Public Safety committee  Yes. As the minister mentioned, both the Prime Minister and President have committed to pursuing cargo pre-clearance. The minister also mentioned there are a number of complexities to work out. We have to look at where cargo pre-clearance ultimately makes sense, but that is somet

Public Safety committee  Yes. We've been in discussions with the U.S. over a number of months in terms of what our objectives are. In terms of cargo pre-clearance, both countries are looking at what kinds of legal authorities or other authorities they would require and also talking about potential pilots

Public Safety committee  That's a somewhat difficult question to answer. It would really depend on the nature of the amendment. That's simply the answer. There are certain things that are clearly spelled out in the agreement, so it would depend on the nature of the amendment proposed whether it was consi

Public Safety committee  The purpose of those pilots was more to test the concept of cargo pre-clearance. It was a pre-inspection pilot where we were doing pre-inspection in Canada with still the potential need to go to secondary inspection in the U.S. Those sites were chosen because they have a signif

Public Safety committee  As Martin mentioned earlier, signage would be in both official languages, so travellers would be able to understand what their rights and obligations are in both official languages. That takes us back to one of those factors in terms of the unreasonable delay and the discussion

Public Safety committee  It's certainly something we could look at in terms of factors that could be included.

Public Safety committee  It would depend on the nature of the services being requested. Again, it's case by case in terms of those kinds of requests. They'd have to look if it's outside of normal pre-clearance operating hours, or if it's to reflect the growth in travellers that we spoke about earlier. It

Public Safety committee  I can't give you a precise answer to that because it does depend on the details of what's being requested, and ultimately there will be a discussion with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is something we'll be monitoring closely. It's ultimately a discussion between CBP a

Public Safety committee  I can't speak to, specifically, how many regulatory changes will be required, but there will be regulatory changes required in relation to both part 1 and part 2 of the act. Part 1 is U.S. operating pre-clearance in Canada, and part 2 is Canada operating pre-clearance in the U.S.

Public Safety committee  We are still exploring that right now. I think we could provide you with a general outline of the types of areas where regulations will be required.

Public Safety committee  As I mentioned, the current pre-clearance operations are protected from cost recovery. That was one of the elements in the negotiations over a number of years. The U.S. is pursuing global pre-clearance, and they're applying cost recovery in all their operations. In fact, they're

Public Safety committee  We don't have specific projections on that. There are two points to make in terms of the agreement. The agreement does provide for cost recovery for new pre-clearance operations, so the eight existing airports are protected from cost recovery unless there's some kind of extraor

Public Safety committee  That certainly is factoring into the discussions we're having with the U.S. to make sure that a fair and clear cost-recovery model is applied, but it also factors into the decisions, finally, about whether a site will undertake pre-clearance. It has to be economically viable for

Public Safety committee  I'll just elaborate on that. As Minister Goodale stated, there are limited authorities in terms of questioning a traveller upon withdrawal. Again, it's to ascertain their identity and their reasons for withdrawing. The expectation is that there would be a limited set of questions

Public Safety committee  As you mentioned, there was a cargo pre-clearance pilot under the beyond the border agreement. The initial testing phase was done in B.C., and there was a second phase in Ontario. At this point, there are no specific sites identified for cargo pre-clearance. We are beginning to