Transport Committee on April 20th, 2010

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

But is it Transport Canada or CATSA that has to comply? Earlier on, Mr. McGarr was saying that his agency was responsible for security issues. He never referred to Transport Canada. I'm going to be frank with you. If you take the blame, you are going to get it.

[Marc Grégoire]

I do not want to get it, but I have to take part of the blame. When the TSA imposes measures on other countries, we must, as a state, ensure that flights to the United States are screened as the Americans require.

In this case, we translated the American security measures into Canadian ones, which generated additional work for CATSA on flights bound for the United States. It quickly became clear that CATSA was not in a position to take on this additional workload. To help with the volume of passenger traffic, we issued restrictions on carry-on baggage. In fact, we completely banned carry-on baggage for approximately two weeks. Around mid-January, the Americans had changed their policy and allowed a little more flexibility, but not enough to eliminate carry-on baggage restrictions. As a result, to manage passenger traffic and comply with American demands once more, we loosened our restrictions to allow for one piece of carry-on baggage per person. Finally, two weeks ago, on the Wednesday after Easter, the Americans once again relaxed their policy, which allowed us to completely eliminate the restriction on carry-on baggage. The conditions are now the same as those for other flights, domestic or international.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

In that case, Mr. Grégoire, why would Transport Canada not advise travel agencies, Air Canada, that sells tickets directly, Air Transat or the other companies? How is it that passengers are not informed about the special requirements at the time they buy their plane ticket? It would be easy enough to do. Customers need to know what they may and may not do. Even ministers are sometimes stopped for carrying a bottle or something. I am not saying that to offend the minister. It has happened to me and it happens to everyone.

[Marc Grégoire]

Every day this winter, as of December 26, we had...

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

It does not have to be in the newspapers. There are people who travel once a year. In some cases, it might be the first time an individual has ever traveled and he or she may not know what to bring.

[Marc Grégoire]

We had teleconferences with people from airline companies and with airports to advise them of changes every day...

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I'm not referring to KLM, Air Canada, Air Transat and other companies. I'm referring to travel agencies, in other words, companies that sell people tickets to Florida or Puerto Rico or anywhere.

[Marc Grégoire]

Currently, the Internet is our preferred place to post our list of prohibited objects. You can find the list on Transport Canada's website.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Those are easy answers, Mr. Grégoire. Does everyone have access to the Internet? In our area, even though we are not far from Montreal, 70% of people do not have the Internet. Stop talking to me about the Internet. The Internet does not reach everyone.

[Marc Grégoire]

I think travel agents are quite well aware and...

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

You should fine travel agents who do not provide this information. I travel and I have never received a list of prohibited objects. My wife plans our trips.

[Marc Grégoire]

Mr. Gaudet, we advise passengers to check with CATSA, which publishes the information on its website. We do so as well, as do airline companies. If you do a quick search on any website, and I personally have consulted a number of them, you will see that all major airlines publish the list of prohibited objects. Over the holidays, as the instructions changed, the information changed on a daily basis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you, Mr. Gaudet.

[Marc Grégoire]

If there is anything else we can do to improve communications, we will certainly consider your recommendations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Bevington.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses.

Mr. Grégoire, you've been here a number of times. I always enjoy your presentations.

The previous witnesses said that CATSA doesn't deal with threat assessment. Is that strictly within the hands of Transport Canada, then, in regard to determining what the threat is and what the likely best response is? Or is it passed on to an international agency? Do you control that decision-making?

[Marc Grégoire]

We don't control everything about it per se, but we certainly are an important player in the development of threat and risk assessments.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

So there are other people involved.

[Marc Grégoire]

There are other people involved; for instance, the Department of Public Safety, the RCMP, CSIS--and CATSA, because they do attend our exercises.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

We conducted an aviation security forum last February. I have to thank our Liberal colleague for working with us on that. I think it was very successful.

But one of the issues that came up and that really strikes me as being important here is that the witnesses said the system here is too fragmented. I'm very concerned that with some of the things you have said already we're going to create even more fragmentation.

You're talking now about the airport authority taking on the responsibility for security around the airport. We have CATSA that's doing the front line and the pre-screening. Then we have whole bunch of other people who are determining different things about the passengers, whether that is the RCMP or whether that is CSIS, in terms of the secure flight list and who takes care of that. Even within this government, it's not you; it's Public Safety Canada.

Is it correct that all of those agencies are now engaged in the security around an airport?

[Marc Grégoire]

I would say that we work extremely well together. I have travelled a lot around the world on the subject of aviation security. I have not seen a single country--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You may at the top end, but when you get down to the airport and you have a variety of people who report to a variety of other people in that particular airport, how do you maintain some kind of cohesive security system when they are all reporting to different people? That's the ground that we were very interested in.

You do not personally, in Transport Canada, deal with safety. Security is dealt with at the airport by the people there. The confusion that is created by this multiple responsibility for security in our system was clearly identified by the experts at that forum as being one of the major problems that we have with security in Canada and also as a major problem in increasing the expense of security. Is that a fair assessment of what's going on here?

[Marc Grégoire]

I am not sure that I entirely share in that statement, but I have to agree with you that this is the opinion of some people, and we certainly would like to change that opinion. One of the ways that we think would help in that respect is to have this regulation on an airport security plan that will also impose a formal security committee at the airport level, to formalize, if you wish, some of the informal linkages that we have today, and to make sure that all the parties involved are speaking to each other and are collectively--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

But let me take another example of what you're doing just lately. You've gotten out of providing the policemen at the airports. You're saying that you're no longer going to supply the policemen for individual airports. So now what's going to happen? Are we going to have a variety of police agencies working at our airports? Who is going to be in charge of those people? Is it going to be a private security firm? Is it going to be different police organizations across the country?

Right now, at least we have the RCMP consistently at every single policing opportunity at these airports: is it not a good thing to continue that? What you've done, actually, is put that particular system in jeopardy again by splitting it up.

[Marc Grégoire]

The RCMP was pulled out of the airports as airport police, starting in 1996. This varied from airport to airport. It was spread out over a few years. I was in the Quebec region of the department when they were pulled out of the Montreal airport. The armed police now at the Montreal airport are not the RCMP; they are the Montreal police. The armed police at Toronto are the Peel police of Toronto. Some airports elected to contract the RCMP.

What was announced is quite different. In 2002 we gave grants to airports to help them in the aftermath of 2001. We helped them to pay for additional armed police at airports, but they were already, as I've said--