all look eminently sensible and would help, I guess, make up for the fact that neither of the organizations representing air carriers in Canada was consulted before the bill was introduced. So I'll be supporting these.

I guess we're going to come back to the question about when we're going to do that in a moment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Yes, Mr. Easter?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

I don't have a problem with Ms. James's point, if she wants to table this amendment for the time being so that Justice and Public Safety and Transport Canada can have a discussion. But I want to be absolutely sure that there is a discussion, so that there is an alert in place whereby the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority is alerted to these issues. It's only fair and makes sense.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay, thank you very much.

Ms. James, are you comfortable with your request right now: that the chair will put to the committee, basically postponing it—standing it down until later on?

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I am comfortable with that. Again, I want to take a look at it more, because this is actually replacing what is currently there. What is currently there refers to the screening of a person before they enter an area—unless I'm in completely the wrong spot, but I think I'm in the right spot—and this is actually the requirement to “alert” of the screening of a person. I don't know whether both would still be required, as distinct from having one replace the other.

Again, I would be very happy, if we can defer this so that I have time to take a look at it, obviously with my colleagues on the committee on this side as well as with the background on this particular amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Okay, thank you. The chair is—

Yes, Mr. Garrison?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I assume that what we have is in an effect a motion to table, and we would have to have, I think, a time that we come back to it, perhaps at the end. It's hard to say which...whether it's a section or not, but my understanding was that we were to have officials here who could answer these questions. I haven't gone through that list carefully enough, but I guess that would be my question. Do we not have the officials needed to answer questions such as this about the bill?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

There is an understanding that we're on clause 11, and clause 11 has a number of amendments all through. Now, we cannot move off clause 11 without having a decision on what we're going to do with it. I would just bring that to the committee's attention. But certainly it can stand down now until after we finish clause 11, on which we have a number of amendments. This should give some time for either research or consideration.

The only thing the chair would ask, and the chair is looking for direction here.... We could have preliminary discussion on the other motions that are presented with respect to this testimony and the recommendations that have come in, so there may be some discussion and some people might want some time to look for clarification, or we can now just table the rest of the three motions until we hit the end.

The chair is looking for a sense of direction on this.

Do you understand where the chair is going?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Yes, I do, Mr. Chair. Procedurally we can't just set aside that one amendment—because I don't think we need to talk to officials on the other amendments that are in this package—but if we have to table the whole of clause 11 to do it, I don't have a problem, just as long as we come back to them at some point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

That's fine. We can just take this piece by piece and we'll have a look as it goes. That's all the chair was looking for, a sense of direction.

At this point, then, I obviously have the consent of the committee to stand down amendment 3.1, and we will now go on to amendment 3.2.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, until when will it be stood down? Is it until the end of the consideration of clause 11?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

It's until the end of consideration of clause 11.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

At that point, we will have to deal with it one way or the other. We'll either have to stand down all of clause 11 and carry on or make a decision on it at that point.