Transport Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2010

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Just for the benefit of Ms. Mourani, what amount of airline loss is there in Montreal going south of the border to Plattsburgh? I understand it's quite substantive. If you go through Plattsburgh you very seldom find a licence plate that's not from Quebec.

[Joseph Galimberti]

Yes, it is significant. Any attempt to capture leakage has been, for the most part, anecdotal. We have rough estimates that there are in the high hundreds of thousands to millions of passengers who are transiting through there. The best way to look at it is to look at the services that are developing. Clearly, there's a certain market opportunity or else people wouldn't be investing billions of dollars in aircraft to service that location.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Is it fair to say that as legislators we should actually shut that business down and move it back to Canada where it belongs, create more jobs, create more employment, make it more competitive?

[Joseph Galimberti]

Yes, absolutely. Even at a more basic level, there's an enormous amount of foregone tax revenue associated with those purchases as well, putting aside the economic benefits. There's actually cold hard cash that would be otherwise collected.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Now to my last question.

If I may, both you and Mr. McNaney probably travel a lot--Mr. Goldstein, I'm sure you do as well--and I know that we have a lot of Mexicans and South Americans in Alberta doing bear hunting and things like that. So a lot of people from that area are coming up. I asked this question earlier: what information that you collect as an airline, or that people collect as an airline, would you not want to share with the United States police authorities? Is there any information that you collect from your passengers that you would not want to share with U.S. authorities? I'm talking about police authorities. The legislation is clear that it's going to be police.

What information would you not want to share that people collect at the border?

[Mike McNaney]

Nothing comes readily to mind--

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Well, you would know more than I do. There are 26 or 32 items that are collected by airlines?

[Mike McNaney]

There's a variety of items. There's nothing that comes to mind. It's fairly straightforward data.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

What kind of data is it?

[Mike McNaney]

It includes name, date of birth, gender. If they've had issues with whatever jurisdiction's no-fly list, or whatever we want to generically call it, and they've remediated that issue, they will be given a number to provide to us so they don't get caught in the system afterwards.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

That's the appeal process that's already in place. They would take note that there's an appeal process and that they've appealed the decision.

[Mike McNaney]

And that their situation has been corrected.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Obviously, if it hadn't been corrected, they'd be somewhere else, we'd hope.

[Mike McNaney]

Again, keep in mind that we have no access to, nor do we want any access to, any of the decision-making or information that goes on among security authorities when they make those decisions.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Goldstein, is there any information that you can imagine that you wouldn't want to share with U.S. authorities?

[David Goldstein]

No. Again, this is a voluntary transaction. I'm engaging in the marketplace, just as I would be in applying for a credit card or other series of information.

But I would tell you that there's also a reciprocal problem, in that Canada Customs is making it very difficult for certain travellers to come into Canada for very minor criminal offences that are decades old. We have a serious situation in which tourists coming into Canada—Americans who have a DWI infraction that's 30 years old—are being denied access to Canada. It goes back to the notion that we need to harmonize the policies and regulations and get on with it.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Does this legislation move that agenda forward?

[David Goldstein]

We believe it's a small step forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

Just to follow up on that, I know friends who were charged 35 years ago who really struggle to access the United States, and yet we have examples of people changing their names and actually gaining employment in the United States because they can't find out who they really are. We have an example of that in the news right now.

We're going to go with one more round of about four minutes each for each party.

I'll start with Mr. McCallum, and then we'll go to Ms. Mourani.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

I just have one question for Madame Des Rosiers. I'd like to ask you whether, if the bill were amended in four specific ways, which I'll read out, you would find it acceptable.

I should say that this is not to say we will necessarily propose these amendments; it's more a hypothetical question.

These specific ways are: one, that Canadian law require that passengers be notified about the information to be shared; two, that adding any countries other than the U.S. to the list would require parliamentary approval; three, concerning the time-limited issue, that this committee be required to review the legislation after, let us say, two years; and four, that the Privacy Commissioner be called upon to monitor the situation and to report regularly to Parliament.

There's a fifth one, but I don't think it could be put into law. You talked about a written agreement from the U.S. regarding the use of data. I think that's more a question of negotiating; I don't know whether it would be possible.

But would those four items make the bill more palatable to you?

[Nathalie Des Rosiers]

They certainly would be a good step.

I think the question of assurances, which we do all the time—we request of the U.S., for example, that they not use the death penalty on someone and so on—with a view to complying with Canadian law, is appropriate in this context.

In an international context in which we want to ensure that there is a possibility of fairness for travellers—and what we're talking about is fairness for travellers—that there be a movement to require some transparency about whether the assurances from the TSA.... It seems to me this would be a significant addition.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Ms. Mourani.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Goldstein, I would like to go back to what you said about Plattsburgh. Did you mean that more people would go there if Bill C-42 weren't adopted? Why?

[David Goldstein]

Absolutely. We would lose Canadian air service.