Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 1 - Evidence, November 4, 2002
OTTAWA, Monday, November 4, 2002
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 9:50 a.m. to examine and report on the need for a national security policy for Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. Today, we continue our study on the need for a national security policy by examining the question of airport security.
I am from Ontario and I chair this committee.
I will introduce the other members of the committee:
Senator Jane Cordy, from Nova Scotia, is an accomplished educator who has an extensive record of community involvement. Senator Cordy is a delegate to the NATO-Parliamentary Association and will be Canada's representative at the upcoming meetings in Istanbul, Turkey.
Senator David Smith, from Ontario, is a new senator and member of the committee. During a distinguished career as a lawyer, he became a foremost practitioner of municipal, administrative and regulatory law. In the 1970s, he was a member of the Toronto City Council and was appointed Deputy Mayor in 1976. From 1980-84, Senator Smith sat in the House of Commons and served as Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism.
Senator Norman Atkins, from Ontario, came to the Senate in 1986 with a strong background in communications. He is currently the whip of the Conservative Senate caucus and is a former adviser to the Premier of Ontario.
Senator Joseph Day, from New Brunswick, is a graduate in electrical engineering from the Royal Military College in Kingston. Senator Day received a law degree from Queens and Osgoode Hall and was appointed to the Senate last fall. He too is a delegate to the NATO-Parliamentary Association and will represent the Senate in the upcoming meetings in Istanbul, Turkey.
Senator Meighen, from Ontario, has a specialization in administrative and commercial law and a strong background in business, as well as extensive community interests. Appointed to the Senate in 1990, Senator Meighen was a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee that previewed the 1994 Defence White Paper. He is also Chancellor of King's College in Halifax.
This is the first permanent Senate committee with the mandate to examine the subjects of security and defence. Over the past 16 months, we have concluded a seven-month study of the major issues facing Canada. We have produced a report entitled ``Canadian Security and Military Preparedness.'' We have also issued a report on coastal defence entitled ``Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility.''
The Senate has asked our committee to examine the need for a national security policy. Today, we will focus on airport security. To date, the committee members have visited airports in Montreal and Vancouver and the committee held hearings in Toronto last June and in Ottawa last August.
Our first witness is Mr. Chuck Wilmink, a consultant on security matters and former Security Manager for Canadian Airlines International.
(Chuck Wilmink, sworn)
Mr. Chuck Wilmink, Consultant and Former Corporate Security Manager, Canadian Airlines: Honourable senators, thank you for inviting me here today. First, I would like to say that I represent an unbiased security professional view. I do not represent a company or special organization but rather, private corporate security. My comments I have briefed with other security experts in Vancouver and I hope to give you an honest security briefing on what is going on at the airports.
The current status of airport security is not very good. I could take anyone in this room and in two minutes train that person on how to put a bomb on an airplane for any city in the world. If you are willing to pay the first-duty shipping fee, we can guarantee what flight you will be on — it is that wide open. I think it is important that we first define what is ``security.'' I did a Google search on the Internet before I came here and there were 69 million hits for ``security.'' The word ``security'' means everything to everyone. To me, a security professional, ``security'' means, ``the preventive measures you put in place to reduce risk.'' However, there will still be residual risk.
It is also important to note that there is a difference between criminal security and terrorism security. There are organized crime problems at airports, but that is not a terrorism threat. If anything, they want the airports to run smoothly so that their money keeps coming in.
I will talk about the initial response to 9/11 and what has happened since in airport security. First, there has been increased passenger security screening — taking away nail clippers and creating long line-ups. Has this been effective? Not really. I sit in first-class or in economy, and you get your fork, your spoon and a plastic knife. Your fork is just as much a weapon as anything else. If you take away nail clippers, you still have your fork, your spoon. People still have martial arts, physical strength, or you could take a wine bottle or a glass and smash it. There are lots of weapons and anyone who is trained properly could still take over command of an airplane. Making the passenger screeners go through all that hassle just to take away nail clippers has not been a good measure.
CATSA took over command of the airport passenger screeners from the airlines. In my view, it is the airlines' responsibility to have proper security on their flights. Their business depends on security. Control of passenger screening, in my eyes, ultimately lies with them. They should be in charge of that.
They have ordered explosive vapour detection machines. This is a tool, but not a silver bullet. They have two machines in the Vancouver Airport right now that can handle 200 bags an hour. There are 1,200 bags now going through the system, so they cannot check every bag. They are also very expensive, very hard to maintain and have a high false-positive rate. One out of every five bags comes back with, ``yes, it has a weapon in it,'' and it has to be hand- searched. It is time-intensive, requires a lot of security screeners and is not effective. It is a security tool — but once you build it, people try to break it. It will not be the silver bullet that guarantees security.
They have hired aviation inspectors — CATSA inspectors — Transport Canada inspectors, but a lot of them are still in training right now and not on the road. However, the ones who are there are doing bureaucratic inspections that do not really affect security. They are going up to passengers after they go through check-in, and asking, ``Did they ask you the three questions?'' Did you pack the bags yourself? Have the bags been in your control the whole time? Are you carrying something for someone else? The U.S. just dropped these questions. They found that they were not effective. Right now at airports in Canada, inspectors are going up to passengers after check in and asking if they were asked the three questions. If they say ``no,'' they are fining the airline $10,000. Right now, Air Canada has 35 of these fines outstanding. It is not a good security measure. All a person has to do is lie. If people want to pack an explosive device in their bag, they just have to say, ``No, I do not have a bomb.'' These three security questions are a good public communications issue. They raise the awareness of the security of the passengers, but it is not an effective tool. If someone is committed to dying on an aircraft, like happened on 9/11, they can easily get an explosive through.
The other thing that has happened is they have put air marshals on some of the flights. These are good but expensive, and you cannot put them on every flight. They are a good deterrent, but it really comes down to luck — having them on the same flight as a terrorist trying to attack a plane.
Other things that have happened: They have strengthened the cockpit doors. This is good but it is only a partial measure. Are they gas-proof, able to stop gas from coming through? I do not think so. The other problem is that they have strengthened the cockpit doors but the pilots still have to get out to use the washroom. When that happens, they pull a curtain across. It is a half measure. If you really want to do it properly, you have to put two security doors in: one to the cockpit and one on the other side of the washrooms so that when the pilots have to use them, both sides are locked and there is no way passengers can get at them. You need a full security measure; you cannot do a half security measure.
All these incidents of post-9/11 security improvements have focused on passenger screening. It has not done anything for cargo; it has not done anything for physical security; and it has not done anything for the airline employees. There are lots of other weaknesses out there. Concentrating on one area — spending $400 million to $500 million on one area — really is useless if you do not protect the other areas.
My response — what should have happened after 9/11? First thing to be done is a proper risk analysis: What are the threats against Canadian aviation?
There are outside terrorists. There is Air India, with inside terrorists. There are people like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber. There are lots of threats against airplanes. We have to summarize what they all are, what is the chance of them happening.
Next, what are the vulnerabilities? Where are the weaknesses in air travel? I have mentioned them: cargo, airline employees, airport employees, passenger screening still, and also baggage.
Next, what protective measures could be put in place? If you want, you can spend billions and billions of dollars on security. What can you put in place? How much would it cost? How effective would it be? At the end of the day then, you have to ask what can the Canadian public afford? What risks are they willing to accept afterwards? What can they afford to put in place?
I have, now, seven proposals on how to improve security quickly, and most of these are inexpensive. The first one is to regulate the responsibility for security. Any business in the airline industry, whether it is airlines, catering, airport authorities, should have a responsibility to do a proper security assessment. The executive board of directors should be made responsible for security and have to do a full audit once a year. What does our company do? What service do we provide? What is at risk? They do not have to have a huge corporate security department and totally staff it, but they have to look at what their risks are, and then manage their risks and come up with a policy. This has been done by PIPEDA, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. That is for customer information. They have to have a chief information officer, every company, and worry about personal information. The same thing should be done for airline security. A chief security officer should be assigned to the executive board of directors. It does not have to be a full-time position. It can be someone's assigned duties, but that person should be responsible for security.
In the United States, they have created HIPAA, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It has a mandate on health information, privacy information in the health industry. Any leak of information carries a mandatory two-year jail sentence and $10,000 fine for someone on the executive. This has gotten the attention of the health industry. They are now paying proper attention to security.
My second recommendation is to deploy police officers at the actual screening points. Right now, under Transport Canada laws, you have to have a five-minute response to the screening gates by the RCMP or the municipal police. These officers usually man a community police office in the airport. They walk around dealing with theft, lost baggage, those types of issues. Why not put them at the screening points, have them support the screening staff? Have a uniformed officer there. You get a lot more compliance from the public. They could act as an overseer. They could search tough bags. If any of the public is giving problems to the screeners, which happens quite a bit, through intimidation, they can step in and make sure that things get searched.
They could also be trained by JTF2, CSIS or the RCMP to recognize terrorists. They are trained people. They can recognize and try to spot the terrorists coming through. They could also, if biometrics is ever introduced to try to recognize terrorists, supervise that program.
My next recommendation is with respect to the passenger screening agents themselves, to increase their efficiency. Things to help them do that: Reduce the number of carry-on bags. People are allowed two carry-on bags now. Make it one. People are allowed bags that have their whole week's worth of business clothes. That is hard for a person to search in two to five seconds. It is very hard. Shrink the bags. Yes, it is inconvenient for the travelling public, but it helps the security officers. They have a smaller area to check. They can spend more time on it.
Right now, the security screeners undergo a two-week, on-the-job training course, and they are re-trained once a year. Why not make it like police officers or firemen? They train every week. This is an important job they do. Why not have them spend one shift a week, eight hours, training, recognizing new weapons?
You can have computer-simulated training. Part of their job is staring at the X-ray machine, seeing what goes through. There are computer programs that can feed fake images of weapons into that to keep them on their toes, to keep them spotting. I think that would help.
Then again, you also have to keep the RCMP and CSIS feeding to these people what are the latest weapons criminals have. The other thing is, you have Canada Customs officers downstairs. They are very good at searching bags for contraband. They are very good, credible people. Why not bring them upstairs and have them act as supervisors or as helpers? They are trained specialists in that area.
The whole idea is to raise the standards on training these people. Right now, they are good people. They get minimum wage. They can do a decent job. Why not raise the standards to such a level they have to hire very high quality people. It will force the contractors to pay more for these employees, but that will help in hiring better-qualified employees. They will be able to keep them longer, and you will have better standards coming out of it.
The next one, and probably my most important one, is airline employee security. Right now, the passengers, the pilots and the flight attendants go through an extensive check to go through passenger screening. Meanwhile, your mechanics, your cleaners, your ramp loaders just show their RAP, Canada restricted airside pass, and walk right through. They carry bags with them, their lunch bags, their gym bags, their clothes bags. There is no check on them done at all. They can take anything through the checkpoint. They can put an explosive device on a plane. They could leave a weapon in the washroom, in a screened area, for someone to pick up. It is a wide-open area. I am sure the pilots who are presenting to you this afternoon will complain, why are they going through the check and not the rest of the employees?
The other problem is the employees have a restricted airside pass. It is very easy to get that. You have to go to the airport authority. You get a criminal background check on you, but when people first apply, they are given a temporary pass. They get fingerprinted. They fill out the forms, and that goes away to the RCMP and CSIS for a check. In the minimum of three months in the meantime, they can go anywhere in the airport. They have to have an escort only. Someone has to escort them. Another already-passed employee has to escort them, but they can take anything in with them.
It is very easy. Right now, the cleaning staff, loading staff, the airlines staff and the employees at the airport are being hired all the time. Someone who wants to get a job can have their temporary screening and go right through.
The other problem is that, in my understanding, the only people turned down for a RAP pass are those who are deemed a threat to the security of the national interest. People with drug records, criminal records, drinking and driving, all those types, still get their pass. The criminal background check is done every five years. Why not do it every year? A lot can happen to employees in five years.
The other problem is you are looking for a criminal background check. Who knows if the person is a terrorist or not? I think 15 of 19 of the terrorists who came in on 9/11 had legitimate visas. They had no criminal record in their past. Same thing here. When you are hiring an employee, you have no idea of what political organization or religious whatever he is a member, and you have no idea whether he wants to blow up a plane or not.
The restricted airside pass and the criminal background check do not do anything for them.
Another thing — and my recommendations 5 and 6 are pretty similar — you have two areas of security at the airport. You have passenger screening, which was the responsibility of the airlines and now of CATSA, and you have airport site security. One works under the Air Carriers Security Measure. The other one works under the Aerodrome Security Measure. There is conflict in that act. They work separately. They do not communicate. Why not have the two people working together, communicating? You could have a natural progression through all the jobs. It would be a lot easier.
Right now we have had conflict. When I was a manager at Vancouver airport, one night I was working and I set off an alarm at one of the passenger screening doors in the international terminal. I waited for a half an hour and no security from the airport showed up. I was kind of surprised. I left and continued my audit. Three hours later, that alarm was still going off.
The next day I went to check with them, and they said, ``Oh no, we do not respond to that alarm. The airlines are in charge of the passenger gates.'' But the airlines share all the gates, and they only use them for an hour and a half at a time. This gate was not in use. There was no one from the airlines who even knew about it. How can they respond to it? So that conflict, ``it is your responsibility, no, it is yours,'' leads to big holes, big gaps. If you put them together in one group, it would be a lot better.
I think that group should be a multiparty unit. It should be CATSA, the airlines and the airport authorities. All three have a vested interest in this. Right now, the airport security is strictly run by the airport authorities. The airlines have a huge stake in it. They foot the bill in the end for it — or they did before — they should have a definite say on what is going on there.
My last recommendation is cargo security, and that is the biggest hole right now. Right now, it is a weakness. You can go in with a parcel and say, ``I am shipping this to my grandmother.'' They will say, ``Thank you very much,'' put it on the bottom of the plane, and it goes right with the passengers on the top in any plane in North America, any plane in the world. There have to be better security checks.
Right now they ask, ``What is in the bag?'' You just lie and say ``presents,'' and that is it. That is the only check done. If you are doing all that work on the passengers, you should do the same thing on cargo. Put security into the cargo warehouses. Check all the bags. Have dogs in there for explosive vapour detection.
They have known shippers, all these types of problems. You cannot rely on your small courier units to do security checks. These small parcels come from all over. Everything has got to be checked at the airport. Put it through a solid check. If you are going to spend all that money on the top, on the passengers, inconveniencing them, you had better do a good job on the bottom.
My summary, security is like an onion. It is full of multiple layers.
You have to put in as many layers as possible to, one, deter someone from even attempting it and going elsewhere, or, two, you hope to catch them and stop them.
So far, everything is focused on the front door. Security has been like a chain. It has links. As soon as you break one link, the chain of security is useless. It has a very strong link at passenger screening, but it really has no links for cargos, airline employees or those types of things. That has to be improved.
One of the options after 9/11 would have been to do nothing, and really that is actually what has happened. It has taken a year to put security in place. There have not been any major improvements yet, and nothing has happened. There have been no security threats. 9/11 was a freak attack. No one else has tried that yet.
That is not my recommendation, do nothing. You have to do certain things, but you have to do them effectively. You have to do them cohesively, as a full unit. The worst thing is that you can spend all the money on airline security, and then someone could stand at the end of a runway in a parking lot with a surface shoulder missile and take a plane down that way.
It is really that you have say how much you are willing to spend, who has to cover the costs, and what risks we are willing to deal with, maintain and live with.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, sir.
It was very comprehensive. It covered a great many areas, and I know that we have many questions for you this morning.
Senator Cordy: You have certainly given us much information.
You talked about the new machinery or new security equipment being brought in.
How do we keep ahead of it? We are trying to keep airports and ports secure. We are bringing in what we think is the latest and best equipment, and yet we are working against people who have unlimited resources. We could spend the whole Canadian budget on security of the airports, the ports and land borders.
How do we keep ahead of it? What can we do?
Mr. Wilmink: You are exactly right. You could spend unlimited finances. You have to come to a reasonable balance. What are we willing to live with? What can we afford to do?
You want to try and get good machinery, such as for explosive vapour detection. You want to buy it from companies that promise to upgrade it. As new threats are found, as new explosive materials are found, they will incorporate that into the machine. You want to make sure that happens.
At the end of the day, it is a balancing act. You have to say, ``Okay, we will protect ourselves against 95 per cent of the risks, the other five per cent is just too expensive. We cannot do it.''
You want to make it hard enough that you can stop a simple someone who gets mad at the government, who gets mad at someone and says, ``I am going to go out with a bomb this afternoon to an airplane and blow it up.''
You want to stop those small, unsophisticated, unplanned attacks. We can do that. The very planned, very methodical acts are very hard to stop. You could spend the whole budget on airline security, and then they will go and hit the power lines. They will hit a nuclear power facility. They will hit the dams, the water supplies.
Part of it is a balancing act. We are Canada. What are the threats against us?
We are right beside the United States; maybe they will take our equipment and use it to attack the United States. All of these things have to be covered.
Your question comes down to you can never secure anything 100 per cent. You have to live with the residual risk. That is a very tough decision on what the balancing act is. There really is no answer to your question.
Senator Cordy: You also gave us the example at the Vancouver airport of the question of who is in charge.
Mr. Wilmink: Yes.
Senator Cordy: You have limited resources to spend, and you are trying to get best value for your dollar. You certainly need all the parties working together, and you need some intelligence-gathering.
Who should be in charge? Should there be one overall body in charge of security at the airports?
Mr. Wilmink: I think, yes, there should. It should be one department that is all encompassing, communicates among all the different subgroups and gets the information through.
You are right about intelligence. A lot of times, the best thing we can do is fight al-Qaeda in their zone. We can stop the terrorism from starting at their area, but still, within the airport you have to work together as a team, one group.
Who should be at the top? I am not sure.
One of the most important things, though, is that this security team has to be given the proper respect to do its job properly. Prior to 9/11, and even now, security is seen as a hindrance. Security slows down passengers going through the line-ups. Security makes employees wait in long line-ups. It creates an added cost, added time constraints. It slows things down.
A lot of the time, security is not given the proper respect. ``Yes, we should do that, but it is more important that our passengers should have a good time. They enjoy their time there and they get through line-ups quickly.''
We have to make the priority of security very detailed, very important. That is why I recommend putting legislation in with set laws on you must follow security principles. You must address your principles and explain your actions on how you attack them.
That is vital. Without that support, the airport security managers will try to do their job, but will get cut off by vice- presidents of other departments and those types of things.
Senator Cordy: They are cut off through trying to balance the flow of cargo and passengers with the need for security?
Mr. Wilmink: Exactly.
Senator Cordy: What about the public's need to know whether security is functioning well? We have heard people say, ``You should not give the public too much knowledge because everybody else will find out about security plans.'' What should the public know about security at the airports?
Mr. Wilmink: I think the public has to know what the security measures are — I think it is open. They have to have an open policy. They have to know what the security measures are in place. They have to know why they are there. They have to know how they are being followed.
If they understand that and you get their buy-in, then you have 95 per cent of your potential problem, potential people, working on your side.
Instead of forcing a fee on people and forcing security measures on them that they know nothing about, explain to them why they are doing it, what the weaknesses are. Then, they have to be honest. You have to say, ``We are protecting against these, these and these risks. These are the measures, how we do it and how we want you to follow through with it.''
You have to be honest. There are still outside risks at the end. You may not go into detailed specifics on the actual ways of creating the terrorist attack, but you have to go to general measures that give the public enough of an idea that they buy in. If they do not buy into it, you ask them the security question, ``Was your bag out of your hands?'' They will say, ``No,'' but they came from the Hotel Vancouver, the Hotel Chateau. The bags were put at the front door. The bellhop put them on the bottom of the bus. They have been out of their sight from the time they left the hotel room to the airport. That is reality.
They have to be made aware of that. Then maybe they will look through their bags when they get off the bus. If you get their buy-in, you will get security.
Senator Cordy: What about lapses in security? Should the public be aware, for example, that at the Pearson airport, somebody got through without passing security quite easily? Should the public be aware of lapses in security?
Mr. Wilmink: I think they should because it will put more pressure on security to do their job properly. If they are made aware, they can have penetration tests; Transport Canada officials get fake firearms, put them in their pocket and go through screening. If the public were made aware that only 40 per cent, 50 per cent of these people are actually getting caught, they would say, ``Wait a second. How come? Do your job better. Spend more on security or train your employees better.''
I really think weaknesses like that should be made public, and it will just lead to things toughening up. If a problem is known to the bad guys, it is known to the good guys as well, and they had better work hard to clear that area up.
Senator Cordy: Perhaps there should be a report quarterly, or two or three times a year.
Mr. Wilmink: Definitely, yes.
Senator Meighen: Mr. Wilmink, you are a security expert. Following on from Senator Cordy's question, we have been told by some airport authorities that we should not have frank, open, public discussions of security measures because that will just alert the bad guys to the holes in the security net. This seemed, frankly, a somewhat naive argument to us, but I wonder about your reaction.
You mentioned earlier that we should not discuss actual specifics about how to detect certain weapons perhaps or other things like that, and I can quite understand that. However, do you think that to discuss the strengths and weaknesses generally of security measures could give aid and comfort in any way to anybody planning an illegal act at an airport?
Mr. Wilmink: No, I do not think so. I think that for the terrorists, the holes are so gaping and wide open that anyone can figure them out. These terrorists who do a planned and trained attack can find the weaknesses. If you hang around the airport for a day or two or three days, you can see the weaknesses. You can see fuel trucks coming from their fuel dump, loading up, driving in open areas, going through the gates, not even checked, just because they have the right badge, and going through.
Why not put a bomb on a fuel truck? It is parked beside right beside the 747. It is parked right beside the terminal. Those types of things.
The terrorists know the holes. Hiding that information is not going to help. The exact same argument is going on in the computer security field right now. Do we release weaknesses and let the bad guys find out? I think we do release them, because it makes the owners of those security measures tighten them up and be responsible for them. I think that naïveté is a protection measure. They do not want to make themselves look bad. If the public found out how many weaknesses there were, they would be quite upset.
Senator Meighen: If they were quite upset, what should that lead to, in your view? Do I understand you to say that it should lead to the adoption of your priority recommendations here?
Mr. Wilmink: I think it is a good start, yes.
Senator Meighen: If we did that, have you any estimate of how much that would cost?
Mr. Wilmink: I do not have a firm estimate. I think it could be done within the tax that is already being collected now. It could be readdressed. For $1 million for an explosive vapour detection machine, plus U.S. $1 million a year for upkeep, you could have a lot of police officers with dogs.
A lot of these things — reassigning patrols at the airports — is not going to cost anything. Combining the two air security measures is not going to cost anything. As for reassigning the police officers to the front gates, they are already paid for right now by the airlines. You are just changing their duties and actually giving them a pure preventive duty instead of a reactive one. I tried to make these as cost-inexpensive as possible.
Senator Meighen: You point out here that CATSA has been collecting a departure tax for seven months and, in your view, the results have been zilch.
Mr. Wilmink: Yes.
Senator Meighen: Do you know where the money has gone? Furthermore, do I understand correctly that CATSA only has jurisdiction over passengers and not over cargo or airport employees?
Mr. Wilmink: I am not sure of the final jurisdiction. Right now their only action has been on passenger screening. My idea of where the money has gone is, before 9/11, the airlines were paying for passenger screening themselves and managing it. That was part of your ticket cost. After 9/11, CATSA said ``We will pick up the bill for that. Not only that, but we will pay the airlines to manage it because we do not have the management staff in place yet.''
Senator Meighen: You pointed out there is no difference in quality.
Mr. Wilmink: No difference in quality at all, that is correct. Some of the money has gone to train new inspectors and some of the money has gone for the explosive vapour detection equipment. They have also put out to tender upgraded training for passenger screening. That money has gone out, and they are designing a new training program right now.
I would be very curious myself as to where the money has gone.
Senator Meighen: This committee has heard evidence in the marine field with respect to containers coming into our ports and the percentage of those containers that are regularly searched. It is somewhere between one-and-a-half and three per cent.
Random checks, as you point out in your evidence, have great merit. Obviously, nobody knows when he or she is going to be stopped. Indeed, I have seen that happen to passengers at various airports, particularly in the U.S.
Do you have any idea as to what percentage should be checked? Is there a mathematical formula that would provide the best screening? In other words, if you check three per cent or four per cent, is that just as good as doing nine per cent or ten per cent?
Mr. Wilmink: No. I think, actually, the formula depends on your budget, what you can afford to do and what you can afford time-wise. Obviously, 100 per cent would be great. If you talk not about marine cargo, but with respect to baggage and people going on the planes, if you check one, two or three people per flight, that is good. Yes, the terrorists could put 10 people on board with 10 bags, and you will not get them. As soon as you get one positive hit for an explosive device, hopefully they shut down the airport and you check everyone's bags in that airport. I think it comes down to a balancing act on how much money you have and your operational expense.
Do we want people to come four hours early for check-in so we can check everyone's bag? No, but you try to do as much as possible, and you try and cover as much as possible. That may be why you use the explosive vapour detection equipment along with dogs. If you use two of them, you get better numbers and better chances.
Right now, it is normal for passenger screening to check five per cent of the bags on a random basis. Sometimes, on increased security, they go up to 10 or 20 per cent. I imagine on September 10, 14, 15, 16, they were checking 100 per cent. I would make the number as high as you possibly can. Yes, it will cause longer lineups, but if you explain to the public why, you will get their buy-in.
Senator Meighen: Would you apply the same reasoning and the same judgment to cargo as to passengers?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes, I would. Yes, exactly the same.
Also, your talk about randomness is pretty funny. Get a mathematical program in there. Have the machine do it. If you leave it up to the person, randomness is usually whoever is causing a hassle. If someone looks like they are going to be a troublemaker, well, ``I am going to check you,'' and they check them thoroughly. If you are an attacker and know that, just get behind the troublemaker. They will spend all the time on him, and you get sent through — no problem. You can put some mathematical randomness in there, and take it out of the passenger screeners' hands. That is my recommendation.
Senator Day: Mr. Wilmink, I did not fully understand your recommendation with respect to police officers at passenger screening points. Could you elaborate on that? Were you talking about having guns, or is that part of what you are recommending?
Mr. Wilmink: Right now, Transport Canada regulations say you have to have an armed response to an incident at a passenger-screening booth within five minutes. If passenger screeners see a weapon on their screen, they stop it, they push a red button and a police response has to get there. That is done with a contract-out through local municipal police departments.
Those officers have to be able to respond within five minutes, but they are not stationed at the actual passenger screening point. Right now, there is usually a community police office somewhere in the airport. They go around, they deal with incidents of thefts from some of the stores, thefts in the parking lots, those types of things. Not really stuff that is in their purview. They are paid to be at the screening points. Instead of having them elsewhere, have them stationed right at the screening points. We are paying for them to protect aviation security. Have them right there. They are armed. They are uniformed. They would be a great resource and backup to the existing passenger screening.
Senator Day: The community policing office you referred to is likely to be at the airport, but not right at the screening area.
Mr. Wilmink: Yes, exactly. It is in the passenger check-in area, somewhere in the check-in area, in a high traffic flow, to show they have a visible presence.
Senator Day: Could that be done by a contracted security officer, as opposed to a regional or a national police officer?
Mr. Wilmink: Well, yes, it could. The thing is, the shop owners of the terminals pay their municipal taxes. That should be part of their regular tax service, having a police response. Is there actually a need for it? To be honest, they do not really even need a community police office there as long as they have a response to deal with threats. They have regular airport security; they are the first responders to a problem. They say, ``Yes, we have a criminal matter here.'' They phone 911 like anyone else would do, and there would be a police response to it. In my view, the community police office is a keep-busy or make-work project for these officers we have on duty to respond to the passenger screening.
Senator Day: Is it important that these uniformed police officers display a firearm?
Mr. Wilmink: I do not think so.
Senator Day: The uniform and training are what is important.
Mr. Wilmink: That is right.
Senator Day: Going back to my earlier point, would you achieve your purpose by having a contracted security person in uniform at each screening office who looks like he might be a police officer?
Mr. Wilmink: I have managed private security companies in British Columbia for five or six years. We do not have armed security officers in Canada. The only time we have them is for armoured car delivery. Their training level, the experience and the skills are a lot lower than a trained police officer. I would want to have the trained police officer at the screening points. I would not trust it to a contract security officer.
Senator Day: Is the requirement for a trained police officer equally served by a local police force, or would it be better if you had a CSIS or RCMP officer performing that function?
Mr. Wilmink: I think the actual municipal officers are fine. They know the area. They know the backup when they call for help. They know that.
I think definitely that CSIS should have a say in training these people because police officers are trained how to investigate crime afterwards. We now want them to do a preventive thing, a role which is a bit different and for which they have not been trained. A training program would have to be developed and you would want CSIS and the federal RCMP involved in that, putting together a proper terrorism-awareness training package for these officers. That package, once developed, could be given to municipal police officers from across the country. They would be able to do it.
Senator Day: At one time, there was a group within the RCMP that was assigned specifically to airport policing. Did that work?
Mr. Wilmink: It was the same as now, because they just walked around the airport. They were there for exactly the same reason, for the five-minute response to the passenger screening alarms, but they did not spend their time standing there. They walked around and handled airport problems, like they do now.
Senator Day: Okay.
Mr. Wilmink: One thing that was better, though, that does not happen now, they also patrolled the grounds. They were responsible for patrolling and traffic incidents on the tarmac areas, inside the airport perimeter. Right now, that is the private security's responsibility. These police officers do not walk through the cargo area. They do not walk through the passenger or the baggage areas, the plane loading areas. Having their presence going through, with their criminal-detection eyes, would be very good, very helpful, so that should be added.
Senator Day: One of your other recommendations was on the issue of coordination of security. You talked about the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, and the airport authority and the airlines getting together to coordinate their security efforts. Would you envisage the RCMP being part of that group as well, or the local community police force?
Mr. Wilmink: I think they should be advisory members, but it would be more important for CATSA and Transport Canada to have that say. The local police officers are a good preventive measure, but CATSA and Transport Canada would be the ones that, if they had an international threat or they knew of some reported problem that was going to happen, would have the news and would pass the message down — okay, let's toughen things up, let's tighten things up.
Senator Day: Are you satisfied that CATSA could lead that group?
Mr. Wilmink: No.
Senator Day: No?
Mr. Wilmink: No. I cannot really answer that because they are new, they are too fresh. They just hired their CEO last week.
Their CEO has no airline transportation security experience. They have hired security managers for each of the airports; class 1, tier 1 airports. These managers they hired were not security professionals. They were people who were Canadian airlines managers. They knew airports, they knew operations, but they do not know security. Now they are in charge of managing security at an airport. It is a huge learning curve in my opinion — that is a big fault. These people should have proper security training.
Senator Day: Of CATSA, the airlines, the airport authority, which one would you put as the lead group or agency in that triumvirate that you have created?
Mr. Wilmink: Ultimately, I believe that the airlines have the maximum responsibility. Should an incident happen on one airline, it is their reputation, their business revenue that is going to drop. United Airlines right now is almost declaring bankruptcy. Who wants to fly United Airlines now after that incident occurred? It is just too much of a risk. If you could fly another airline, you would.
It is the same thing here; these Canadian airlines have to protect their reputation. They should have the most vested interest.
My experience from managing private security was that when we went to bid on a contract, on a government contract, it would go to the low-ball bidder. The reason being, if any problem happened, the government had access to tax resources or whatever, and they could fix a problem.
We provided security for General Motors Place, which is the hockey arena in Vancouver. They paid significantly higher rates because they knew if something happened to their building, they were out of business, their revenue streams were gone. They paid for high-quality security, and had very good security. They knew there was a risk there.
That is why I get back to my view that the private airlines are ultimately, at the end of the day, going to pay the most responsibility-wise.
Senator Day: Would you include the cargo handlers and cargo shippers in that group for security issues?
Mr. Wilmink: They are part of the airlines.
Yes, I would include the airlines, but also right now nothing is covered. The Fed-Ex, the UPSs, the Purolator, they all have operations at the airport and they are not paying anything right now for security. I think they should. If you increase security, definitely the parcels that go on Fed-Ex, UPS, are a threat, so I would include them, yes.
You also probably want to include some of the small plane operators. Right now, anyone who comes in on a small charter plane or even a small plane they own themselves, flies right into the airport environment. They are now in the pre-screened area, and they could have had no screening done. They could have left from a small airport anywhere. They can walk over, get in the terminal, taxi their plane over. They are in the system. Let's put some security awareness or focus on them as well.
Senator Day: How do we bring this about, the total focus on security? Do we need legislation, in your view, or can this be cooperatively done by these various groups that are doing something or nothing in their own sphere?
Mr. Wilmink: Either through regulation of Transport Canada or legislation, those two. I think working on their own, they will attempt it; but at the end of the day, the big hammer will not be on them to get it done.
The other bonus when there is legislation is now they have a hammer to use on their boss and say, ``Look, we are just following legislation. We have to get this done. It has to be done.'' I would prefer the legislation or regulation.
Senator Day: The coordinated effort is not happening now? Is that right?
Mr. Wilmink: No, it is not.
Senator Day: It seems to me that if I wanted to wreak havoc at an airport, with the frequency of landings and takeoffs, air traffic control would be quite a vulnerable spot. Is there proper security from the air traffic controllers' point of view now, or are there some things we should be doing?
Mr. Wilmink: I guess there would be three things: There would be the security of the employees themselves, and I am not sure what background checks are done on them, how often criminal background checks are done.
The second would be the security of the building itself, if people could come in and cause havoc.
The third one is the computer systems. I know there is an example in Boston where some hackers hacked into the landing system of a small airport and brought it down. That airport was closed for the rest of the day.
I sure hope that the air traffic controllers are protecting their computer systems very diligently to prevent these hacking problems. It is a vital area.
I think the biggest one is the people. Are they doing proper security background checks on their people and are they following that up on an annual basis? Do they have checks and balances or dual controls, so that one person is not in control of everything? There are two people. You want collusion, and that is harder to get. You want to put those checks and balances in. That was not part of our area in the airlines, so I cannot speak very well on that.
Senator Day: Well, you gave us questions anyway, even if you do not have the answers.
Mr. Wilmink: I know the questions, but I cannot answer.
Senator Day: There is a lot of construction going on at airports. To your knowledge, are the airports thinking in terms of security to the extent that they should with respect to these designs?
Mr. Wilmink: No. I would say the design, first of all, is for passenger comfort, passenger ease.
A classic example at Vancouver Airport is trans-border, U.S. border traffic. All the check-in counters are here. You go through the check-in counters. Your bags get tagged. You then pick up your bag and you go through a duty free area. You have to go through duty free, and then you get to the U.S. customs. In that duty free area, people put their bags down. They buy things. Sometimes they go out to the bank machine to get more money. That has caused a security threat there. Yes, they get more revenues from selling in that duty free area, making money off that rent, but it has caused a security threat right now and the airlines are getting dinged for it. Every time, once that bag tag is put on, the bag is in the control of the airline. If a passenger puts it down and goes to get something else, the transport inspectors are giving a fine to the airline, and fining the airlines because the airport authority has put in something to make extra revenue is not right, in my eyes.
I was in Pearson airport doing a security audit, security review, and there was a classic example. They were doing construction on the old T2, T1, and they had a bunch of changes done to the boarding gate, and at the end, they had a security guard with a shuttle bus going to the other terminal. Well, the day I went down, we were walking down the ramp and there was a construction door wide open, and you could see right across to the other side, and there were passengers walking across the ramp carrying their bags. I walked further down, and there was the security guard sitting there reading a book, just waiting for the shuttle bus to show up. There is not the proper focus and attention. Hey, there are some vulnerabilities ringing here, let us pay it proper attention.
Senator Day: We do not often have the opportunity to talk with a consultant like yourself who knows the industry, but is not fixed on one particular aspect of it or does not have a predisposition in some way. Are your recommendations reflective of what you have seen throughout Canada and internationally, in the United States and Europe? Are your recommendations the best practices that you have seen internationally or is this a peculiarly Canadian list of recommendations?
Mr. Wilmink: They are not Canada specific; they are North America-wide. The U.S. security plan is very similar to ours, so our recommendations will do well there.
I think the biggest difference is with El Al, the Israeli airline. They screen all the cargo.
They put the cargo through a pressurized test to make sure it does not have a pressure-sensitive bomb in it. They make sure all the cargo is done. They have a good record. Internationally, in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, those places, it is very similar to here. There is a focus on the passenger; there is not much focus on the employees, and there is very little focus on the cargo. I think that is worldwide.
My recommendations are security-specific from what I have learned in security for 15 years. They should be applied. Some of the security managers in the air industry would like to apply them but they get cut off by senior departments and they just do not give them a place.
Senator Day: Other than El Al that you have just told us about, there are no practices that you would recommend that are being done elsewhere that we are not implementing here?
Mr. Wilmink: Germany has a professional, in-house government-type passenger screening force. There is professionalism; they take 10 to 15 seconds per bag to check it thoroughly. Here it is a priority rush to get the passengers through; there are two to thr ee seconds per bag. That is one thing that can be done.
The positive bag match is a good thing. It is done worldwide right now. You do not get on a plane unless your bag comes on with you. That is only done internationally. If you fly domestically in Canada, the positive bag match is not done.
Another area: when I fly into T3 at Toronto Pearson and I go to pick up my baggage, I am still in a secured area; no one can get at it. When I flew into Ottawa here, and when I fly into Vancouver, that baggage area is wide open; anyone can go and pick up that bag. It is not only a theft issue; it is also a security issue. If I am flying from Ottawa to Halifax and I go through Toronto, I get off the plane in Toronto but my bag goes all the way through to Halifax. I have my partner in Halifax say, ``Oh, Chuck Wilmink had a problem; he got sick in the airport and could not make his flight; can you please send it back to him?'' ``Oh, sure, no problem, here.'' They take that and they throw it right in the bottom of the plane, no check on it. My partner can put anything he wants in that bag.
Things like that have to be done. LA Airport is secure and you show your bag tag to security on the way out. That is at the Bradley terminal. It is not done at some of the other terminals.
There are small measures like that. There are not a lot of other examples I can give you.
Senator Smith: Mr. Wilmink, you started off by focusing on what you think are the inadequacies of these vapour detection machines. Are these in operation yet anywhere in Canada? They have been ordered but have they been deployed?
Mr. Wilmink: They have been deployed at Vancouver International Airport. That is the only one I can speak for, but there is a problem. They have two machines: One of the machines is certified in Canada but not in the U.S., and the other machine is certified in the U.S. and not in Canada. Bags have to go through both these machines, so there is a direct conflict right there.
They are in place. People may be using them on a trial basis, but not a regular basis. They are stationed in Vancouver only at transborder areas. They have three domestic transborder international areas. They are only in transborder U.S. International baggage and domestic baggage, there are no checks on that yet.
Senator Smith: Who would have ordered these two different machines?
Mr. Wilmink: CATSA, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.
Senator Smith: Was that done intentionally? Was there a slip-up or any rationale behind ordering two different machines?
Mr. Wilmink: Those are great questions and I wish I could answer. I have no idea. They should have been addressed beforehand.
One thing I will say: Europe has had these explosive vapour detection machines on a trial basis. In the United States, after the Oklahoma bombing, the Vice-President Gore commission said, ``We have to get explosive vapour.'' They bought one machine per airport for Chicago, New York, Miami, the large ones, and they use them on a profiling basis, just trying to get one or two random people per flight.
The government bought those and picked up the expense. In Canada they were trying to force the airlines to pick up the expense. The airlines were fighting it. After 9/11, CATSA stepped in and picked up the price tag for it.
Senator Smith: Are the Americans ordering these same machines?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes. They have them in place already and they are working.
Senator Smith: Is that where they have this one-in-five faults detection ratio, roughly?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes.
Senator Smith: What about an example? I do not think I have ever gone through one. If I went through one, I was not aware of it. Take an example we all seem to have heard a fair bit about: this person who was going from Britain to the United States. I think I remember which airline he was on, but as I am not 100 per cent sure, I will not say. In terms of profile testing, seeing pictures of him in the paper and seeing clips of him on TV going into the courtroom would have rung every bell in my system and would have made me look closely at him. This is the person who had the bomb in the heel of his shoe.
Mr. Wilmink: Richard Reid.
Senator Smith: Would that vapour detection machine probably have got him?
Mr. Wilmink: No. The vapour detection is for baggage and luggage only; it is not for people to walk through.
Senator Smith: People do not walk through it?
Mr. Wilmink: People do not walk through it. It is strictly right now in Canada a downstairs operation. In the United States, it is right at the check-in. Once you have been notified, you pick up your bag yourself, walk over there, put it on the conveyer belt, and it goes through. If they were suspicious and put his shoes through it, that would be one way.
Senator Smith: How would we have got him in Canada with our current equipment?
Mr. Wilmink: We would not.
Senator Smith: Is there any plan to have something that would address that?
Mr. Wilmink: The only thing would be an alert passenger screening agent who looked at this person and said, ``Wait a sec here,'' and put him through. My understanding is that he was picked out of the lineup in Europe and went through a search. They did an extensive search on him and could not find anything and still put him on the plane.
Senator Smith: What about the dogs? Would they have helped?
Mr. Wilmink: If you had the dogs working the lineup, instead of actually being on the conveyer belt checking the bags as they go through. You could also put them in the lineup. Again, some people do not check bags in so you would have to do it at the passenger screening point. Having a dog going up and down the line would catch that, hopefully.
Senator Smith: Going back to this vapour detection machine, you characterize the prospect of it being deployed as not the silver bullet. My interpretation of the phrase ``silver bullet'' was the definitive response to the various problems we had. Does the silver bullet exist or is there any one of these recommendations that you have made that would symbolize the silver bullet?
Mr. Wilmink: Unfortunately, it does not exist. There is no silver bullet. There is also a danger, too, when you have technology; technology is only as good as the people using it. The screeners who run this EVD equipment have to be well trained. If they are sloppy, if they are not paying attention, then the equipment is no good. The equipment is only one part of it. The EVD will not get a passenger whose intent is not to blow up the plane through explosives, but to take control of it and do something to the pilot. That is a totally different problem. That is where you try profiling, passenger screening and those types of things. You have to do all of them together.
Senator Smith: In your opening remarks, before you got into your seven proposals, you said that proper risk analysis should have been done. Why would you assume that the various stakeholders did not do that or do not continue to do it on a regular basis? I am assuming they would be the airlines, Transport Canada, airport management at, in particular, the major airports, and maybe the RCMP as well. Is it not possible that they are doing it to some extent? There are cost implications in some of the more desirable things, but if they could push a button and have them, they would. Do you think it is fair to say that there has been no proper risk analysis done? That would trouble me. I wonder if you assume it or you know it?
Mr. Wilmink: It is an assumption and comes from the lack of positive changes. They may have very well done a risk analysis. How they did it, who did it, and with what prior security knowledge or skills, I cannot speak to at all. As a citizen, I would hope they had done that.
Senator Smith: Do you not think they all have an optimum wish list, and if they could push a button and somebody else would pay for it, they would?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes, but some of the changes I talk about do not take $50 million or $100 million. They can be done immediately. I do not see any action in those areas. All I see is a focus on the publicity coming out of CATSA and Transport Canada is focused on the passenger screeners.
Senator Smith: Let us just take the one cost thing. I think they are all good suggestions, but somehow we must come to grips with how they will be paid for and who will pay for them.
You mentioned that it would not be expensive to take some of the personnel, like customs people, and move them into doing that. Surely, then, they would have to be replaced by a whole bunch of people in terms of, say, the police officers with dogs. Well, these police officers would have been doing something else.
I am not quarrelling with this, but here is my point. Take those two issues. I am from Toronto, and Pearson is the one I know best, but I believe you are Vancouver-based, so let us take the Vancouver airport. Do you have any idea of the number of new personnel that they would need at Vancouver to do both of those things — have officers with dogs and customs people and then, presumably, other trained customs people doing what they had been doing? What is the new personnel figure? Do you have any estimate of that?
Mr. Wilmink: The estimate for customs agents to move upstairs, maybe 30 to 50 to 70 agents. We are not going to totally staff it, but we are going to use them as supervisors on the shift, so customs would have to replace 50, 60 customs officers. Yes, that would be a manpower requirement. There would be a manpower cost for that.
With respect to the dogs, they do not have to be police officer supervised. That could be done by private security. It is the dog that receives most of the training on the team, and the handler could be a private security officer, which brings the salary down from $40 to $15 and makes it more affordable.
The police are already in the airport being paid for now. There is no extra cost for that, and if the dog hits on explosives, the handler calls the RCMP and they deal with it there. There is no extra cost.
Senator Smith: Presumably, the police have other duties.
Mr. Wilmink: They are not what they are paid for, though. They are being paid by the airlines to be a response.
Senator Smith: You mean they are sitting there playing bridge?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes, and they are responding to other problems that the taxes from the regular airport should be covering for regular police costs.
Senator Atkins: I want to get back to the proper risk analysis. You are not sure whether there is any effort in this regard. If they were to do it, would you want it to be airport to airport, or a general analysis?
Mr. Wilmink: I think CATSA and Transport Canada should do one on a federal level. What are the threats against Canadian airports? What are the problems we perceive? That is at one level.
At the lower level, the airport authorities have to say, ``Here is our airport. What are the threats against us? What is our physical makeup? Where do our problems come from?''
The airlines, each one really has to do their own. The airlines say, ``Here is our business. Here is our plan. Here is how our operations work. What are the threats against us?'' Some of them are similar. There has to be communication. Some of them are business-plan specific.
Senator Atkins: Senator Smith made the point that Pearson is one kind of airport; Vancouver is another. With all the construction that is taking place, are there any national standards applied to the development of these airports as we proceed to the future?
Mr. Wilmink: There are requirements with respect to the specific site security. With respect to design, I am not sure about that. I do not know whether there are Transport Canada regulations on how you architecturally design an airport, or whether it is all given over to the airports themselves. I do know you have to have your security line, your pre-screen and your after-screen. Those have to be in there. How you get to those areas, I am not sure of the architecture on that one.
Senator Atkins: What would be your view about perimeter security? It seems to me that any of the security dangers are so close to the source. Is there any way in which airports can be designed or security set-up could be developed — you described the onion — that should be applied to some of the major airports like Pearson, Montreal or Vancouver?
In addressing that question, is there a new technology for identification that should be a standard across the country?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes, I would like to see biometrics used. Hand recognition or eye recognition is very good. Right now, you just have your access pass, your RAP pass. That is easily forged. I see some of the people here have a Senate ID card. It is just printed on a simple HP machine, and you can design the cover yourself. Make people have two things, their ID card plus their personal recognition, so every employee going through has to put their hand in a palm reader. ``We know that is Chuck Wilmink. We know he is an employee here. We let him through.'' I think that would greatly help. That stops the forgeries, stops people from going to a thrift store and buying an old Air Canada uniform, putting it on and going through.
Senator Atkins: Is it expensive?
Mr. Wilmink: No. For hand recognition, there is the software behind it, and then hand readers, which are $500 to $1,000 each. It depends sometimes how many choke points you want in the airport, how many times you want the airline employees to go through. If you want employees to be really accessible in the airport, have 30 entrances, then it is going to cost you more. If you focus them on five or four main entrances, the costs go down. They are in place in private businesses in downtown buildings already.
Senator Atkins: What about the perimeter question?
Mr. Wilmink: The perimeter question is a tough one. You have miles of fence. You should have cameras on the fence with pattern recognition, so if they see a motion sensitive, it alerts the security guard at the monitoring station. You should also have wiring going through it with tension it, so that any cut, any break signals the alarm, ``Hey, we have had someone go through it.'' Part of the problem you will have is a big crow or other bird will come and land on it and that may set it off, but that is okay. You err on the side of safety. You can do it that way with cameras.
The other thing they have done is they have no parking right in front of the check-in areas. You have drop-off areas. You do not let someone drive a car in. Unfortunately, you will always have threats like the Oklahoma bombing, where they took the big rental truck and parked it out front. Do you stop big vehicles from going through and have one area for buses and just passenger cars right in front of the public check-ins? That is probably a good idea. You do not let the big buses go through. You create a separate entrance for them.
Senator Atkins: One emerging issue is profiling as it relates to the Charter. Do you have any thoughts on how you deal with this issue?
Mr. Wilmink: It is a balance issue between public security and public privacy. It is a very tough balance. I think you have to ask the public what do they want. Are they willing to give up their personal identification for safety's sake? It is a big issue right now. Do you put police cameras on public streets? They are talking in Vancouver about Granville Street, and in Kelowna. They are all over Britain and Europe. Police cameras are everywhere and they have police monitoring them. It is accepted there for safety's sake. It is being introduced here and that is a tough question.
I think the other problem is that if you do accept it, you had better make darn sure that you secure your systems properly. If I am going to release my information for travelling purposes, I do not want it released to employers, outside people. I do not want people hacking into it.
Senator Atkins: We are told that, in terms of checking through passengers, there are random checks, but they are sort of on a mathematical basis — every fifth person. Do you agree with that? Do you think that makes sense?
Mr. Wilmink: It is every twentieth, because it is five per cent, so that is one out of every 20 that is supposed to have the bags hand checked. No, it has to be really random. Sometimes you do three in a row and let 55 through people afterwards, and sometimes you do every fourth, those types of things. It has to be more than every fifth person.
I do not know how you would do it, but the passengers maybe should be given some control, some discretion on whether there is a personal risk. They have to have some discretion as well.
Senator Atkins: That would be my question. When they have this pattern, there is no discretion.
Mr. Wilmink: No. Exactly right. Right now they do it, but how do you tell a nervous criminal from a nervous flyer? They are both in the lineup, they are both sweating, they are both askew, they are both in a rush. It is very hard. Now you might have the nervous flyer complaining, ``Hey, I am checked every time.'' That is where you publicize to the public that we are using a preventive security measure. ``I am sorry you get checked, here is what we are looking for, people trying to hide something,'' and hope that you get the public behind you.
Senator Atkins: I will wind up with one final question about air marshals. Should inflight employees of airlines know who the air marshals are or should they not be identified in your opinion?
Mr. Wilmink: In my opinion, they should be identified to the inflight crew and the pilots, because they are a resource and part of the team. If a flight attendant has a passenger they are kind of suspicious about they should be able to tell the air marshal. How you do that is very carefully, but you have an electronic paging system or something like that, because you do not want her going up to the air marshal and saying, ``Watch out for the guy over there.'' You have to be very careful in that way, but I think they should work as a team. Also, should an incident happen, you want the flight crew to know who the good guys are. If all of a sudden a terrorist or someone has a gun and the marshals have guns, you had better make sure you know who the good people are and who you help and who you do not help.
Senator Atkins: How do you feel about pilots having weapons?
Mr. Wilmink: I would leave that up to their discretion. I had an interesting dinner with pilots. They were not hired to carry a firearm on the job. That is a big change. Some people just will not accept that, and I cannot argue against that. Some people may be willing, but if they are, are they capable is another issue. They had better have very good training.
I know the pilot I talked to said it is a bit silly, because if he is the co-pilot right here and he reaches for the gun and goes to get the terrorist, he goes right by the pilot, and he is scared and he is shooting all the way around. There are issues like that. In the U.S., with the prior military training of some of their pilots, I would feel confident about them having side arms.
The other comment is that if a hijacker gets to that point, it is pretty bad trouble. Will the gun really help or not? I do not think so. That is my personal opinion. If they are willing to do it and they are trained well, okay, but it will not be a silver bullet or the magical cure.
The Chairman: I have been remiss in not giving your qualifications, sir. They include a period of service as Corporate Security Manager with Canadian Airlines and two years as Director of the Canadian Centre for Information Technology Security. What is that, please?
Mr. Wilmink: It is a joint initiative in Vancouver between the University of British Columbia and the Justice Institute of British Columbia, which trains all the police officers. It was to introduce computer security issues into the IT field.
The Chairman: You also have a Master's degree in Business Administration, are a certified information systems security professional, and have taken the Federal Bureau of Investigation's airline terrorism training program and the RCMP aviation security and explosives detection course. Is that all correct?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes.
The Chairman: How much of the testimony that you have given the committee today would be location specific? Being from Canadian Airlines, does it just apply to Vancouver? Does it apply throughout the system?
Mr. Wilmink: It is Canada-wide for sure, and it is probably U.S. wide.
The Chairman: Would you say that any of the testimony you have given us today would not apply to Pearson?
Mr. Wilmink: The only one I know about is the design, whether people go through the duty free before they go through check-in, whether the passengers have control of their bags for a while where they should not. That is the only one I cannot qualify.
The Chairman: You spoke at the beginning of your testimony about the difference between criminal security and terrorist security. We have received testimony in the past from police officials who have indicated that where organized crime functions, that gives terrorists an opportunity to flourish.
I did not get that impression from you. I got the impression from you that where organized crime was functioning you would have a straightforward, very efficient looking airport and terrorists would not do well there.
Mr. Wilmink: They do not want a plane crash. They do not want the five-day interruption after 9/11. That is bad for their goods. My impression of organized crime in the airports is that there may be the one, or two or three odd individuals who are members of organized crime, whether it is putting drugs on an aircraft or something like that. I do not see it as being systemic. It is individual opportunism, and that is also the same with individuals who are not with organized crime.
Part of the problem is that if you have a criminal record, if you have three drinking and driving offences, maybe it is because you are a gambler and you have a gambling debt. There is a relationship between criminal people and terrorism in that they may be more susceptible because they owe money to a bookie or they owe money for a drug deal. They may be willing to say, ``Hey, put this package on a plane for me, okay? It is only cash for my partner in Calgary,'' and who knows what is actually in the envelope. There is a correlation that way. One hundred per cent, no, but there is cause and effect.
The Chairman: The testimony came from the RCMP. I do not believe they said there was 100 per cent correlation. They implied that if organized crime could flourish in an airport, that you could probably have terrorists taking advantage of that.
Mr. Wilmink: I think that terrorists could take advantage of the same systems that are in place that organized crime is using: free access to the planes unencumbered, no searches on their personal bags, that type of thing. I think if members of a terrorist organization wanted to get a job with an airline, with fuel service trucking, with the cleaners, it is quite easy to do, especially if they do not have any criminal record in their background check.
The Chairman: You talked about explosive vapour machines. Are these ion scanners, essentially?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes.
The Chairman: You talked about the one-in-five false positives. Do you know in fact what happens at airports when false positives take place?
Mr. Wilmink: The way it is now designed in Vancouver, the false positive from one machine will get sent through the secondary machine for a different test, and then also they are hand searched. The requirement is that the security officer pull them off the line and hand search them and see what could be causing the problem.
The Chairman: Was it 120 bags you described going through the system?
Mr. Wilmink: They can handle 200 bags an hour, and there are 1,200 bags going through the system.
The Chairman: Is that in one hour?
Mr. Wilmink: At the peak times.
The Chairman: Therefore, if you have 200 bags going through, that means you have 20 per cent false positives. If it is one in five, that means there are 40 bags to be checked. What happens to the 40 bags?
Mr. Wilmink: They are taken out and checked by the security officer.
The Chairman: Are they all taken out?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes.
The Chairman: Every one?
Mr. Wilmink: They should be.
The Chairman: You talked about the three questions that the Americans do not find useful anymore. Your suggestion was that after you have heard the questions a few times it is easy to lie in answer to them. My understanding is that those three questions were designed as a result of an IRA terrorist who had a lady friend whom he persuaded to meet him in Rome and then gave her a suitcase carrying a bomb. Therefore, it really is not so much to catch the terrorists, but to catch people who might have been duped by someone else — quite innocent people, in fact — into carrying a bomb.
Is that your understanding of the reason for those three questions?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes. I agree with you, the reasons are good and they will stop that one naive person who has taken a package from someone else and who will honestly admit that. A lot of people are in a lineup at the airport, they are busy, they want to catch their flight. They will not respond honestly. ``Sorry, yes, oh, I know what is in that package, my brother gave it to me,'' or they will assume that ``I got it from my boyfriend, I must trust him, I am not going to say anything.'' There is value to that question and stopping that very small percentage of people.
The Chairman: However, what you are saying is that while there may be value, you are not sure it is cost-effective?
Mr. Wilmink: Exactly, and the other question I did not mention earlier is that it is being asked by the check-in agents, who have little security training and do not know what they are looking for. They are answering it. It is on their screen and they have to ask those questions. It is just part of their thing. Are they really focusing on, ``I think this person is lying. Let's send them over for a double check''? I have not seen that happen.
The Chairman: Did you fly here today?
Mr. Wilmink: Saturday.
The Chairman: Were you asked those questions?
Mr. Wilmink: Yes, I was.
The Chairman: Okay. I am not certain, but on the last three flights I have been on, I have not been asked those questions, and I have to attribute it to an honest face.
You raised the question of ongoing training for searchers.
I was intrigued by your suggestion for one day a week. That is, 20 per cent of the time should be devoted to training? Is that a number you want to stick with?
Mr. Wilmink: It is a proposal. It is mainly to draw people's attention to the fact that, yes, they should spend more time on training, whether it is one day a week or two hours a day out of an eight-hour shift or one hour, but first the training has to be designed. Then, realistically, how many times can they take certain training?
The Chairman: Okay. You are trending up now. Two hours a day out of an eight-hour shift is 25 per cent of their time. One day a week is 20 per cent of their time.
Mr. Wilmink: Bad math. I thought two out of eight was 20 per cent, not 25. I meant an hour-and-a-half. It was just an example.
The Chairman: I am just trying to get some idea as to how much training you think is appropriate for screeners. What you are suggesting is an awful lot more than they are getting now.
Mr. Wilmink: Exactly.
The Chairman: Okay. Thank you. Training police for prevention rather than for catching people after the fact is an interesting concept. I think intuitively it appeals to all of the committee members. What do you know about preventive training for the police forces that are contracted to airports? Do you have any knowledge of that? Should we be asking other people? There is no reason why you should know about it. I am just wondering if you can assist the committee in this regard.
Mr. Wilmink: From what I saw, it was very minimal. Their preventive training was, ``Here is the airport; here are the passenger screening areas; here is where you will have to respond.''
We saw it at Vancouver airport — I cannot speak for Toronto — where brand new officers right out of depot training in Regina were being assigned to the airport, and that is their first posting. I have not witnessed a proper pre- screening training program for them. What they have in place, I cannot say.
The Chairman: Sir, I would like to thank you very much on behalf of the committee. It has been a very instructive period for us. I should observe that the committee has benefited from information with which you have provided us in the past, and we appreciate that very much. We hope we can call on you again in the future as our studies continue.
To those of you at home following our work, please visit our Web site by going to http://sen.sec.ca. We post witness testimony as well as confirmed hearing schedules. Otherwise, you may contact the clerk of the committee by calling 1- 800-267-7362 for further information or for assistance in contacting members of the committees.
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence.
Prior to introducing our witnesses, I will ask the clerk of the committee to swear them in.
(Captain Don Johnson, sworn)
(Captain Matt Sheehy, sworn)
(First Officer Russ Cooper, sworn)
The Chairman: Our next witnesses are from the Air Canada Pilots Association. Today, we have Captain Don Johnson, President. He is accompanied by Captain Matt Sheehy, Chairman, Security Committee, as well as First Officer Russ Cooper, who is Toronto Representative, Security Committee. The association has been very active in the field of airport security, participating in working groups with Transport Canada.
Captain Don Johnson, President, Air Canada Pilots Association: Thank you, Senator Kenny and committee members, for the invitation to be here today to discuss the issue of aviation security.
We at the Air Canada Pilots Association have noted and appreciated the transparency that your standing committee has brought to this critical national debate and are pleased to be here.
Our membership, through its Security Committee, has been very active in advocating change in the aviation security environment. As pilots and commanders of Canada's flag carrier, we fly routes and aircraft demonstrated to be of interest to terrorists who have declared war on the United States and her allies. We have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of our crews and passengers, as we not only operate as pilots in command but as peace officers in accordance with the Criminal Code of Canada.
We take these responsibilities to heart, so much so that we formulated an integrated security action plan within weeks of the 9/11 events. It was our hope, in doing so, to advance security improvements by bringing our unique and legitimate perspective to this vital undertaking.
Our action plan and inputs have been successful in influencing change, but four major security initiatives continue to defy resolution. We have been very patient in advocating progress in these areas but now feel, to put it bluntly, that our efforts and unique perspective have been sidelined.
The first of these relates to our priority call for the centralization of responsibility and accountability for aviation security within one federal government authority. The component parts of aviation security are many and far-flung and require a central focal point to integrate associated measures effectively.
The formation of the Canadian Air Transport Security Agency, or CATSA, falls short of this vital requirement. This agency is incapable of addressing many airborne security issues as it is primarily mandated to oversee ground screening issues. In addition, it seeks no direct input from those being protected or those legally mandated to assure airborne security, the public and the pilots respectively.
The second area deals with ground screening and aircraft access concerns. As it stands now, there are inconsistent measures and procedures in force at airports throughout the nation. Some personnel requiring airside access are screened extensively while others pass with minimal requirements. It may very well be that the lack of centralized, publicly controlled oversight contributes to this serious shortfall, but the fact remains our pilots are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the pre-flight security status of the aircraft we fly. This situation needs to be dealt with immediately and speaks to a requirement for the implementation of a technologically advanced national pass system.
We recognize the superb job that the RCMP are doing in implementing and now expanding the armed air marshal program. The fact remains, however, that this program needs to ensure that the number of marshals available is sufficient to provide a viable deterrent. This is a third concern for us, as we realize how critical the RCMP is to the ongoing fight in the war against terrorism. We therefore suggest that consideration be given to expanding the program beyond the RCMP to include a larger pool of personnel with relevant background and skills. In this fashion, the RCMP could become a centralized trainer and qualifier of marshals rather than their sole supplier.
Our fourth and last priority concern deals with the implementation of measures to assure the security of the cockpit environment.
Our efforts and suggestions in this area have been downplayed, and we are now being told that a single, reinforced door modification would address this requirement. We, however, do not see this as a final solution and continue to call for measures that would either provide a security seal between the cockpit and the cabin throughout the operation of a flight or provide our flight crews with defensive weapons or systems that would prevent the loss of control of the flight deck to unauthorized users. The provision of a continuous seal between the cockpit and the cabin could be addressed by the installation of a double-door type system. Such systems are in use today while others are being developed for the retrofit market.
In summary, our four major concerns lie in the areas of responsibility and accountability, inconsistent screening of those accessing aircraft, air marshal program augmentation and protection of the cockpit environment. My security colleagues and I are now at your disposal for questions.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Just before we go to questions, could you briefly qualify yourself and the members of your panel for us?
Mr. Johnson: Senator, I am a captain with Air Canada. I have been in the aviation industry for 37 years — 30 with Air Canada. I am a captain on the Boeing 747. I am proud to represent the 3,500 pilots flying at mainline Air Canada as their president.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Captain Matt Sheehy, Chairman, Security Committee, Air Canada Pilots Association: Good afternoon, senator and members of the committee. I am a captain with Air Canada with over 30 years service with the airline — a 767 captain based in Toronto. I am the security chairman, originally for Canadian Airlines, and have been involved in the security end of things for 15 years. I took over the job at Air Canada on September 1 and have been quite busy since. I am also a qualified Transport Canada security inspector and have experience in FBI and police training.
The Chairman: Thank you.
First Officer Russ Cooper, Toronto Representative, Security Committee, Air Canada Pilots Association: Senator Kenny and committee members, I currently have first officer responsibilities with Air Canada on the A-320 aircraft. I have come to Air Canada and the security committee a bit late in life. I have only been with Air Canada for three years and I joined the security committee shortly after September 11, after writing a series of papers that outlined threat analyses, plans and some recommendations.
These papers came from my previous background: I spent about 28 years in the Canadian Air Force. There, on the operational side as a fighter pilot flying 104s and CF-18s on the staff side, I had the opportunity to be involved with directing some pretty sensitive acquisition programs for the air force.
On the operational side, I did have an opportunity to be the deputy commanding officer of the CF-18 squadron that fought for Canada during the Persian Gulf War. On the staff side, I managed the capital acquisition program for the air force for a number of years, including the acquisition of some fighter weapons.
The Chairman: Thank you, gentlemen.
Senator Meighen: Perhaps I could ask general questions directed to all of you and whoever wants to answer would be fine. You were here, I think, for most of the testimony from Mr. Wilmink, security adviser. Is there anything that he said that you would take issue with, or anything that you would add to what he said?
Mr. Sheehy: Yes, Senator Meighen, it kind of leads into some of the issues that we have alluded to in our statement. We are deeply concerned about the oversight of the entire matrix of aviation security in this country. Certainly, the gentleman preceding us was a subject expert. I was very impressed.
However, often these things are driven by the bottom line. One of the issues that we are trying to portray to this group is that the oversight of security in aviation in Canada is a national security issue. Therefore, we consider that it should be under the auspices of the federal government or some entity of that sort. The devolution of authority that took place in 1996 was primarily driven by an economic initiative. The devolution of authority took place and a lot of the day-to-day operations of the airports were handed down to the local airport authorities, which was fine. Let's say that it functioned to a certain degree. It certainly supplied the economic part of it.
However, since 9/11, the whole landscape of the world has changed, and the aviation security certainly has changed dramatically. We are going to make a suggestion to the Senate committee. Unfortunately, we are going to ask you to turn the Titanic around because we sincerely believe that the model that we are trying to work with right now is dysfunctional. It might have been able to get through the day before 9/11, but as it stands today, it is not working.
One of the issues that the previous gentleman brought up was the issue of costs of police officers. I have had the privilege of working with the Peel Regional Police, in Toronto, for years. They are, without a doubt, one of the finest police departments in the country and, as far as aviation security at our airport is concerned, there is none better. I would hate to see the day that they would be replaced by minimum wage, or slightly above that, hired people — guards who are given a certain amount of authority and jurisdiction. When somebody flies an airplane, I would like to see a professional up there. I do not want to see someone up there who is being paid minimum wage, just to get the bottom line fixed.
I think I have pretty well covered that one off. As I said, I would rather see a professional police department coming to my aid than a $15-per-hour guard. God bless them, they do a great job, but they are not police officers.
Mr. Johnson: I would add one other thing. The thought occurred to me when the expert was talking about the duty- free shop. Pilots have been after the authorities for many, many years to put the duty free shop at the end of the trip, so that you are not carrying flammable liquids with you when you go from one place to another. Do your duty-free shopping when you get off the airplane. Something as simple as that would help a lot.
Senator Meighen: Mr. Cooper, have you anything to add?
Mr. Cooper: I think the previous presenter was spot-on on many issues. He reflects a lot of the observations that we have made over the past year.
One thing that struck me was he stated that he would like to see the responsibility for security centralized within the airline structure. I wonder if that is perhaps the way to go because the airline industry and airlines are money-making propositions, and they can only afford to put as much resources into that kind of an enterprise as they have coming in through the form of revenues.
I would think that security is so important, and as Captain Sheehy suggests, is of such critical interest to the public that perhaps that should be centralized within a public organization.
Senator Meighen: Yes. It seems to me that the public must be terribly confused. They know they are paying an additional $12, or whatever it is, per ticket to fund a presumably new and better security system under the aegis of CATSA, the Canadian Air Transport Security Agency, whose name says it all. However, the previous witness told us that, as far as he could determine, the money has only been spent on reimbursing the airlines for the provision of largely minimum wage security checkers at passenger check-in, and that there is very little evidence, if any, of improvement in cargo or passenger security. Have you anything to tell us that might be different? It is a pretty bleak picture.
Mr. Sheehy: We have to agree with what you said.
The mandate of CATSA has been limited strictly to screening, and at the last minute, when the issue of air marshals came to the forefront, they had to capture that as well. They are not giving any direction to the air marshal program, so far as we know. All they are doing is taking care of the cost structure and the accounting aspects of paying for it.
All we see that has been accomplished in some ways is Transport Canada has now created another bureaucracy to separate them from the issues at hand. It is one of the issues that we are very familiar with as pilots, and that is responsibility and accountability. We live that every day. We understand that, and we realize when it is not there. Unfortunately, the situation right now is that, if you look at what is happening, you see a situation and ask, where do we go to get some accountability here and who is responsible, Transport Canada will tell you, ``We are responsible.''
Senator Meighen: ``We'' being...?
Mr. Sheehy: Transport Canada will say that they are responsible, but the reality is it is very difficult to draw the line between what happened here and how the ministry is responsible, because there is CATSA in between. You have the local airport authority in between. What you have now is eight or nine different entities across the country, all basically controlling national security. To me, that is wrong.
I believe that aviation security is a national security issue, and it should not be in the hands of the local airport authorities. They have a role to play, certainly, but it boggles my mind to think that they will be dictating national security issues for all Canadians.
Senator Meighen: What I personally found very disturbing is the total lack of security, it would seem, or improved security in the area of cargo. Surely you must worry as much about me getting on your plane as a great big package and going into the belly of it. At least they check me. They do not check the package going into the belly of your plane. Where is this covered off in your four priorities? Perhaps standardization of airport security screening would cover cargo?
Mr. Johnson: It has always been our suggestion that, as part of this one federally mandated agency to oversee the security issues, all of those programs would be addressed and given a central clearing point. Right now we do not have that. We have everybody playing their own game. We are certainly not getting the bang for our buck, for our 12 bucks.
Senator Meighen: I almost hate to ask you this question because it is only part of the problem, or the solution, and that has to do with the arming of pilots. Does your association or do you personally have a viewpoint on this?
Mr. Johnson: No. We polled our pilots on that question, and basically, what they said was, ``If we can have a totally secure cockpit environment —
Senator Meighen: Double-doored?
Mr. Johnson: Double doors — then we do not need to be armed. However, in the absence of that, we would like to have some type of weapon. However, we do not want it to be a lethal weapon.'' We are looking at all possibilities there.
Senator Meighen: We know that there are air marshals on flights into Reagan, because the Americans have insisted on it. We know that there are air marshals on some other flights. In your view, is there a satisfactory protocol worked out between the pilots, the air marshal and the cabin crew to deal with an emergency?
Mr. Johnson: Well, we have no training in that. We are told that the air marshal will make himself known to us if he is on our flight.
Senator Meighen: Does he?
Mr. Johnson: As far as we know, he has, and we insist on that, as a matter of fact. On that point, you asked the expert, Mr. Wilmink. Yes, we need to know who that person is, and we need to work with him.
Senator Meighen: Whose responsibility is it, in your view, or who says it is their responsibility to bring this about? Is it CATSA?
Mr. Sheehy: If I could address that, sir, we were on working groups at Transport, two working groups — the airport working group and the aircraft working group. There were 47 recommendations put together over six, seven months of considerable effort.
They are still on the books, and at some point, I assume that the minister or the government will respond to them. They have not done so yet. One of them was that we would set up a subcommittee and bring subject experts in, for example, Peel Regional Police, the Calgary police, the RCMP, Transport Canada, ACPA, ALPA. Whoever needs to be there as stakeholders would be there.
The Chairman: Excuse me, sir. Just for the record, could you tell us what those acronyms stand for?
Mr. Sheehy: Well, Peel police, Calgary police, RCMP — I will probably miss a few, but CUPE —
The Chairman: It was ACPA and ALPA.
Mr. Sheehy: ACPA is Air Canada Pilots Association. ALPA is the Airline Pilots Association. We work very closely with them, by the way. We have a very good working relationship with ALPA, and on most issues we are together. The other groups were CUPE, Canadian Union of Public Employees, and CAW, Canadian Auto Workers. All of these unions were representing different stakeholders — flight attendants, for example, ticket agents and what have you. That was promised.
That was supposed to precede the implementation of the air marshal program. Unfortunately, the air marshal program took place in isolation to a certain degree, and we are still waiting for some protocols. We are peace officers on board the aircraft under section 2 of the Criminal Code as well. We are the commanders of the aircraft and the peace officers, and we should be the peace officer in charge. All of these small, niggly issues are important. To blast off at 500 miles an hour at 35,000 feet and then have something go wrong when we have never sat down with these people and worked through what we're going to do is a little frightening.
Senator Meighen: First Officer Cooper, you wrote a very extensive paper on security concerns right after September 11, three days after, I think.
Mr. Cooper: Yes, sir.
Senator Meighen: It was very detailed and very prescient, I think. What, if anything, just for our work as a committee, in this paper would you change now in light of another 12 months of experience?
Mr. Cooper: Is that the appreciation, sir, or the perspective?
Senator Meighen: ``Cockpit Security and Appreciation.''
Mr. Cooper: Okay. That particular paper highlighted a threat analysis approach to the post-September 11 situation.
Senator Meighen: As well as the paper you did on ``The Way Ahead.''
Mr. Cooper: Yes.
Senator Meighen: Both of them.
Mr. Cooper: Frankly, sir, I cannot think of anything I would change in any of those papers.
I think it is becoming more and more apparent that the integrated approach that was proposed in our security plan ``The Way Ahead'' is the way to go to bring into place a defence-in-depth type of approach to security, where a protagonist has to go through a series of obstacles before he finally gets to wherever he wants to go, whether it be the cockpit or the baggage area, or whatever. That approach, I think, is still very much advised. As for the threat analysis that I did in the original two papers, I think events have borne out that those threats are as serious as I originally conceived, and, no, I do not see a change in anything.
Senator Meighen: Are you getting full cooperation from the airport authorities to the extent of their abilities, or does it vary across the country?
Mr. Johnson: No, and that is one of our problems. Very early on in the events after September 11, one of our points, or issues, was a nationally administered pass system. We had cases where one airport would not honour the passes that were issued by another airport, even though they all went through the same supposed screening process. One was issued in Montreal, one was issued in Vancouver, and so on, and they would not honour those passes.
My understanding is that we have a turf war — it cannot be termed any more than that — in which obstacles are being put up that would not allow for a national pass system.
We think that we have the technology for the biometrically enhanced pass system. We have, supposedly, with the security tax, the money to do it. We are over a year after September 11 and, as far as I know, nothing has been done about it.
We really need that. We need our passes to be honoured wherever we go within Canada. We do not have that now, and it needs to be done.
We keep hearing stories about, with the demise of Canada 3000, there were 700 security passes out there that could not be accounted for. That alone should get you working on a new security pass. A year is enough. Let us get those passes straightened out, so that the people going through security and using their passes are known to everybody.
The Chairman: As a footnote to that, could you tell the committee where your passes are not being honoured? It is important that we know where the problems are.
Mr. Johnson: Actually, right now it is in Toronto. We cannot go through any kind of alternate screening at all in Toronto. We have the ability to go through alternate screening at some other airports, but not all of them. I think Montreal is the other one.
The Chairman: Could you define ``alternate screening'' for the committee, please?
Mr. Johnson: It is a place for employees and crews to go through where we may be checked or we may not be checked. You just have to show your security badge and go through a screening process there.
The Chairman: Are you checked at these alternate screening places?
Mr. Johnson: Yes, we are.
The Chairman: We have noticed a change in Ottawa, for example, where there is now an alternate screening facility. Have any of you passed through Ottawa since the facility has been put in place?
Mr. Sheehy: Yes, I have.
The Chairman: How often are you checked when you go through there?
Mr. Sheehy: We are always checked.
The Chairman: How often are you searched?
Mr. Sheehy: It is a different level. They have a system of identifying who you are based on your pass system. There is a list of missing passes, as well, that they can crosscheck. They look at me, and they look at the picture, and they look at a list to see if I am on it. If I am on a good guy list or a bad guy list, it is clear, and they let me access the aircraft.
If they choose to, they can put you through X-ray at that point. At this point, that is how it is being dealt with.
That brings up to the issue of threat assessment, as First Officer Cooper was explaining. We are considered by Transport Canada, we are considered by CSIS and we are considered, I hope, by the general travelling public as a very low threat group of people. What has happened is, for whatever reason — and it probably is the fact that we have a fractured system across the country, certain airports — one individual, actually — has decided to continue to demand that, or to consider us to be a high risk group of employees.
The Chairman: Who is the individual?
Mr. Sheehy: I will not say ``individual''; I will say ``entity'' — the Toronto airport.
The Chairman: You raised the question of passes that have been cancelled or discontinued. This committee does not understand why that system is in place. Perhaps you could explain it to us. It seems to us that it would make more sense, given the testimony that we have received on how easy it is to forge passes, to have active passes that are enforced rather than a list of cancelled passes that should not be enforced.
You mentioned that your pass is checked against a list of cancelled passes. Do you think that this is a useful function?
Mr. Sheehy: I would say it has limited use. What we have suggested, and is part of the working group recommendation as well, is that the whole pass system be regenerated, the old pass system cancelled, and a national pass system re-introduced.
In order to do that, we have to go to biometrics, smart cards, et cetera. This will solve 99 per cent of these small irritants that are creeping in on a day-to-day basis.
Senator Meighen: I heard you say a national pass system should be ``re-introduced.'' Did we formerly have a national pass system?
Mr. Sheehy: What we have in place now is not really a national pass system. All individuals have a pass issued by the local airport authority. The background checks of these individuals are supposedly taken care of by CSIS, RCMP, et cetera. What you have is a pass that is generated out of Montreal, another pass that is issued out of Toronto, and Toronto has decided that they will make a decision on who they will allow through.
There is no real national pass system. There is a real national background check for everyone, but there is no in- place national pass system at this time.
Mr. Johnson: I would like to clarify one issue. All through this period of time, the Air Canada pilots did not want special handling here. What we want is one level of screening for everyone. If the pilot has a pass issued by a relevant authority, he should be treated no worse than somebody who runs the kiosk inside security or somebody else. We see that the way to solve this problem is to have everybody checked, not just the pilots and the flight attendants.
The Chairman: I am shocked to hear that you are having problems at Pearson. Certainly, this committee has had nothing but cooperation from that airport.
Senator Atkins: Thank you, gentlemen, for being here this morning. I want to follow up with the GTAA thing, but before I do I will note that one of the challenges for this committee is the question of whether the kind of testimony witnesses give us is a threat to our security, or whether things should be dealt with in a quiet way or in such a way that the public does not know.
Could I have your view on that?
Mr. Johnson: In my opening remarks, I said that we appreciated the transparency that this committee brings to these hearings. We think, similarly to Mr. Wilmink, that they should be held in public and that everybody should know what is going on. That is the only way that we will get the kind of measures in place to stop this kind of stuff.
I do not think we have to go into express detail about what is being done, just that, of so many people that tried to penetrate the security system, this many got through. Those are the kinds of statistics that will get people moving.
Senator Atkins: It is not really telling the terrorists something that they do not already know?
Mr. Johnson: I do not think so. We feel closely with Mr. Wilmink. With the systems that we have in place at the airport, we will stop the fringe terrorist. We will not stop the dedicated, well-trained, well-financed ones.
Senator Atkins: Our Chair was joking that we get along well with the GTAA. You are having the same difficulties as we are having.
Mr. Johnson: Absolutely.
Senator Atkins: Mr. Sheehy's comments about the Peel County Police surprised me, because we have not had much cooperation from them, either. When we asked for them to appear before this committee, the chief refused.
It comes down to a fundamental issue of whether the entire security question should be under a federal jurisdiction, like the RCMP, or whether it should be delegated, depending on the area, through the municipalities. We run into this issue with the port question in Halifax. When the port police were eliminated, the question arose of whether the local police should do their job.
It is a matter of how well-trained individuals are to deal with the kind of assignments that they are given. Do you have any comments?
Mr. Sheehy: Yes I do. I cannot really respond to why Peel police have been reluctant to show up here — and you had correspondence with the chief. I deal more with the day-to-day operation at the airport, I deal with these people on a day-to-day basis, and I find that they are very, very good.
One issue — I think this committee is quite insightful — is that if you do not have a police jurisdiction, in other words, Peel, Calgary, RCMP, et cetera, the police have a mandate to be objective. This is part of the Police Act. They will come into a room and they will deal with each and every one of us — that is their constitutional requirement — as equals. If you have a police force that is paid for by the local corporation, you have a conflict of interest there. We are not only looking at a reduction in the quality of people, but now we have an issue of independence. I am deeply concerned about that, and this is what the fractured operation that is in place right now is leading to — and very, very rapidly, by the way. As I told you earlier, we are asking this committee to turn around the Titanic. You look like very capable people, but the Titanic is a pretty big ship, it has a lot of momentum right now and it may be rudderless. Somebody is going to have to volunteer to get down there and put a rudder back on.
Senator Atkins: Why, in your view, would the GTAA or the Peel police not want to appear before a committee acting in the public interest like this one?
Captain Sheehy: I cannot answer that. You will have to ask them. If I had the answer, I would have the answer to the puzzle.
Senator Atkins: All right. I should like to return to the marshal situation. We were under the impression that there were situations where the marshals were not telling aircrews that they were onboard aircraft.
Captain Johnson: Well, according to the way that the program is set up, they are required to make their presence known. You have to understand that a lot of the problems that are generated by having someone with a weapon on the airplane are generated when people do not know. I will use this example. Prior to 9/11, we would have, on occasion, police officers accompanying deportees and criminal suspects on the airplane. Quite often, as pilots, it would come to our attention when, in the course of the flight, this officer would reach over to get something, the passenger across the aisle would see the gun, and all of a sudden become upset that someone had a gun on the airplane and would report it to the flight attendant and the pilot would get involved. At that point, we knew who that person was and we could allay any fears that they had. We need to know those people and that they are on our airplanes.
The Chairman: As commander of the aircraft, an armed constable coming on the plane is required to present documentation to you, and you have the authority to bar him from the aircraft. Is that correct?
Captain Sheehy: That is correct.
Captain Johnson: Yes.
The Chairman: If I recall correctly, Senator Atkins, the concern was that no direction was given as to what to do in the event that something happened. We heard this from your brother or sister organization. I take it you are expressing the same concern?
Captain Johnson: Yes.
Senator Atkins: To continue with the theme of aircraft security and the double-door configuration, are you talking primarily about large aircraft, rather than Dash-8s or the smaller aircraft that are flying regionally?
Captain Johnson: Yes. I am going to give that one to Mr. Sheehy, because I have not seen the actual double-door system and which aircraft it can be applied to.
Captain Sheehy: We have a concept in the aviation piloting profession that there is one level of security and one level of safety for everyone. Our position, I would assume, and I am not necessarily speaking on behalf of the entire organization, is that we want to put into place the same level of safety on a 767 or a 747, and passengers would enjoy that same kind of safety and security as an individual flying a Dash-8 between Winnipeg and Saskatoon. Now, I am not sure how you do it. You can do a threat assessment or a risk assessment on this thing, and you can find it is probably bigger aircraft flying overseas and international flights that are at a higher risk. There is a cost factor, and we are sensitive to that, but that would be, I think, on principle, the position. We would have to say ``one level of security for everyone.''
Senator Atkins: I do not know how you do that with the configuration.
Captain Sheehy: I am not a technician.
Senator Atkins: As one who flies a lot, as most of this panel do, I always feel more secure on a Dash-8 than I would on a larger aircraft. I do not think anyone who is trying to cause any major problems would pay much attention to it.
Captain Sheehy: Right, well, that is when you get into the threat assessment issue, the threat analysis. Maybe what you said has a lot of validity to it. We do not necessarily need to have a double door on a 19-passenger airplane. You probably do on a 747 or a 767 flying overseas.
Senator Atkins: As for the security risk program that the previous witness was talking about, do you think that should be done on a broad basis, as well as on an individual airport basis, because airports are different? Do you see them as being different, or do you see it generally as being the same problem wherever you go?
Captain Sheehy: I go along with the previous gentleman 100 per cent. What we have to do is sit down and do a threat assessment right across the country first, then compare it to best practices internationally and globally, and then bring it down to specific airports. I think what he said is true, and I do not necessarily blame anyone. There is a lot of demand on resources and time and people post-9/11, I think. My hat is off to a lot of people in Transport Canada. They are hard-working people, they are great people. I know them, and they did the best they could, but this is a huge undertaking. Nobody had ever been faced with this before, but we are well into a year after, and so we would like to see some results come out. The recommendations are something we are waiting for. We have been told that they are coming forward shortly. It may be out tomorrow and we will have to apologize for all the stuff we said here today, but as it stands right now, this is where we are.
Senator Atkins: The impression I am getting is, if there is an airport that gives you more problems than concerns, it is Pearson.
Captain Sheehy: Well, I would say it has created, instead of a cooperative attitude and a cooperative paradigm that we were used to — we are used to dealing with Transport Canada, where we have been on working groups before. We have dealt with their regulators, their bureaucrats. They are slow, they are deliberate, and we are used to moving at 500 miles an hour. There is a slightly different mindset there. However, all I will say is that we come from a position and a spirit of cooperation, and it is not evident. You cannot have dialogue when someone will not speak to you, as you gentlemen and ladies are quite aware. If there is an issue with this entity or that entity and they do not show up in front of you, what conclusion are you supposed to draw from that? That is where we are at with them.
I do not think we are alone. I believe this is straight across the board.
Senator Cordy: It was interesting, Captain Johnson, that your opening remarks dealt with transparency and the fact that the Canadian public deserves to know what is going on — not every single detail, but certainly the overall importance of knowing about security at the airport.
One of the questions I was about to ask was why you felt there was a lack of cooperation with the Toronto Airport Authority, but I think you have stated that it is probably best to ask them that question, if one can get to speak with them.
You mentioned having an overall government agency to coordinate, and to have responsibility for, security at all the airports, because we heard from our previous witness that sometimes the various arms within the airports do not really know what each other is doing.
Do you think that the mandate of CATSA is too limited to do this job?
Mr. Johnson: I think they probably have the mandate to do it, but they are not taking that broad a brush stroke at it. I think that the government could make their mandate as broad as they wanted to. When we first heard that they were going to set up this board, we thought that that would be the board that we were talking about, somebody who would take on the issue of security right across the nation and provide the coordination and the direction on how to apply the policies and everything that was developed. From what we see right now, they have not done that. They have taken a very narrow view of what their mandate is, so I do not think the CATSA people are the ones that need to do this.
Senator Cordy: Are you suggesting another body?
Mr. Johnson: Another body, or broaden the mandate.
Senator Cordy: Of CATSA.
Mr. Johnson: One of the two.
Senator Cordy: You talked about the role of the RCMP at the airport, and in Toronto the role of the Peel police. Should the role of the RCMP be broadened at the airports across Canada? We see that the RCMP is certainly a presence in the airports. Should their role be broadened?
Mr. Johnson: I think I will leave that to Matt. He is the security gentleman there.
Mr. Sheehy: The RCMP is an excellent organization, and a terrific police organization. However, we have a well-run airport in Toronto, for example, and Peel local police are taking care of that. It is a local jurisdiction, and there is a certain aspect of owning the jurisdiction. They live in the jurisdiction, so there is some advantage there. In Calgary, they have the Calgary police taking care of Calgary airport. The RCMP takes care of Vancouver. Personally, I do not think there is an issue of any particular policing agency taking over the whole oversight of policing at the airports. All we need is a coordination of all these groups. That is lacking, and we have tried to address it; they have tried to address it.
Once again, you have to have some leadership at the top. We always go back to poor old Transport Canada and ask them to do things that they may not have the resources to handle right now. That is what is lacking, is the coordination. As far as the RCMP is concerned, they are great, but so are Peel and Calgary and Halifax.
Senator Cordy: It would depend on the particular airport, and the airport should have the mandate to select. Do you feel that an independent police force should have access, be it RCMP, Peel or whomever?
Mr. Sheehy: Well, maybe you can expand on your question just a little. I am not sure if you mean the mandate of the policing agency would be too limited, or are we going back to the original speaker, who indicated that maybe they could resource the police in a different way?
Senator Cordy: I think that what I am looking at is resourcing the police in a different way. When you go through security at the Halifax airport, you see an RCMP officer who may be standing there, and you are wondering, well, maybe they should be doing a little more. I think someone said that sometimes, new graduates of the RCMP school would be placed at the airport. They are brand new. We will send them to the airport. Really, the security at the airport is of the utmost importance.
Mr. Sheehy: I would say the beauty of having a local policing agency at an airport is that they are familiar with the airport because they have lots of experience. When they bring in new officers, they bring them up to speed.
We carry almost 30 million passengers a year, and I believe — do not quote me on this — about 30,000 people work at, in and out of Toronto every day.
What I was hearing from some of the witnesses, and what I think is coming, is that they will try to reduce the role of the local policing down to a cop standing at a screening point and watching for the bad guys. Well, I can assure you that no police officer will last very long in that role because it is just not effective.
However, in the Toronto airport, for example, it is like a small town. You have robberies, you have assaults, you have drugs and you have cars being stolen, so I think I am more comfortable with having a fully mandated policing agency to take care of all of the issues, not just looking for bad guys at the screening point. You see, we always go back to the screening point.
One analogy you heard earlier was the onion; you know, layers, layers, layers, and I think that is a good one. We have to look at the parking lot, and then slowly move in on the airplane, and our purview is more the cockpit and back. We all have to work together. It has to be.
But it is familiar ground for some people — screening point, articles. Nail clippers, we can get them. We get them every time, or 99 per cent, but we have to watch for the individuals as well. That is why, to me, a fully mandated policing agency is the answer.
I hope I have answered your question.
Senator Cordy: Yes. You are suggesting a broader spectrum than the previous witness.
Mr. Sheehy: Slightly larger, yes.
Senator Cordy: You said that you were frustrated with the inaction on your recommendations. To whom did you present your recommendations?
Mr. Sheehy: Well, we were on two working groups. They started in approximately September, about November, and most of the final reports came out May/June — so May, June, July, August, September. We are at four, five months since the recommendations left the working group, and they went to the CARAC process. That is, again, a week or two after the final reports came out. We have been waiting months, at least three or four months for, I guess, the minister to make a call on some of these things.
Senator Cordy: It was presented to the Ministry of Transport?
Mr. Sheehy: I am not an expert on that. I assume that is where it has to go eventually.
Senator Cordy: Have you received any response at all?
Mr. Sheehy: We had one response from the minister. One of our recommendations in the aircraft working group referred to the captain's prerogative to decide who he felt was okay to sit in the jump seat. We are going back to captain's authority in this and that in this issue. He decided that he should take that purview and that judgment away from the pilot and stick it into a formatted CARAC — Canadian air regulations ruling. We are kind of concerned about that.
Senator Cordy: Have you received training? I was not quite clear when you were explaining it earlier. What type of training do pilots receive in dealing with terrorists or even hijacking, and how do you work with an RCMP officer who may be onboard the plane, the marshal? Do you receive any training?
Mr. Sheehy: I will pass it on to Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson: No. The short answer is no, nothing. We used to get training on how to deal with hijackers before we knew that they were trying to get control of the airplane and crash it. We had all kinds of procedures set out on how to deal with this.
We have been calling from day one for procedures on how to deal with that very issue. What do we need to know? How do we have to coordinate our crew that we have onboard and everything else? We have received nothing.
You react in your own way to it now. If it ever happens to you, it is going to be a one-off situation. We have no training at all.
We have asked our company to do it. They do not know where to go with it; so no, we have had no training.
Senator Cordy: You just keep your fingers crossed?
Mr. Johnson: That is it.
Mr. Cooper: One of the very early recommendations that we came up with in our original plan was one of changing the attitude towards hijacking. Prior to 9/11, the attitude had been — the established policy was — to be compliant, slow the situation down, get the aircraft on the ground, and we will sort it out from there with forces available.
We recommended that this policy of compliance be changed to a policy of non-compliance and recognition of the new threat, of the new environment that we found ourselves in.
That is just one recommendation that needs to be looked at and brought to the fore, if we are going to change this kind of training situation that we currently find ourselves in.
Now, that recommendation was forwarded through the Transport Canada working group sessions. It is with the minister. To date, I do not think we have had anything back on it, but basic things like that have to change. Policy has to change in order to kick off the type of training programs you are talking about.
Senator Cordy: Canadians, and pilots overall, have had a philosophy of compliance. Just let them take it; we will land it. You are right, that when you went through it, it did not work, obviously, with September 11.
Mr. Cooper: It does not work in this world.
Senator Cordy: How do we spend our dollars wisely when we look at security at the airports? Do we follow your recommendations?
Mr. Cooper: We have a few — the presenter before us had some great ideas. You do not have to spend a lot of money to be effective when it comes to security. When we were developing some of our plans and recommendations, we took what we knew from the Israeli experience. Now the Israelis, rather than have three questions that they ask at a counter, actually have people who are trained in interrogation. They will walk up and down lines and they are looking for specific characteristics in a passenger. If they see it, they will approach the passenger. They do not just ask three questions, but they ask why and how and where. They get a little bit more deeply into why that passenger is there, where he is going, how he bought his ticket, what family is he going to visit, et cetera. They get a very good idea of what they are dealing with in a very short period of time.
From there, that person can be passed off to another agency within the building, maybe in a separate room. That kind of approach is extremely effective. We are not talking about millions or billions on special machinery or technology; we are talking about people talking to people.
Senator Cordy: Are these trained people who really have an idea of what to look for?
Mr. Cooper: Yes.
The Chairman: Thank you, Senator Cordy. I have two supplementaries to clarify things.
You spoke briefly about the authority for the jump seat. I did not follow it precisely. Prior to 9/11, you as captains had authority to let whoever you chose sit in the jump seat. That was taken away after 9/11. Subsequently, you requested the Department of Transport to restore that authority. What is not clear to me is what happened then.
Mr. Johnson: Let me be clear. We see that, for instance, another pilot in the cockpit, riding the jump seat, is an increase in security, not a decrease. It is another level of somebody in there that can help out if something happens.
In their regulation, they limited it to, initially, just MOT inspectors and supervisory pilot flight checkers.
Mr. Sheehy: Yes. They change it all the time.
Mr. Johnson: It has been changing all along. It is now down to the point where pilots can sit in the jump seat. However, they must be from an airline that we deal with on a regular basis. It is an ever-changing model.
The Chairman: However, prior to this you had unfettered authority to decide who would sit there. Now you fill out a form and someone else says, ``Yes, that person is okay,'' or, ``No, that person is not okay.'' Do I understand correctly?
Mr. Johnson: That is right.
The Chairman: The second point of clarification is how much co-operation you get from Air Canada in terms of your security proposals.
Mr. Johnson: We work with Air Canada. Air Canada, I think, has been trying to keep its head below the foxhole on this whole issue of security. They do not want to get in the middle of anything. If it makes sense to them, I think that they are willing to look at virtually anything, but I do not think that we can say that they are behind us pushing at all for any of this stuff. We just do not see them hindering us at all.
Senator Smith: Several of my questions have been asked, so I will not take too long.
One thing that was mentioned but not followed up on is the duty-free business.
Are you aware of specific problems that have more or less pretty certainly arisen because of laxity vis-à-vis duty-free bags and luggage? Are you aware of actual problems?
Mr. Johnson: No, I am not aware of any. I do not know if Matt or Russ is, from their discussions with Transport. My comment was an issue years ago — we had a lot of problems with air rage and people who were getting intoxicated on airplanes.
Senator Smith: You mean buying their own booze and drinking it?
Mr. Johnson: Yes, those issues, we used to have a lot of those, so the position that we put forward back then was, do your duty-free shopping when you get to your destination. That would take the booze off the airplane. Do not forget that a bottle of booze is a very flammable liquid. You can do a lot of things to take over an airplane with some booze.
Mr. Johnson: Anyhow, the issue back then was, get the booze off the airplanes and our problems would go down. If we have people going through the duty-free on the way out of the airport, it is probably a better place for it than going into the airport and getting on an airplane.
Senator Smith: I followed the logic of that. It would seem to me that the people who operate the duty-free shops may complain about it, but they would still have a client base; it would just be the people coming in rather than the people going out.
However, you would require a lot of multilateral co-operation there. Would you have ever put this proposal to some of your international groups, to IATA, for example? It would seem to me that if there were a case to be made, you would need some agency like that to champion it and try to get the various stakeholder countries to buy in.
Mr. Johnson: Yes. It was the International Federation of Airline Pilots that were promoting that position, and they did it at IATA, as far as I remember.
Senator Smith: Did IATA find it too hot to handle?
Mr. Johnson: We saw no changes.
Senator Smith: If there were actual incidents that you could point to, it might be worth revisiting.
Mr. Sheehy: There have been incidents. I cannot give you exact, specific details, but there have been incidents on board aircraft where flight attendants have been assaulted by enraged passengers with the use of their duty-free bottles, made out of glass, as a weapon. There was one, which I think was British Airways, where this female flight attendant was badly hurt. In other words, this guy was beating on her with a glass bottle. One of the solutions there is plastic. We would love to see —
Senator Smith: I have seen that, too, yes.
Mr. Sheehy: — all bottles that are brought onboard made of plastic.
Senator Smith: I still am not totally clear on the double-door stuff. Captain Johnson, I believe you are a 747 pilot. Are you getting double doors? Do you know? What is happening with 747s?
Mr. Johnson: Right now we are advocating it. We are saying that we want them.
Senator Smith: Right.
Mr. Johnson: Understand that most cockpit doors are at the end of some kind of small hallway, whether it is made up of the galley and the washroom or whatever. There is a system whereby they can put a metal curtain across that hallway. It is just temporary, while somebody is coming and going from the cockpit. You may even be able to see through it. It may just be a series of steel bars, much like you see across the front of a shop when it is closed up.
It may just draw over and lock for that period of time when somebody is going in and out of the cockpit, and then it would retract automatically after you are in there.
My understanding is that it can be adapted to almost any case.
Senator Smith: Okay.
Mr. Johnson: We have a company in Canada that is developing it. We understand, through our partnership with United Airlines, that United Airlines is developing that type of system and that we are co-operating with that.
Senator Smith: However, when you say you have asked, have you asked Transport Canada, or who has been asked?
Mr. Johnson: At this particular time, we have made Transport Canada aware of what we want, but we are dealing with our company right now on the issue.
Senator Smith: That is with Air Canada. Again, I am pleased you have made reference vis-à-vis the duty-free stuff to this international federation of pilots. Would there be a consensus within that body as to what the most appropriate response would be vis-à-vis doors to the cockpit? Is this on their agenda do you know?
Mr. Johnson: I do not know, quite honestly, but I am guessing that it is very high on their agenda right now.
Senator Smith: It might be the sort of situation where if you had a strong consensus of G7 countries, or something like that, you could push them. If they then make a statement and lead the way, many of these other countries would follow suit.
Mr. Cooper: I agree. The situation now, Senator Smith, is that we are kind of ahead of the power curve on this. We are kind of out front on this, and other organizations are starting to look at it.
Senator Smith: That is good. The final melancholy subject relates to — and I say that being a native of Toronto — the GTAA. Is the reference to their lack of cooperation on screening of pilots an isolated incident, or does it seem to be their attitude across the board?
Mr. Johnson: We deal with the GTAA on a number of issues, at varying levels on different topics.
Senator Smith: Yes.
Mr. Johnson: I am sad to say it is a consistent attitude that we get from them. Many people attribute it to the top there, but I cannot make any comment on that. I have never met with the gentleman. I do not know how cooperative he is, but the people that we deal with have not been very co-operative.
The Chairman: If you have details on the duty-free question that Senator Smith raised, could you write to us on it? We would be happy to append it to your testimony. If you can provide us with that information in writing, we would be very grateful for it. In fact, if you have any second or third thoughts after you leave the room, which sometimes is the case, or if there are questions that were not asked that you wished were asked, we would also welcome correspondence from you in that regard.
Who is your point of contact with Air Canada when you are dealing with security questions?
Mr. Sheehy: He is the director of security at Air Canada. His name is Yves Duguay, and he is in Montreal.
The Chairman: With respect to his experience, is he a pilot or a security officer?
Mr. Sheehy: He is a former ranking officer in the RCMP.
The Chairman: Has he been with Air Canada for some time?
Mr. Sheehy: Approximately, what — two years? Two years.
Mr. Johnson: Yes, not for very long.
The Chairman: Would you say you get a good response from him?
Mr. Johnson: I do not think we could characterize it as good response. We feel that — as I said — our company has been trying to keep its head below the foxhole on all of this security stuff. They want their passengers to feel as good as they can getting on the airplane, and so we have not been hindered, but they are not out there waving the flag with us trying to get some things changed, either. I think it is fair to say that they are neutral on this issue.
The Chairman: Having said that, the passenger feels best who gets off the plane safely.
Mr. Johnson: Absolutely.
The Chairman: I do not want to put words in your mouth, sir, but what I am hearing is that this does not appear to be a priority.
Mr. Johnson: It is a priority to the extent that the economics are not a prevailing issue.
The Chairman: How do the economics change when you have an incident?
Mr. Johnson: Absolutely. You have to be able to explain that to your company.
The Chairman: Who is your point of contact in Transport Canada?
Mr. Sheehy: Well, it would be a gentleman by the name of Gerry Frappier, a director of security, and we deal with other people below him as well, but Gerry is in charge right now.
The Chairman: You commented to the committee earlier that the responses were taking some months. Is this the normal speed of response? I am not sure whether you were giving us a message.
Mr. Sheehy: I think there is a certain critical time period here that we have available to get things done and hopefully protect the Canadian public from another incident. Historically, Transport Canada, or the government, is a slow- moving train, and this thing is coming along gangbusters, so probably we are a little impatient, but it has been four months or so. The indications are that we will hear something shortly, so we are looking forward to it.
Mr. Cooper: Just one point. There is an awful lot of stuff going on. These are big issues and they are all interrelated. It is a huge project. In the States, for example, they are still wrestling with trying to get certain types of equipment onboard and in airports on schedule, and it looks like they are not going to make it.
In all fairness, Transport Canada, I know, is bringing some equipment on line ahead of the Americans, so in certain areas they are doing great work, but there is a lot going on.
Our company, as a matter of fact, was one of the first in the industry to get those reinforced door locks onboard the aircraft — so excellent work.
In all fairness, with so much going on, it kind of gets back to our central point of centralizing the responsibility and accountability for all these diverse issues within one framework, within one focal point, so that things do not drop through the cracks.
I think that part of what we are seeing right now is people are doing their best. They are working overtime to get things done, but they just do not have the direction and coordination that they need.
The Chairman: You are satisfied from your side of the cockpit that the doors are safe now?
Mr. Johnson: I would not characterize it as safe as we want. They are safer than they used to be. We still believe that we need that double door to make it as safe as we want it to be.
The Chairman: The double door only works when you go to the washroom, though. We understand that concept. When you are not going to the washroom and you are just flying the plane, are you satisfied that the doors that have been installed on Air Canada are satisfactory and meet the needs?
Mr. Johnson: There are two doors. There is one that was there before 9/11 that has been reinforced with a bar, and just recently we have started to get the door that was mandated by the MOT. All reports are that it is impregnable except when somebody is going through it to go to the washroom, or whatever they have to do.
The Chairman: The bar was okay as an interim step, and the new doors that are coming in, you folks have no complaints about them at all. You think they are very good and you just want the bathroom question resolved.
Mr. Johnson: It is not just the bathroom. There are many times, like —
The Chairman: Or for meals.
Mr. Johnson: — meals, or the people who are augmenting the flight are in the back of the airplane, and so on and so forth.
Mr. Sheehy: If I can add to that, we witnessed what the engineers, the technologists, have said what it is. It is a vault. You cannot put a bullet through it, this and that, which is great, but when you actually use it on a regular operation, that is when the faults, if there are weaknesses, in the system will become apparent.
The Chairman: Fair enough.
Mr. Sheehy: I think we are leading the way on the double door. I think years from now, all aircraft will be built with a double-door system. I am proud of the guys of the Air Canada Pilots Association. We are actually leading the way globally in this regard.
Just to add one little kudos to the company, it is my understanding that they have an airplane right now that they have dedicated to experimenting with this double-door system.
The Chairman: The committee is hearing that you are satisfied with the way the door question is progressing, and if it keeps on track, you will be satisfied. You just do not want to give it your seal of approval until you have worked with it and tried it out. Is that what you are saying?
Mr. Johnson: That it is very good, yes.
Mr. Cooper: To understand, the current new door that is coming onboard, if it looks like it is multiple approved, that it meets these criteria, that is fine. But by itself, we could not be satisfied with that because of the need for that door to be opened and closed; generally speaking, the average is about eight times a flight. The solution, as we see it and as our members see it, is to have a double-door system in place, which has not been certified. It is an idea that is progressing and we are advocating, but it has not been accepted officially as a bona fide system.
The Chairman: Okay, subject to that qualification, then. Thank you.
I am left a little unclear. My next question deals with local police and centralization. The testimony you have given us so far is that you are happy with Peel Regional, with Calgary Police Service, and with the RCM Police in Vancouver. You have worked with them all and they are terrific.
What concerns do you have about having a different system in each airport you go to? How important is it to you that you have a consistent system, where you deal with the same procedures, the same set-up all the way through? If you register a complaint in Vancouver, you know that the folks in Toronto will have taken note of that complaint and it will be solved right across the system. How do you rationalize your desire for centralization with your comment that you like the different folks at each airport?
Mr. Sheehy: I think if you have a system in place that would train or give guidance to all these different agencies, that this is the criteria, these are the protocols that we need in place, I see CATSA or some form of Transport Canada sending down this information. The policing agencies have already sat down together in a conference in Ottawa two years ago, and it was called the ``Canadian Policing Conference.'' At that point in time, they were trying to do this. It was also part of the working recommendation that a subcommittee be put in place where you bring all the stakeholders together and develop dialogue and set policies. This, unfortunately, is not what is happening. What is happening here is that we have not had a chance to bring enough people together enough times to get the job done. It does not matter to me whether it is Peel, Calgary or Halifax, as long as everyone is reading from the same script.
The Chairman: I hear you. Having said that, and having had some experience with police forces, you can have a conference and come away with an agreement and everything works fine, and then a chief of police changes and, all of a sudden, there is a new deal for the folks on that particular force. Just as you can have individuals running a particular airport authority who may decide that they do not like the way the script is unfolding, and they will say, ``In my spot, it will be run the way I say.''
Given that chiefs of police have a turnover of every three or four years, why are you proposing a system that will be so personality dependent over time?
Mr. Johnson: Senator, I think what we are looking for here is an oversight board or group of people who will set the standard and then see that it is enforced, so that, whether a new police chief comes in or not, they will ensure that the standard is enforced everywhere and it will be consistent across the country. That is what we want with all of this. We want the policing done that way, we want the screening done that way, and we want security measures at all the airports to be standardized.
The Chairman: I do not want to belabour the point, but take the Calgary Police Service just as a for instance. We have not been to Calgary, we do not know what they are like, but I am just picking them out of the air, perhaps. At the end of the day, the constable, sergeant or inspector who is running the detachment in Calgary will be answerable to the chief of police. The rest of that individual's career will be dependent on how well he or she pleases the chief of the day. Are you not suggesting a system that will be difficult to keep standardized?
Mr. Sheehy: We are talking a specialization here, and that would be airport policing. As Captain Johnson said, we want to see a tribunal of people who get together on a regular basis. No matter if you change the individuals, the constitution would be in place and it should not affect the standardization of the policing applied on a day-to-day basis.
Mr. Cooper: I think there is a template in place that kind of supports what Matt and Don are talking about, and it takes me back to my air force days. We used to have situations where squadron commanders would rotate through their jobs on a three- or two-year basis. They are always changing. The fighter pilots, they are all changing, moving in and moving out, but we also had a situation where we had these numerous squadrons and resources that had to be lashed together and put against an objective at any given time, and we would form packages to go into an objective. In the package there would be fighter bomber, there would be fighter escort, there would be EW assets — electronic warfare assets — there would be AWACS aircraft responsible, and everybody was working as a team towards this one objective. The way they did it was, they got all of these entities together under a concept known as ``centralized control, decentralized execution.'' What you do is, you centralize the control within a visible entity.
We suggest that this entity, because it addresses the public interest and public security, should have public oversight, and then this entity would be responsible and accountable for coordinating all the activities that needed to take place to give us a security system that was integrated from top to bottom.
The Chairman: I take your point, but the organization you are describing had one CDS and all the air force reported to one general and the colour of their uniform was the same shade of blue.
Mr. Cooper: Actually, no, there was the situation I mentioned before, the Persian Gulf War. We had a number of nations involved and they all had their own CDSs, but for the purpose of this enterprise they all agreed that this would be the focal point and we are going to be responsive to this focal point and conduct ourselves accordingly, and their jobs rode on how well they fitted their operation into that organization.
The Chairman: Good answer.
I wish to thank you all for appearing before us today. It has been very helpful. This committee views its work as ongoing. Even though we contemplate a report sometime before year's end, we do not expect that will be our last report on this subject, and so we hope to have the occasion to hear your views in the future. You heard me earlier encourage you to communicate with us in writing, or any other way you choose. We would like to stay in touch and we appreciate your coming down and sharing your views with us, and being of assistance to the committee.
The committee continued in camera.