Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the committee for inviting us. I think we're all agreed that customs pre-clearance is a huge benefit to Canadians, and its expansion would make those benefits available to even more Canadians and, of course, to enterprises. Nevertheless, a

Public Safety committee  We would be happy to return for questioning, if you like, by video or something. We would rather not fly back for the questions. The law also insulates the United States from most claims. You can't sue Canada. What about the U.S.? Subclause 39(1) states that civil proceedings ca

Public Safety committee  I don't understand the options as being having pre-clearance or continuing to have pre-clearance. I have not heard any indication from the government that, had none of this happened, pre-clearance would have been withdrawn. As we understand it, this was a condition precedent to g

Public Safety committee  Sure, we would be happy to do that. As a principal matter, we think it should be amended so that there isn't a power for a strip search. The agreement may say things about that. The minister himself has said he thinks it would be exceedingly rare that there wouldn't be a Canadi

Public Safety committee  We recognize that may not be a matter for the act or even for regulations, but, for policy, we think that the training is critically important. I mean, Canadian officers who get steeped in this stuff get it wrong. We don't want several hours of training from CBSA. We don't nece

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much for the question. Mr. Chair, of course, we await being told that we can speak rather than jumping in. It isn't an either-or, and this is the message we have heard. With great respect to Ms. van Vugt, indeed we support virtually everything that she is saying

Public Safety committee  I agree with Minister Goodale that it's better for these things to take place on Canadian soil. I don't see the option for most travellers as being between doing it on Canadian soil and doing it on American soil, because pre-clearance exists in much of the country already. I thin

Public Safety committee  In respect of civil remedies for, say, charter breaches, which can often happen or at least be alleged in detention situations, the remedies require going to court for those kinds of things if they're serious enough, but those avenues are blocked.

Public Safety committee  Now, someone may try to get around it somehow, but the bill has set up a regime where it's not obvious how you would do that.

Public Safety committee  Certainly, with any act of Parliament that has constitutional problems, if someone goes to court and brings those problems up, it's possible for a court to say that Parliament did it wrong and to show how it could be remedied. Just because there may be someone out there with the

Public Safety committee  We try to avoid these things on the front end. They may get to court and find that because of the State Immunity Act there's no liability on the part of the United States. Moreover, it could be a very expensive judicial process to try to strike down the portion of the bill that s

Public Safety committee  Sure. What the minister had said to the committee was that Americans would only be able to conduct a strip search if a Canadian officer were unavailable and that would be a fairly rare occasion, but the bill permits the Americans to strip search not only if a Canadian officer isn

Public Safety committee  All circumstances. In really exigent circumstances, they are entitled to use force, they are entitled to restrain—these are the U.S. officers—they are entitled to detain. We might quibble around the edges with some of that stuff, too, but if you have someone now locked down, we c

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Dubé. One recommendation that we provide—and by the way, to answer Mr. Clement's question from the other day about recommendations, by now you should have our full brief in translation, with recommendations in it—is that it needs to be made clear that the refusal

Public Safety committee  I think there definitely could be things done to tighten up the withdrawal questions. We would start by saying that, people should simply still be allowed to withdraw and we've noted that in our recommendations. If the person had reasonable grounds to suspect that there had bee