Transport Committee on March 1st, 2011

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Yes.

[Joram Bobasch]

Obviously they could not, for two reasons. One the one hand, the cockpit doors are locked, hopefully for good, and on the other hand, the security protocols that existed prior to September 11 allowed knives on board. If I remember correctly, they were allowed to have knives up to nine centimetres long. The reason for it being nine centimetres was that up to that point you could still stab somebody without killing him. This was the assumption then. This assumption was revoked shortly after that, but those two major risks were mitigated by the existing system.

The question is, what are the risks today and are the systems mitigating all the risks that you perceive today?

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I agree with you, but in 2001, those were American pilots with American planes. Those were not planes from other countries. The planes that hit those targets left from the United States. We are talking about airplanes from American companies. What guarantees do you have that this won't happen again? The cockpit may be closed, securely shut, locked, but if the pilot has control of the airplane, what are you going to do?

[Joram Bobasch]

I'm not answering on behalf of the pilot, because this is the pilot's decision, so--

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I am not asking you to answer on behalf of the pilot. Those were four American pilots from American schools who did their pilot training in the United States. And you are telling me that it couldn’t happen again. I’m not so sure about that. They were American. Even if they weren’t American in origin, it doesn’t matter. They were American with American airplanes and with Americans inside. The targets were very specific, and you are telling me that it could not happen again with these same pilots. I am not sure about that, even if the cockpit is locked. We are talking about security. It is all well and good to say we are going to screen people at the airport, or Brian Jean, the chair or myself will go through the checkpoints, but if the security staff does not screen the key players, meaning the pilots, flight attendants and so on, what are we supposed to do? We can say goodbye to security forever.

[Joram Bobasch]

If I recollect correctly, on September 11, 19 people succeeded in entering cockpits to hijack the airplanes and fly the airplanes. Against this modus operandi, one of the measures was to close the door of the cockpit and close it in such a way that an entry would not be possible. Now, the question is whether that is technically possible or whether you could convince the stewardess to open the door for you.

It is probably very hard, but wherever the door is, it is there to be opened. There is always a risk that somehow you would be able to open the door of a cockpit, of a nuclear plant, or of a meeting room...it doesn't matter.

I understand that I don't understand the question--

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

You are saying that 19 people got into the cockpit, but that’s not what happened everywhere. The planes that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York had left the airport 20 or 30 minutes earlier. Those people did not have time to take everyone by storm. I think it was the pilot himself who flew directly into the World Trade Center. If I remember correctly, that is what happened. You are talking about the plane that was headed for the Pentagon, the headquarters of the American defence department. But in this case, fights broke out on the plane. To my knowledge, there were no other fights elsewhere. That's my opinion.

[Joram Bobasch]

As far as I remember, some of those 19 people took flying lessons in Florida. They upgraded their capabilities in order to fly those commercial airplanes. What exactly happened in the cockpit, we don't know, but they hijacked the airplane.

I don't know if they forced the pilot who was sitting in the cockpit to fly the airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or if they replaced them. As far as I remember from the media and the press, some of those 19 people, led by Mohamed Atta, took flying lessons at flying schools in Florida.

By the way, if you want to take flying lessons in Florida today, you have to undergo something like NEXUS registration to verify your personality and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Mr. Mayes.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Bobasch. I'm really enjoying your answers to these questions.

As a private provider of security, there must be some sort of a relationship between you and the policy-makers, the government. With regard to that relationship, do you have input into levels of security and techniques to help the policy-makers make those decisions that give you direction in providing security?

[Joram Bobasch]

Obviously, when you have worked for 25 years together—I have spent over a third of a century in the field of security—you get to know people. This is the wonderful part of getting to know people worldwide: you start to talk.

I know that nowadays talking has become very virtual, but on a personal level you get to know that it is human to make mistakes. You try to learn from your mistakes. You try to learn from the mistakes of other people. You exchange views because you want to achieve the goal of securing those flights.

Obviously, you are maintaining a relationship, sometimes on the level of client and supplier, and sometimes on the level of getting together in conferences--although there is no commercial relationship in getting to know people, yes?

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

There was some discussion from Mr. Jean about what I'd call perimeter security. We had a witness from the Israeli airport security who mentioned that as an issue. I am wondering if that is a common practice in Europe around international airports.

[Joram Bobasch]

Definitely. It's not just international airports. Every airport, according to the existing legal system, has to have a definition of the perimeter, of what is regarded as the perimeter, the clean area within the perimeter, who has the access, and at what levels. There is a full set of rules and protocols on how it has to be done. The monitoring of this is very important, as are the training of the employees and the drilling of the employees.

One of the biggest problems we are confronted with on a daily basis is that we have 13,000 screeners, and each of those screeners is sitting in front of a monitor and seeing pictures that are changing every seven seconds. How do you ensure, at 4 o'clock in the morning, or at midday, or at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, that the employees are responding at the same level of expectation in a continuous way? The same thing applies to perimeter security.

We are actually at the beginning of the intense part of it because there are a lot of goods entering the airport through the gates. Just think of the deliveries to an airport. Also, every airport is a construction site. There is no airport in the world that is not building a new terminal or a new runway. We're talking about huge construction sites worldwide. Every truck could be loaded not only with metal, but with dangerous items. It is a very valid point and issue.

[Colin Mayes, Conservative, Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

I want to get back to international airports and domestic airports. The challenge in Canada is that we're twice the size and have a third of the population density. We have our international airports in our urban areas and we also have rural airports. Should they have the same level of security? Do the airlines within a particular country in Europe have the same level of security protocol as, for instance, what I would call an international airport?

[Joram Bobasch]

I had the honour to give a presentation in front of the security council of the Canadian airports committee, the CAC. We talked about threat assessment. We were looking for an example that was not Pearson or Vancouver or Montreal. We were looking for an example of the threat in a remote airport. I believe we picked Calgary or a smaller airport.

We looked at something that is public information. In Canada or North America, you have this wonderful thing of having aircraft spotters. People sit at the end of the runway and register the tail numbers of the airplanes. They watch and take pictures and so on.

We found out--I think it was in Calgary--that there is a website where people exchange information about how well you can see the wonderful airplanes that are landing when they're using runway so-and-so, and how, if you go to the hotel at the end of the runway and you go to the third floor and open the window, you can see it from 100 metres away. That's wonderful information for spotters.

But if I had bad intentions, I would place on the third floor of this hotel an RPG or another rocket in order to tear down.... That's if I had bad intentions.

The threat assessment is there. The threat is there. How to mitigate it is something that has to be regulated. It cannot come down to whether I have the funds to do it, yes or no, especially when you're talking about an emerging level of threat that is almost uncontrollable. If 10 years ago Mohamed Atta needed probably 15 months to train his people to fly airplanes, nowadays in the Facebook generation it takes maybe days, or hours, or seconds to initiate something that comes up in a revolution in a country, a political revolution.

Saying that the threat in a smaller remote airport is not as big as it is at a bigger airport is maybe a nice statement if you perceive only the smaller airports. But the people who fly from that small airport are coming to the bigger airport and are transit passengers in the bigger airport. Then they have free access to the next flight.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Thank you.

I want to offer one more short round of questions. Would anybody would like to take it?

Mr. Bevington, would you like a couple of minutes?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Yes.

I want to get a sense from you of the relative cost of our system in Canada in comparison to European countries, where they meet the ICAO minimum standards. What's the relative cost in Canada compared to other systems?

[Joram Bobasch]

I have to admit that I have no idea of what the cost here is.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

We have a $25 per passenger charge for international passengers. I think it's $12 for domestic passengers. Some of the evidence was presented to us. How does that line up with some of the airports in Europe that have similar systems?

[Joram Bobasch]

I don't have the data in front of me. I can say that from my own experience as a passenger, I see the security fees on my tickets, and some of them are higher and some of them are lower.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Are we in the gradient range?

[Joram Bobasch]

I don't have the official figures to compare that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Merv Tweed]

Go ahead, Mr. Jean, very briefly.

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

Yes, I will be very brief, Mr. Chair. Well, maybe I won't be quite so brief, but cut me off if it gets too long.

I built a car wash in 2001. Every time I go to a car wash, I look around and say, “I would do that differently or that differently and be more effective”. I can't help myself. I can't even get a car washed without pointing out three or four things that are wrong with the car wash even though it's probably better than mine.

You must fly a lot. You go through all of our airport security. You must see a lot of things that you would suggest we do differently. You're a service expert, right? Why don't you give me the top five that you would recommend?

[Joram Bobasch]

Go fishing.