Transport Committee on May 4th, 2010

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

And they're flying smaller helicopters.

[Somen Chowdhury]

They're flying smaller helicopters. They're doing odd missions and trying to get business. They're trying to make ends meet, and they're having difficulty.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Do you think we should set higher standards for the training that goes into someone who starts off in the helicopter business with a small helicopter? Do you think we should make that more expensive, bring in more equipment, or increase the flight hours required for a single helicopter pilot to get a licence to fly a helicopter?

[Sylvain Séguin]

In all fairness when we talk about large operators, they operate with different clients, so it's a different structure, different class, and different category. With the small operators and pilots coming in, I think the approach that has been taken, let's say, in Canada, for example, with the HAC having specific committees for different segment of the activity--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

But do you think we need to have greater initial helicopter training before putting a pilot in a small helicopter with a small company? Do you think the amount of training they're receiving right now is adequate?

[Sylvain Séguin]

I think it's adequate for--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Okay.

[Sylvain Séguin]

Yes--

[A voice]

The difference--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Okay. Thank you.

I want to go to aviation security.

We've been presented with a lot of data on this, but you've correctly identified that the threat is explosives. What's the current condition of the technology around sniffing devices that could be added to the system? Would they not, in some ways, be more directed toward the problem we have, rather than these full-body scanners that are very intrusive to the passengers and take quite a bit of time? A sniffing device for explosives probably takes quite a bit less than 45 seconds.

[Kenneth Dunlap]

I think the sniffing device has turned out to be a very interesting exercise in government contracting and science. The science of the sniffing devices appears to work. It appears that you can put a person into the sniffers and get a very good idea of whether or not they have a range of explosives on them.

But the United States has found out that unless you have a very careful process of contracting and making sure your science works in an airport, you're going to have a device that winds up sitting on a shelf. I think the United States government has several hundred of these devices sitting on shelves in boxes because they don't work in an airport. They are unable to work in the high humidity of an airport. They're unable to work with all the debris floating around in the air. Quite frankly, the sniffers got clogged

I certainly think that if the TSA had it to do over again.... I think they would be wishing that they had done something we call the O'Hare test. They would have tried to see if it could work operationally at an airport as large as O'Hare the day before Christmas under high passenger loads, under the same environment.

I think this cautionary tale applies to the whole-body imaging as well. We need to make sure that it operates under high passenger loads, should that be the route people want to go.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Now, in terms of aviation movements, you have an incident, right, like the December 25 bomber, and suddenly you put on these added security requirements. Would intelligence not tell you that this was a single operator, that you didn't have to ramp up the security for the whole system worldwide when the threat was already over? There was no threat left.

Isn't there something we should be doing to rationalize this security threat paranoia that we've created in the system?

[Kenneth Dunlap]

Mr. Bevington, you're right: the basic fundamentals of risk management. We find that what the airline experience has been, especially since September 11, is that emergency rules and emergency orders that are written in the heat of the moment wind up becoming national policy, and that winds up becoming the worst security policy.

So we think there's an order that needs to be taken when you look at emergency response. The first is that you do your preplanning. You do your government-to-government coordination. You do your intra-government coordination. And you plan for these bad things to happen, because they will happen again.

So after you do that and get that coordination in place, get your game plans in place, then what you need to do is work with your intelligence agencies to identify the threat. After the threat is over, after you know there are no more conspirators out there, and after you know there are no more devices, I think you have to draw down, and you have to analyze what has just happened. Then, if you need to make long-term changes, you have to do that.

Frankly, many governments that IATA has seen don't take that second step. We have layer after layer after layer of security that has been put onto the industry right now, and quite frankly, there's overlap, there's duplication, and there are a lot of security measures that probably aren't relevant anymore.

So we would ask Transport Canada and we would ask CATSA, and we would propose to other governments, to please stop and take a look at what they're doing and understand that a short-term emergency requires a short-term response, not long-term policies.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Ms. Brown.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here.

Mr. Séguin, I will have to pass on your regards to our good friend Kirk. It's interesting that we know people in common.

Mr. Chowdhury, I want to talk about something you presented to us about cultural relevance. I worked in disability and risk management for a number of years: industrial accidents and injured workers. We used the same iceberg that you are using. There were some different numbers, but the same concept applies. I was impacted particularly by the last video you showed about the individual crossing the railway tracks and the risks they're prepared to take.

I guess, Mr. Dunlap, I come to you, because there is a cultural issue here that we have to change. People don't want to take risks with their aviation security. They want to know that they're going to be on a safe flight. So we have some work to do in changing a culture. I think that what we saw as a result of what happened on December 25 was a reactionary situation in our culture, where people said, ”Do something, do anything, but just do something to make sure I am safer”.

I think one of the comments you made was on detection capabilities. For all existing detection capabilities, there are complementary vulnerabilities. It's the law of physics, isn't it? For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

We're doing our best with the technology we have now. We have to make a capital investment in scanners in order to ensure the public is travelling safely, but we need to look to the next generation. You made a comment that, first of all, Canada and the U.S. need to foster better cooperation on security.

The issue is productivity. You talked about the number of seconds it takes for an individual to go through a scanner, which is 45 seconds. If there's only one scanner, it will take however many hours to get 300 people through. Hopefully we'll have more than one scanner so that it duplicates the process.

The United States has become very protectionist in its attitude, and rightly so. They have a responsibility as a government to ensure the safety and protection of their citizens.

How do we as Canadians go about fostering a climate of trust? How do we do that for our aviation security, keeping in mind that we have a culture that we have to change? How do we do it to ensure productivity is not interrupted?

[Kenneth Dunlap]

Let me start by saying that Transport Canada, on a major portion of the question you just asked, is headed in the right direction.

IATA has put together security management systems. My colleague here has talked about safety management systems. Transport Canada has been very supportive of taking some of those same concepts and putting them into security, because, quite frankly, there are large portions of the industry that need to have a security culture embedded from the ramp to the boardroom. Some companies do it well and some companies don't, but we think there needs to be a baseline of expectations on how companies internally handle security incidents.

Our hat is off to Transport Canada on being visionary and pushing forward on that, because security management systems, I think, are an alien concept to large segments of regulatory leaders right now.

You also asked me how Canada and the United States work together based on the fact that the public wants a strong reaction; they want the threat to be over with, yet they still want to travel comfortably. Certainly we think that emphasis on outcome-based regulations needs to be part of the dialogue between the United States and Canada.

That dialogue should begin as, “Tell us what you don't want”. Okay, you don't want explosives in baggage, so don't tell us the kind of machines we have to use, don't tell us what procedures we have to use, but tell us what you want. All too often, certainly when we look at the United States, we see them discussing specific types of equipment that must be used and certain procedures that have to be taken, and the outcome in all of this is forgotten.

I mean, the outcome is no explosives on passengers, and the outcome is no explosives in checked baggage or in carry-on baggage. And let's stick with that.

My suggestion for you as government—I've never been in your shoes, though—is to push back on the prescriptive security regulations that come from down south and say, “We can get you the ends that you need, but let us determine the means”. And certainly the means are how we think security can be safer and more effective.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

So as we are moving towards this new understanding of behavioural profiling, which is essentially what it is, we need to have other things in place to move us forward to that place without interrupting the productivity.

Because really, that's the bottom line for us, isn't it? We don't want to interrupt passenger movement. We really don't want to interrupt the movement of goods back and forth across our borders. We have to ensure that's there for the strength of our economy. The suggestions that you have to get us to that place I think will be very welcome.

Mr. Chowdhury and Mr. Séguin, do you have any comments?

[Somen Chowdhury]

We did not address the airport security issues. We suffer as much as passengers, and as you do, but from the operational side what I addressed was how things operate for those in an aircraft or a helicopter.

The man in the cockpit is a critical decision-maker. That's the safety side of the operation. We have to empower the pilot with all the tools that enhance his situational awareness and judgment, so the technology is driven towards accuracy of data. If he sees a light flashing, he needs to know what it is. Once he knows what it is, he needs to have a diagnosis right there as to whether it is critical or non-critical.

All that should happen in a timeframe such that he can react safely for the passengers of the aircraft or the helicopter, whichever it is. The faster we go, the faster the aircraft, the shorter the time span. So it's a contradiction that we're struggling with in the technology realm. Without confusing the pilot, without adding to the scare, we need to provide a solution. We're not there. It's all being driven in that direction.

It has to be cheap and cost-effective. It has to cost nothing to the people. You want to enhance the safety of the passengers and you want to introduce systems, but you don't want to cause pain.

You want to have a vaccination, but you don't want the injection needle to go into your body. This is the contradiction that you have to struggle with.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you. I have to end it now.

Mr. Volpe or Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I just want to welcome back Mr. Dhaliwal. He's going to take this round.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Dhaliwal.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen.

I will carry on with Mr. Dunlap.

You mentioned that people carrying a NEXUS card should be treated a little differently. I certainly see the lineup at the Ottawa airport, and I'm a NEXUS member. I have not seen any difference in the attitude of CATSA processing or in the time it takes for me to get through that security process.

What specific recommendation would you make to ensure that those people get through security faster?

[Kenneth Dunlap]

I'm talking about a situation that may be two or three years down the road, because currently the way CATSA carries out its mission is not consistent with an idea of having separate tracks for NEXUS or Global Entry cardholders.

But on the higher level of philosophy, essentially in the future you'll have two types of passengers. You'll have a passenger who, in exchange for having a quick, efficient, and trouble-free journey through the airport, will give a lot of information on his background. Essentially, that's what NEXUS says: give us the information and you can have a pleasant journey through CBSA.

In the future, we think that subset of passengers—we never expect that it will be a majority—will be screened differently. Everybody needs to be screened, but those types of passengers will be treated differently somehow in the future screening system.

Now here's one of my problems. My crystal ball isn't working on what that next-generation checkpoint looks like yet, but of the higher-level principles, it is those passengers you know more about who get treated differently from those passengers who don't want to give up any information on themselves. Whether or not that means this passenger gets her shoes screened, this one does not, this bag goes through this type of machine, this bag goes through the other...I don't know what that is.

But precisely because of that question you asked, that displays the importance of global regulators getting together and coming up with the next-generation checkpoint, because that concept has to be embedded in it. There's the concept of figuring out what we do with our crew members. Obviously we have crew members in and out every day, and they're one of the lower-risk groups we have right now, yet they're being screened like people we know nothing about. So certainly a next-generation checkpoint takes into account our crew members as well and figures out what we need to do with them.

But I do think that, like anything, the brainpower is out there to put this new system together. Unfortunately, I don't have a better answer than that.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

You mentioned here that passengers are treated with dignity.

I have heard a few complaints, although not many, that for the passengers who go through these security checkpoints, particularly in Canada—I have travelled across the world and I haven't noticed this situation anywhere in Europe—the racial profiling the people at CATSA are doing is unacceptable. Just upon seeing passengers' colour or his ethnicity, they are stopped and harassed.

Would you like to comment on that?

[Kenneth Dunlap]

I can comment at a high level, representing IATA: we're completely opposed to racial and ethnic profiling.

Racial and ethnic profiling is not a security procedure. However, we do believe that behavioural profiling, whereby you take a look at how a person is reacting and interacting with their environment, has security value.

Certainly, there's the other aspect, too, and it goes to the discussion of how you leverage all this information we know about passengers. We do believe security needs to have a one-on-one interaction with each passenger. You just can't simply wave everybody through. We do think there's time to ask intelligent and intelligence-based questions of the passenger.

For instance, I came into the country last night and was asked the purpose of my being here. I said that I was going to testify for the first time in front of a committee of the House of Commons, and I was told that was very good.

By that same token, another passenger could come up and say he was going to the Delta Hotel. Perhaps in the next-generation checkpoint the questions would be about when he made his reservation and who made it, just to see if his story adds up. I think, as Mr. Sela said, that's what the Israelis try to do.