Mr. Speaker, it is great to be back here in the House to do the nation's work.
I would be remiss if I did not take two seconds to pay tribute to my colleague and friend from Scarborough—Agincourt who sadly is no longer with us today. My sincerest condolences to his children and family. He will be deeply missed. I will miss having breakfast with him at the Marriott, which is where we stay and where I got to develop a friendship with the hon. member. God rest his soul and God bless.
I am pleased to support the legislative provisions in Bill C-21 that would amend the Customs Act to authorize the Canada Border Services Agency to collect personal information on all persons leaving the country.
We all understand the importance of obtaining basic biographical information on people arriving in Canada. Who are they? Where are they from? How long do they intend to stay? These are all basic security questions. That said, it is just as useful to keep track of people leaving the country, and on that front, Canada lags far behind.
While most every other country collects basic information on travellers on their way in and out of the country, Canada only collects data on a small subset of people leaving the country. That means that we can never really know who is in our country. We know someone has come into Canada but cannot know for certain if they have left.
At this time, since we lack the means to precisely identify every person leaving our country, we have no way of knowing whether dangerous individuals are leaving Canada to evade justice. We also have no way of knowing whether, for example, we are wasting the immigration department's valuable resources trying to track down a person who was ordered to leave Canada but who may already have left of their own accord. The fact that we do not collect exit data also limits our ability to react swiftly to Amber Alerts or suspected abductions.
This is a blatant and unacceptable security gap, one that many of our international partners have already rectified. We need to catch up. To be clear, we are not talking about collecting reams of personal information about people leaving Canada. We are talking about the “basic” biographical data that appear on page 2 of a person's passport, meaning their name, date of birth, citizenship, and gender, the type of travel document, the document number, and the name of the country that issued the document.
The only other information that would be collected would be the location and time of departure, and flight number in the case of people leaving by air. In other words, this is the same information that travellers voluntarily provide when they enter Canada or any other country. That is all. No new information would be collected. Of note, no biometric data, such as photographs or fingerprints, would be collected or exchanged as part of the entry-exit initiative, and travellers will not notice a difference.
This is how it would work: for people crossing the Canada-U.S. border by land, border officers in the country they enter will simply send that passport information and departure details back to the country they just left. In this way, one country's entry is the other country's exit and vice versa. The exchange of information in the land mode would occur on a near real-time basis following a traveller's entry into either country, usually within fifteen minutes.
The exchange would take place through an existing secure electronic channel between Canada and the U.S., the same channel that is used to transfer information between Canada and the United States under the NEXUS, FAST, and enhanced drivers' licence programs.
For air travellers, no new exchange of information between nations would be required. The information comes directly from airline passenger manifests. To obtain an exit record in the air mode, for example, the CBSA would receive electronic passenger manifests directly from air carriers with information on all passengers scheduled to depart Canada aboard outbound international flights. This information would be received up to 72 hours prior to departure to facilitate the identification of known high-risk travellers attempting to leave Canada by air.
That is a key point for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it will help Canadian authorities recognize when someone drawn to violent extremism is preparing to leave the country and stop them from travelling abroad to participate in terrorist activity.
In fact, Bill C-21 will help border officials to deal with a number of threats that they currently lack the tools to address.
The CBSA is our first line of defence against threats originating overseas. It uses a system called lookouts to identify persons or shipments that may pose a threat to Canada. Lookouts are based on information in the CBSA’s possession or that may come from sources including the RCMP, CSIS, immigration officials, and local or international law enforcement. While the lookouts system is effective for identifying inbound threats, the absence of exit information means that it is not effective for identifying outbound threats.
In a global threat environment, with dangerous individuals leaving or trying to leave peaceful, stable democracies to join extremist organizations, collecting reliable exit information has never been more vital to support Canada’s national security. We must equip the Canada Border Services Agency with the statutory authority to collect the same information on outbound travellers that it does on inbound ones. With the passage of these legislative amendments, CBSA’s lookouts system will be strengthened, allowing the Agency to notify partners if and when a known risk intends to leave, or has just left, Canada. This information closes the loop on an individual’s travel history, and fills a gap which has been exploited by persons trying to avoid the law.
As a final note, it is important to recognize the care that has been taken to ensure this initiative is designed to respect and in fact comply fully with Canada’s privacy laws and obligations. The communication and collaboration between the CBSA and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada in the design and implementation of the Entry/Exit initiative has been extensive, productive and instructive in terms of protecting privacy rights.
There is no question this bill will enhance the security of Canada and its allies. I urge my colleagues to support its swift passage, and ensure the women and men of the CBSA have the resources they need to do their job of securing the border and facilitating bilateral trade and the free movement of legitimate travellers.
