Thank you very much, Chair.
Good morning, and thank you for inviting me to join you today.
My name is Nada Semaan, and I am honoured to appear before this committee as president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, or CATSA. With me are Rhoda Boyd, director of communications and passenger experience, and Louise Alberelli, general manager of operational programs.
As I believe everyone knows, CATSA is responsible for securing specific elements of the air transportation system. We have four mandated activities: pre-board passenger screening, hold baggage screening, non‑passenger screening and ID card management for restricted areas. We deliver our mandate at 89 designated airports across the country through a third‑party screening contractor model.
Our goal is to provide professional, effective and consistent security screening across the country with a focus on service excellence. As part of this commitment, we strive to provide an inclusive and barrier‑free security screening experience for those working at or transiting through Canada's designated airports.
Ongoing improvement is always at the forefront of CATSA's efforts. With this in mind, we saw the Office of the Auditor General's recent report, “Accessible Transportation for Persons With Disabilities”, as an opportunity to look at what additional steps we could take to better meet the needs of those we serve.
Personally, it was a great way for me to focus on such an important topic just a few days after my appointment as CEO of CATSA.
We definitely agree with the recommendations made as a result of the report, which provided additional measures we can undertake to remove barriers for persons with disabilities.
The report contains three recommendations for CATSA. They are areas for improving accessibility of online content, implementing enhanced accessibility training and leveraging complaints data to prevent barriers to accessibility.
Today, I'll give a bit of an update on where we are in these areas.
On the first recommendation, we have taken critical steps toward ensuring that our online content meets web accessibility standards. As planned, we upgraded our content management system. Since then, we've been working on an ongoing basis to ensure that outstanding website accessibility issues are addressed. Right now, we expect that these improvements will be completed by March 31, 2024, providing an enhanced level of accessibility on our website for all travellers.
With regard to training, we have implemented a process to monitor and ensure that all screening officers receive accessibility training prior to starting to work with the public, that CATSA management and decision-makers are immediately offered accessibility training upon joining the organization, and that they complete it within a set period of time. We also introduced three new modules that screening officers, managers and decision-makers are required to complete, and all employees are encouraged to explore.
We are also working to improve the data gathering and analysis of CATSA's complaints. More specifically, we are improving how we categorize complaints to allow us to extract more accurate data. At the same time, we are enhancing our reporting of these complaints.
As noted by the Office of the Auditor General, we currently evaluate and process complaints individually. This allows us to review complaints in real time, and share information and feedback to our frontline operations team right away and to our training team. However, to improve our reporting, we are creating a quarterly report that will allow us to better analyze our data and identify potential trends that we can work to address.
CATSA actively listens and engages with passengers, airport workers, screening officers, the CATSA workforce and accessibility advocacy organizations to identify, prevent and eliminate accessibility barriers, both current and future. In fact, my colleagues and I had the enormous pleasure of meeting the chief accessibility officer recently. We voiced our support for the very important work that is being undertaken by her office, but also our commitment to continued collaboration.
We remain available to participate in various forums dedicated to the common goal of taking action today to work toward a more accessible and barrier-free tomorrow.
Even with all the progress that CATSA has made in terms of accessibility, this is an area where we will always be looking to improve. We believe that everyone deserves and is entitled to an inclusive and barrier-free experience.
We thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you today about this pressing issue. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have about our role in terms of travel and accessibility.
Thank you very much.