The member across the way asks what do I know about this. I have had firsthand experience with this.
The question that has always been asked is: Where were you on September 11? I happened to be in Saskatoon with the Prime Minister's task force on future opportunities in farming.
Camelot died that day as far as I am concerned. From that time on air travel would never be the same. As a government we must respond to that reality. The general public right now is basically nervous about air traffic. The number of air travellers has declined. We must put back that comfort level with travellers so that they know that air travel is safe.
Canada has a next door neighbour of over 300 million people. We do over a billion dollars of trade a day across our border. We must have seamless traffic that is safe and that is what part of the bill would deal with. We must ensure that the truck traffic crossing the border is not interrupted, but it must always be safe. Canada's economy is based on how the bill would deal with the safety factor of the nation.
At the present time the United States is taking a look at a number of initiatives within its own country. We must have a meshing of how these initiatives are undertaken. We must have shared technology and data. It must be transparent and seamless to make this thing work properly.
One of the items included in Bill C-17 is that the bill would look at enhancing the ability of the Government of Canada to provide a secure environment for air travel. I know that when I returned from Saskatoon on September 11 I made it a point to see what had taken place at Pearson Airport in Toronto. Quite frankly it was something I had never seen before and I have travelled out of that airport since 1993.
There was a line that was over 200 feet long approaching the ticketing agent. The people were being screened and there were all matters of identification going on because of the heightened security. There was a SWAT team at the airport. I had never seen a SWAT team in an airport before, but there was one there a few days after September 11.
Once a person went through that 200 foot line to get your ticket there was another 200 foot line and that was to pass through security before reaching the other side to board the plane. That was the best we could do at that point in time to address an unforeseen situation. We must have legislation that is flexible enough to take and address unforeseen situations. We have already been named in the latest audio release and told that there could be other terrorist attacks. We must ensure that we are ready for it. To facilitate that we need data sharing between air carriers, federal departments and agencies for the purpose of transportation and national security.
Why do I say this? It is because our whole economy is based on it. We are an exporting nation. Some 44% of what we produce we export. Some 85% of that goes to the United States. These are big dollars that we are talking about. We must have something in place that we can take and address it.
We must allow for the issuance of interim orders in emergency situations, while ensuring that there are proper controls over government actions. We must make it flexible. We do not know exactly what we could be dealing with.
We also have to deter hoaxes that endanger the public or heighten public anxiety. That for me is a no-brainer. We know now that people standing in security lines do not mention anything about terrorism or things else like that because we are looking at heightened security. I agree with that.
We have to establish tighter controls over explosives and hazardous substances, activities related to other dangerous substances such as pathogens and the export and transfer of technology. As an exporting nation these things have to be in place to ensure that goods can freely flow back and forth with our biggest trading partner.
We have to help identify and prevent harmful unauthorized use or interference with computer systems operated by counterterrorism agencies, and to deter the proliferation of biological weapons.
All of us now have our own electronic identity and we have to ensure that we have a computer system in place that cannot be hacked into by different forces. One thing we have found is that terrorist organizations obviously run on money. If they do not have the money, then they are unable to carry on their operations.
We want to see the Government of Canada proceed on the guiding principle that our approach to national security can always be improved. For any unforeseen situations, we have to look at how we handle them today and how we can improve the situation to handle them better tomorrow.
Work is ongoing among various organizations in the public safety community to ensure that legislation, policies and operations remain current with and relevant to the rapidly evolving public security environment. As a result, the proposed legislation still includes some of the key amendments that were made to Bill C-55, just to address that.
The provisions in the public safety act of 2002 would require air carriers to provide passenger information on specific persons to designated persons in Transport Canada or on persons onboard any flight to designated persons in the RCMP or CSIS and the proposed scheme would include strict controls on access, use and disclosure. I am totally in agreement with that.
About three and a half months after September 11, I was flying from Vancouver to Toronto. While I was reading my newspaper, all of a sudden I looked down at the back of the seat in front of me and pulled out the flight information about the aircraft. It was a 767. It was the same plane that went into the towers. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. However I want to show the travelling public that we have the proper process, laws and legislation in place. It was unwarranted for the hairs to stand up on the back of my neck. I really had nothing to worry about because everything was taken care of.
Amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act are also proposed to support data sharing for limited public interest purposes and to expressly provide for it in law. That is only common sense. We already have a screening process in the Immigration Act and in laws of the country to find out the backgrounds of people who try to immigrate to Canada. Were they involved in terrorism in the past or do they have a criminal record? All these things are definitely points of interest. We have to have information on people coming into Canada.
Bill C-17 is a very good first step forward in ensuring that our boundaries are secure and that when we travel on any public transit system it is safe too because it has been covered.