Evidence of meeting #62 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-49.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
That's great.
As I understand your comments, your level of security is very high. Would you say that it is higher than at other Canadian and international airports?
Of course, I am talking about major city airports. There is no need to compare situations that are not comparable.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aéroports de Montréal
I will talk about North America and Canada.
For Canada, you see the efforts that Montreal is making. We have obtained CALEA certification. We have safety officers. We even have firefighters available. Montreal tends to do everything that is reasonable to do to ensure safety—
Conservative
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Let me ask the question again. Compared to the security services in airports like New York, Fort Lauderdale, Paris, Barcelona or Toronto, are those at Montreal Airport above average or at the average?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aéroports de Montréal
Everything revolves around risk management. Each country, each city determines its own security level in terms of risk management. Everyone involved is part of that. Mr. Pharand spoke earlier about the monthly meeting and I will mention it too. In terms of the risks we manage at Montreal airport—
Conservative
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
If the risks to be managed were the same at all those airports and an international incident occurred, would our level of security be higher than or the same as at other airports?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aéroports de Montréal
Our level is the equivalent of what is found elsewhere, given the risk.
Conservative
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Thank you.
I imagine that you go and see best practices elsewhere. Can you tell me about the practices used in Montreal that set you apart from the airports with which you are in competition?
I suppose “competition” is not exactly the proper term. Let's just say things that are done elsewhere, internationally.
Conservative
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aéroports de Montréal
In Montreal, we have a canine unit that can detect explosives.
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Rainville, we have often heard about wait times, sometimes very long, that people have to put up with before going through security. As this summer looks like it will be busy in terms of tourism, I was wondering how ADM was planning on reducing the wait times in peak periods.
You answered a question about this from my colleague, but I personally would like to know how, with the financial resources at your disposal, you are planning to reduce the wait times this coming summer.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aéroports de Montréal
Clearly, we are very involved in managing customs, given that the airport provides physical locations for customs. That being the case, we are working together with the Canada Border Services Agency and we have to coordinate what we do. That is what we did following the incident—what happened last year can indeed be described as an incident.
You have to understand that Montreal-Trudeau Airport is extremely busy during the summer. Montreal airport has a European focus. Flights to Europe are concentrated at the end of the day while aircraft returning from Europe almost all arrive at the end of the afternoon. That is the time when the bottleneck causing the wait times tends to occur.
We have met with the people from Canada Border Services Agency in order to set up an action plan for the coming summer. We have established a temporary processing centre, which will become permanent, for passengers in transit. For their part, they have made sure that they are going to have officers on duty at peak times. We also post the wait times.
Despite all those efforts that we are making together, there will still be wait times longer than 30 minutes this summer during that very busy time. That situation, which really is unusual in Montreal, will be particularly acute in August, which is our busiest period of the year.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
You mentioned just now that the solution lies in CATSA Plus. How is that going to help you in the long term?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aéroports de Montréal
CATSA works at every departure checkpoint. The problem I was referring to involves customs at arrivals.
For departures, Montreal does not really have unreasonable line-ups. The CATSA Plus program is partly operational in Montreal. At departures, things are going well, they do not have the problem. The situation is completely different in some other Canadian airports, but, in Montreal, things are going relatively well.
For us, the bottleneck is in customs for arrivals. As I was explaining to you, we are in the process of taking care of it.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
You mentioned before that the communication lines are pretty good between the different levels of organizations at the time of a crisis. Is there cross-communication among airports across Canada, as well as internationally?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Aéroports de Montréal
Mr. Pharand, can you answer, please?
Vice-President, Airport Operations, Infrastructure and Air Services Development, Aéroports de Montréal
When a risk is identified, airports share information, both formally and informally. That does not just happen between airport operators. Police and security forces also communicate with each other, such as the RCMP, Transport Canada and CSIS. They make sure that information is shared when an airport or a geographic location becomes overcrowded.
Liberal
Angelo Iacono Liberal Alfred-Pellan, QC
This question is for Mr. Pharand.
You stated in an interview that “We do conduct, on a continuous basis, threat analysis, risk analysis, vulnerability analysis, just to make sure we can face any kind of threat”.
Can you please elaborate on all these types of analysis, including with respect to the time frame, and how you proceed in these different types of threat, risk, and vulnerability analysis? What do you mean by that exactly?
Vice-President, Airport Operations, Infrastructure and Air Services Development, Aéroports de Montréal
It happens on two levels.
First, we analyze the threat based on the information that Transport Canada, or other law enforcement agencies provide us, because we are not an intelligence agency.
Then we assess the vulnerability of our physical facilities, which provides us with a risk assessment. We mitigate those risks through measures that may involve personnel, material resources, or technology. This strategic situation assessment is done almost annually.
It is also done tactically. Take an incident like the one in Fort Lauderdale, or in Brussels. We immediately conduct an assessment to find out whether the threat for us has changed. Does the way an incident took place somewhere else expose a vulnerability for us that perhaps we may not have seen? We study the response. We go and look. We have discussions with our colleagues in the other airport and law enforcement agencies to see how they reacted and how their response worked, so that we are improving ourselves on an ongoing basis.
