Public Safety Committee on May 8th, 2017

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'll ask Martin to answer.

[Martin Bolduc]

CBP officers would operate under CBSA policy, and carriage, storage, and transport of firearms would be aligned with CBSA policies. They would not be able to do something with a sidearm that CBSA is not allowed to do.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Is that explicitly stated somewhere or does it require regulatory change?

[Martin Bolduc]

It's clearly stipulated in an agreement we have with U.S. CBP that—

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Does that agreement have force of law?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'll examine the question, Mr. Dubé. My view is that it does. These are the rules, these people will be operating on Canadian soil, and they'll be operating according to the rules specified in the agreement and in the legislation. If it needs greater clarity, I'm happy to make sure we provide it.

The point about this arrangement being better than the alternative is important to bear in mind. If we did not have the agreement and the legislation, then all the rules would be written in and for the United States, because the whole process would take place in the United States on Canadian soil, according to their framework, with no international agreement and no Bill C-23. That would leave Canadians more vulnerable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

Thank you, Minister.

I'm going to suggest that if either the minister or his officials thinks there's a document that would help answer that question, or if Mr. Dubé knows of a document that could be relevant, it would probably be helpful to the committee.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I'd be happy to provide it, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

We're going to continue with Mr. Spengemann.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Minister Goodale, it's good to see you. Welcome back, and a warm welcome to your senior departmental staff as well.

Minister, on previous occasions you've characterized the task at hand for the field of public safety, for this committee, and for your work, as not trading off rights versus security, and as the need to do both—to be good on security and to fully protect Canadians' rights, including charter rights.

In this case, there is a third spoke in the wheel, which is trade and the movement of people. It's about business. It's about tourism. It's about family relationships across the border. In my own reading, I discovered that in terms of pre-clearance, the cross-border relationship takes us back to 1952, some 67 years ago. While not all years had an agreement in place, it's certainly a relationship that operationally is deep and of long standing.

As you know, the committee travelled to Washington and, from our perspective, we want to echo the sentiments you described on the part of Secretary Kelly, which is really very positive feedback from congressional counterparts and also the DHS staff as to the nature of the border as it currently stands.

I want to ask you if you or the department have any statistics on the rate of incidents of withdrawal? You mentioned withdrawal from the process as one alternative to subjecting oneself to U.S. screening that one may disagree with. How many times has that actually happened? Do we have any numbers on that?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

It's very small. Let me see if my officials know.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Or if not, could you undertake to...?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

We'll get the information for you, but on the issue of an intrusive search, for example, if I remember correctly, I believe the numbers for the last year show that there would not have been an incident of that kind—zero in the last 12 months.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Okay.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Similarly, I'm thinking of the circumstances in which a U.S. officer might think a search is necessary and the rules say that they cannot conduct that search themselves, that they have to contact someone at CBSA to do the searching. If you were to apply the new set of rules—slightly changed from what existed before—to the experience over the last 60 years or so, there would not have been one incident when there would have been a problem for a Canadian traveller.

I appreciate the concern of people who want to make this absolutely boilerplate in terms of the protection of Canadian rights and freedoms. We all want to achieve that objective, but the experience would suggest that the rate of incidents that could be considered untoward and actually invoke the provisions of the law would be very few and far between.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Also, that's placed against very large net numbers—millions of border crossings per year of people—and then billions of dollars' worth of trade.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Exactly.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Yet Canadians may ask, how do we make sure that even for those cases where somebody is tempted to withdraw, we have proper mechanisms, and the system and process are integral?

This takes us slightly outside the legal ambit of this bill, but I want to ask you if you have some comments on the nature of oversight or the issues relating to oversight of this process, because trust in government here doesn't flow just to the Canadian government but also to the U.S. government as a component of the pre-clearance process. Do you have any comments on how that process could be overseen effectively?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

Ultimately, someone with a grievance would have recourse to legal proceedings, and that's, I guess, the ultimate protection.

I've had and have I think a very good working relationship with both the previous Secretary of Homeland Security and the current Secretary of Homeland Security. We are both determined that the experience at the border needs to be carefully monitored to determine if there are untoward circumstances that are happening, and before it would get to the point of somebody launching a legal action. Again, if you look at the experience of the last 60 years, that would not have happened very much, if at all.

Before you get to that kind of a situation, we need to have the kind of relationship where, if the U.S. has a problem with the way the Canadian system is operating, or if we have a problem with the way the American system is operating, we can simply communicate with each other and fix it. That's the kind of attitude that has built the kind of border that we presently enjoy, where it is the longest, non-militarized, most successful boundary relationship in the history of the world. Both sides dare not take that for granted. We both need to work at it to make sure that it continues to be safe, secure, efficient, and expeditious.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Again, the committee's experience in Washington just recently was that the interaction, official to official, is strong and profound and positive, and basically, people are on the same page with the same vibe.

I want to ask if you could expand a bit on the issue of reciprocity. The bill captures the obverse of the predominant scenario, which is pre-clearance to go into the U.S. As to pre-clearance going into Canada, what are the plans there in terms of volumes and mechanisms?

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

I have opened that conversation with Secretary Kelly, to get his suggestions or observations as to where we could start on the U.S. side. Would it be in some of those large northern metropolitan areas that are pretty familiar to Canadians: Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle, those kinds of locations? Would it be more the snowbird locations? You could think of Scottsdale or West Palm Beach or areas like that.

We have to work at this together to see where it would make the most sense, where the volumes exist. There's a huge volume of Canadians who go in and out of airports like Fort Lauderdale, for example, in the middle of the winter, as there are in places like Scottsdale or Phoenix. However, there's a huge commercial value in having access out of places like Chicago or New York. There's a governmental value in a relationship, say, between Reagan airport in Washington and Ottawa.

Incidentally, Reagan is one of those airports in the U.S. to which we would not have direct access if it weren't for pre-clearance, because it is a domestic airport. It does not have the international clearance facility. If we couldn't get in there, if we could not pre-clear in Canada before we leave, we'd have to land at some other airport and then take a connection.

We're looking at the options, and they're interested in the discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Rob Oliphant]

I'm afraid I need to end it there.

Thank you, Minister and Mr. Spengemann.

Mr. Miller, you have five minutes.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Thank you very much.

Minister, it's always great to have you here, and thanks to staff for coming.

I think the issue at hand, pre-clearance, has been covered fairly well, and I'm fairly comfortable that we're heading in the right direction there.

However, Minister, screening in general is something that came up in another avenue, and it's to do with the safe third country agreement. I think everyone is aware of the illegal immigrants, illegal refugees, whatever you want to call them or term them, who are entering, basically at will, especially in Emerson, Manitoba, and in Quebec, and I'm sure in other parts. It's probably going to get worse.

Minister, when CTV first publicized it, my phones were inundated with people. Basically what it looked like was that instead of the RCMP saying, “Look ma'am, look sir, you're not crossing here. I'll have to turn you back”, or even directing them to a regular border crossing, if I can use that term, that never happened.

People can't get their heads around why security forces would be standing there and all but inviting them in. I guess on behalf of Canadians—and I'd like to know the answer too—why aren't they being turned around, or at minimum directed to head to the next border crossing? For example, with Emerson, Manitoba, I'm not sure exactly where that is from there, but I'm sure there's one that is not too many miles away.

[Ralph Goodale, Liberal, Regina—Wascana, SK]

It's right at Emerson, just a half a block west of town.

[Larry Miller, Conservative, Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON]

Then that makes it even more bizarre.