Transport Committee on March 1st, 2011

[Joram Bobasch]

Well, it was not prior to 9/11--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Okay. Good enough.

[Joram Bobasch]

--and then there were steel doors and locked doors.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You said that you could take out this steel door with your glasses.

[Joram Bobasch]

I could try.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You could try. But I mean...are you satisfied that the protocols now in place for access to cockpits are such that access to cockpits is very unlikely by anyone within the plane? To me it's one of the key elements of security, because it's dealing with the risk. If the risk is taking over the plane or if the risk is simply damaging or hurting one of the attendants or one of the passengers on the plane, two levels of risk are involved. Do you not agree?

[Joram Bobasch]

I agree with the fact I can take my glasses and threaten a flight attendant—or a glass or whatever--and stab her and whatever and try to convince her to open the door to the cockpit. If she makes it or doesn't—

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Is it possible for a flight attendant to open the door of the cockpit under the new protocols?

[Joram Bobasch]

I don't know.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You don't know? But this is an essential element of security.

[Joram Bobasch]

It is, but we are dealing with the security that is up until the airplane--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

But if you're talking about risk assessment and you don't know whether that door can be opened, then how can you assess the risk of anything that a passenger is taking on a plane?

[Joram Bobasch]

Again, I understand your question. The total risk assessment with our—

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

You may be protecting your business, but I want to get some answers here. If the business is security, yes, you have to.... But what is the risk when the cockpit doors are locked and barred?

[Joram Bobasch]

The question is a fair question. It's a wonderful question. The fact that the cockpit doors should stay locked is not disputable.

The protocols should be such that any threat that happens before the doors shouldn't enable a stewardess or any member of the crew to open the doors. If it is as such, I don't know, because we are not involved in that. We might have an opinion in saying that there should be a protocol. The inflight security measures are the sole responsibility of the airline that operates the inflight process, not the security company or the security regime that does the security for the passengers before they board.

Having said that--

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

But—

[Joram Bobasch]

Please let me finish. But having said that, if we analyze that scissors or glasses or whatever would enable someone to overcome this kind of a protocol, the protocol should be changed.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

But in order for you to determine what should be looked for on a passenger, you must understand what the risk is on the plane. I'm kind of befuddled by you being the expert on European Union security yet you can't answer this question for me.

[Joram Bobasch]

My answer is very simple. We are a commercial security provider. We are providing compliance with the requirements of the regulator, of the government. If the government decides that we have to take off whatever item there is, then we will take it off. This has to be monitored and managed day in and day out. The decision of what to take off is a regulated decision and not that of a private service provider.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Okay.

On another matter, in terms of these wait times at security, what we saw this year was a very bad incident at the Russian airport, in the airport, where we lost many people. The Israelis believe in no waiting; they believe in no congestion at the airport. Do you follow that logic?

[Joram Bobasch]

It is, again, the process of the threat assessment. How possible is it, wherever you're doing this assessment, that this threat may happen? It happened in Russia. It happened in Glasgow. In Glasgow, a car full of explosives was driven into the terminal and exploded. I forget the number of casualties. The same thing happened in Madrid in the parking area.

Coming back to Israel, the Israeli threat assessment has a protocol that says cars are inspected in the vicinity of the airport, not while arriving at the airport. So four kilometres before you arrive at the airport, on the highway, you have a kind of checkpoint where they verify whether the car represents a risk or should undergo an inspection. In Israel, this risk exists. In Baghdad, it exists every day, because cars explode every day. How high this risk is here and whether this is an actual risk is up to the regulator to analyze.

In Germany two years ago, a group of so-called homegrown terrorists was preparing bombs from chemicals they bought on the free market. They were detergents. They were caught, luckily, days before execution, but they had exactly the same intention.

It is a question of risk assessment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

You have five seconds, so I think I'll go to Mr. Jean.

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

Thank you for coming today. We really appreciate it. I have anticipated this for some period of time. I'm quite excited, because you are a service expert in relation to airports, I understand, and you have some expertise in relation to queueing and efficiencies.

That's what I'd like to concentrate on: productivity and efficiency in our airports. I think that's very important, and I think most Canadians expect us to work on that, especially given some of the statistics we've received from other countries in relation to the throughput in other airports.

I'm going to concentrate a bit on Israel. I had an experience in Israel. I went to Israel with my mom and about 30 Jewish friends from a synagogue in Long Island. I was on a bus. I was coming up to the airport in Tel Aviv, and they stopped us. The military surrounded the bus and we got out. I was the first person. Everybody was about 60 years old or older, so I was the person who got out and did the talking.

I got out and they asked me a few questions. They asked what I did for a living, and I told them that I was a member of Parliament from Canada. Well, they were just pulling out the first suitcase, and when they found that out and got my business card and saw my ID, they put everything back in and said, “Have a nice day”.

[Joram Bobasch]

They were nice people.

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

They were nice people. I was quite impressed, because obviously I don't pose a threat, right? You would think that as a member of Parliament of a democracy that believes in the rule of law, I don't pose a threat.

Why can't we do that in this country?

I understand that they have a psychological test they give people every year. In that psychological test, they have a series of 10 or 20 questions, and they exclude almost all of their citizens, all their Israeli citizens. It's something like 90%, I believe.

Now, I received a NEXUS card here a couple of days ago. I must be one of one per cent of one per cent of Canadians who have it, if not fewer. It's very difficult to get. It's not that simple, to be honest, and especially for a guy who travels. I'm a super-elite member. I travel a lot, and it's still quite difficult, or at least cumbersome, to get.

Do you think there's any value in having an exclusion list of people who don't pose a threat and having those people assessed through some sort of psychological test every year? That's my question to you.