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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Legislative Committee on Bill C-17

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, February 13, 2003

0905

The Chair (Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont—Dundas—Charlottenburgh, Lib.))

Ms. Sheila Fraser (Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada)

0910

0915

The Chair

Mr. Gary Lunn (Saanich—Gulf Islands, Canadian Alliance)

0920

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak (Principal, Audit Operations Branch, Office of the Auditor General of Canada)

Mr. Gary Lunn

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.)

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Steve Mahoney

0925

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak

The Chair

Mr. Mario Laframboise (Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, BQ)

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Mario Laframboise

0930

Ms. Sheila Fraser

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.)

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Ms. Sheila Fraser

0935

The Chair

Mr. Rex Barnes (Gander—Grand Falls, PC)

The Chair

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—St. Clair, NDP)

The Chair

Mr. Rex Barnes

Mr. Joe Comartin

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Peter Kasurak

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Peter Kasurak

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Peter Kasurak

Mr. Joe Comartin

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Joe Comartin

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak

0940

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak

The Chair

Mr. Rex Barnes

0945

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Rex Barnes

Ms. Sheila Fraser

The Chair

Mr. Rex Barnes

Ms. Sheila Fraser

0950

The Chair

Mr. Gary Lunn

The Chair

Mr. Gary Lunn

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Gary Lunn

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak

The Chair

Mr. Mario Laframboise

0955

Ms. Sheila Fraser

The Chair

Mr. Joe Comartin

Ms. Sheila Fraser

Mr. Peter Kasurak

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Peter Kasurak

The Chair

Ms. Sheila Fraser

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli (Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police)

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

1010

1015

The Chair

Mr. Ward Elcock (Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service)

1020

The Chair

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau (President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Air Transport Security Authority)

1025

1030

The Chair

Mr. Gary Lunn

1035

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mr. Ward Elcock

1040

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. Ward Elcock

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. Ward Elcock

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. Ward Elcock

Mr. Steve Mahoney

1045

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney

1050

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

1055

Mr. Mario Laframboise

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

1100

The Chair

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Mario Laframboise

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

1105

The Chair

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

1110

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Ward Elcock

1115

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

The Chair

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

1120

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Ward Elcock

Mr. Joe Comartin

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Marcel Proulx (Hull—Aylmer, Lib.)

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

1125

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Marcel Proulx

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Marcel Proulx

The Chair

Mr. Rex Barnes

1130

Mr. Ward Elcock

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Rex Barnes

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Rex Barnes

Mr. Ward Elcock

Mr. Rex Barnes

Mr. Ward Elcock

1135

Mr. Rex Barnes

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Steve Mahoney

1140

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mr. Steve Mahoney

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mr. Ward Elcock

The Chair

Mr. Gary Lunn

Mr. Ward Elcock

Mr. Gary Lunn

Mr. Ward Elcock

1145

Mr. Gary Lunn

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

The Chair

Mr. Mario Laframboise

The Chair

Mr. Ward Elcock

1150

The Chair

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mr. Mario Laframboise

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mr. Rex Barnes

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

The Chair

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli

1155

Mrs. Marlene Jennings

The Chair

CANADA

Legislative Committee on Bill C-17

NUMBER 010

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, February 13, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0905)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. Bob Kilger (Stormont—Dundas—Charlottenburgh, Lib.)): I call the Legislative Committee on Bill C-17 to order and, on your behalf, welcome Sheila Fraser, our Auditor General, for a brief presentation.

Ms. Fraser, maybe you'd like to begin by introducing those with you, and then we'll wait for your testimony.

Ms. Sheila Fraser (Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Thank you for the opportunity to appear before your committee to discuss our work on national security. Accompanying me today are Richard Flageole, who is an assistant auditor general in our office currently responsible for transport and formerly responsible for the immigration portfolio; and Peter Kasurak, a principal in our office responsible for the Solicitor General portfolio as well as national security audits.

I'd like to briefly describe today our previous reports on this subject and then give you an overview of our current projects.

National security involves no fewer than 17 departments and agencies of the federal government and several provincial and municipal organizations. Their functions include policy development and planning, intelligence, policing, border control, and consequence management. Since 1996 we have completed nine audits that touched on national security information systems and inter-agency cooperation. A list of these audits has been provided as an annex.

[Translation]

We have found a pattern of inadequate information to support front-line officials and limited ability of national security information systems to inter-operate.

Key police information systems are very old and need to be replaced. An example is the Canadian Police Information Centre or CPIC. CPIC is used by police across Canada to check vehicle and driver's licences, criminal records, reports on stolen vehicles and boats, and lists of people entering Canada. Customs officials also use the system to check on people entering Canada.

The RCMP began a $114.7 million project in 1999 to renew CPIC. Completing this project and continuing to monitor the CPIC's performance should be a priority.

The fingerprint database also needs renewal. The time it took to enter fingerprints into the RCMP's database grew from about 10 days in 1997 to 25 days in 1999 and was continuing to increase. We are now monitoring the RCMP's efforts to replace its fingerprint information system.

The government has an umbrella project to overcome systemic, cultural, and technological barriers to sharing criminal justice information. In October 2001, 9 of the 21 elements in this project had been completed or were on track, 6 needed monitoring, and 5 were at risk. One project for fingerprinting had no resources earmarked for it. Among the elements at risk were the governance framework, the offender tracking identifier, and the integrated police information reporting system.

We have also found problems with border control information systems. In April 2000 we published two reports that dealt with the movement of people. The first looked at how the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency manages risks at ports of entry, including airports. We found that customs officers did not have adequate information to assess the risk that travellers pose to Canada. Many long-service officers had not received needed refresher training.

¿ (0910)

[English]

On the specific findings of our 2000 audit, the primary automated lookout system, or PALS, used to screen air travellers was outdated, and customs inspectors used it infrequently. Second, the information for targeting air passengers was poor. Customs had a limited capacity to receive advance information from airlines on travellers to Canada. It had to depend on data provided by the airlines at their own discretion.

Since our report, customs has replaced PALS-Air with an updated system, and we will be reporting on this new system this coming spring. Members of the committee are also no doubt aware of the government's effort to improve advance passenger information, and our spring report will comment on this as well.

In 2000 we also presented our audit findings on the economic component of the immigration program, which is managed by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. We found that visa officers had little information and support to ensure that applicants were unlikely to engage in criminal activities or endanger the safety of Canadians. The primary information system, the computer-assisted immigration processing system, dates from the 1980s and does not provide all the information that immigration officials need. Additional information must be sought in other legacy systems. Data matching and completeness are far from assured, and numerous attempts to upgrade the system have failed. The department is now in the middle of a $194 million project over five years to replace the system.

The lack of computer systems that can interoperate impedes the systematic exchange of criminal intelligence between Citizenship and Immigration offices and headquarters, and between the department and the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

In addition to examining the people side of border control, we've also audited the control of commercial shipments entering Canada. In December 2001, we reported on an audit that included 147 land border crossings, 13 major airports, and 3 seaports. We questioned the effectiveness of efforts to target high-risk shipments. At the time of our audit, the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency was not collecting the information it needed to tell whether its targeting activities were leading to more enforcement actions. In other words, it did not know how well its approach to managing risk was working.

We've also reported the limitations of the national health surveillance system, a system that would detect a biological attack, for example. We first audited health surveillance in 1999 and completed a status report on progress in September 2002. Here the problems are the number of jurisdictions involved and the lack of standards for data. Although Health Canada is working on a national framework, it has yet to set a timetable for completing that framework. It has also made only limited progress since 1999 on developing standards for surveillance data.

[Translation]

Our work has also touched on inter-agency cooperation. We have not looked at the intelligence community since 1996, when we completed a study on control and accountability. We noted opportunities to strengthen leadership and coordination. We pointed to the benefit of increased senior-level guidance to, and review of, intelligence plans and products and continued efforts to integrate the contribution of agencies such as Citizenship and Immigration, Customs, and the RCMP. We also saw the need for a rigorous evaluation of the adequacy of intelligence products and the extent of duplication among products and agencies.

In our audits of border control we have noted the need for better coordination. Customs carries out the responsibilities of several federal departments, and it needs to have formal agreements to ensure that all the players understand their roles. One major improvement in response to our recommendations was the drafting of a memorandum of understanding between Health Canada and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency to provide front-line Customs officers with the formal training to handle situations that involve the importation of illness. However, in September 2002, that MOU had not been signed.

The largest problems stem from jurisdictions where not only the federal government but the provinces and territories are involved. In the criminal justice area there is an array of legislation, regulations, policies, and practices that govern the privacy and security of information. For example, there are 6 federal statutes that deal with information management and ten provincial freedom-of-information and protection-of-privacy acts. There are 11 police acts. Information needed for disease surveillance is the property of the provinces and territories. There is no generic agreement on information sharing.

¿ (0915)

[English]

We have continued to work on this file and have three projects underway now. Two of them, a follow-up on audits of border security, will be reported in the spring of 2003. They will look at problems that we have identified in the past with information systems and the coordination of work between Citizenship and Immigration Canada and the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

We are also working on a government-wide audit of the $7.7 billion initiative announced in the 2001 budget to improve national security. This audit is still in an early planning phase and it's difficult to say to what extent the final report will discuss any particular subject.

However, at this point we have identified six top-level issues: strategic resource allocation--where the money is going and why--air travel security, human resource capacity, information technology and physical infrastructure, consequence management, and the reporting to Parliament on the use of new powers.

Mr. Chair, that completes my opening statement. We would particularly appreciate any comments on areas of interest or concern that we might include in our future work, and we would be pleased to answer the committee's questions.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Fraser, for your testimony. We'll ask the cooperation of colleagues on both sides of the table to respect the five-minute format for questions, so that over the next 40 minutes, approximately, with Ms. Fraser and the officials we might exchange as much information as possible.

We'll begin with Mr. Lunn.

Mr. Gary Lunn (Saanich—Gulf Islands, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Ms. Fraser.

I'll just ask one question so my colleagues will have an opportunity.

You mentioned a number of times, through one capacity or another, the lack of computer systems, their inability to communicate with each other through various agencies, and I think also to some degree the related training through various agencies to go along with that.

We've heard from witnesses, I believe just earlier this week from the Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, that when they're up and running they would actually fully expect that the data will all be automated from CSIS, from the PNR, which is the passenger name registry from the airlines, so that they'll be able to get hits on a possible security risk of one degree or another, even early enough that, if it is a very serious potential threat, they may have to actually act before a flight leaves.

You've raised a concern about whether or not our computer systems are actually going to be able to react that quickly to communicate with each other. Can you expand on that a little bit more and give me your thoughts on that, please?

¿ (0920)

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you can appreciate, we obviously haven't done any work on the proposed systems that will be coming into place as a result of that new requirement. But in the past, and particularly with customs, the systems could not talk to one another. There were questions about the rapidity of access, too, to the information, and we found, in fact, in our audits in the past that many customs officers were not using it just because of the time pressures and the fact that they weren't.... Hopefully projects are underway that will address some of this, and I'm sure that we will be looking at it eventually.

Perhaps Mr. Kasurak could add a comment.

Mr. Peter Kasurak (Principal, Audit Operations Branch, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Unfortunately, the question is difficult to answer without pre-empting the report that we're just about to table on customs. We have followed up on the system that replaced the old customs information system and we have taken a preliminary look at the advance passenger information system. But we aren't ready to report on that quite yet. So I don't think we can add more detail at this time.

Mr. Gary Lunn: Thank you very much.

The Chair: Mr. Mahoney.

Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.): Thank you, Ms. Fraser, for your report. There's a lot of very valuable information and helpful data.

Much of the initial audit, I believe, if I'm reading this correctly, was done pre-9/11. Is that true?

I want to tell you that when I was on Citizenship and Immigration as vice-chair, we travelled to many of our border points and found that the CAIPS system was just a disaster. There was an inability to communicate from office to office even. So I think you've identified something. But it does seem to me, and maybe you could tell me if you find this is true, that whether it's CPIC or CAIPS or PALS--I love all these acronyms--basically all the departments agree with you and are in some way in the process, at one stage or another, of trying to improve or repair those systems. Is that a fair comment?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to just confirm Mr. Mahoney's comments that the audits we have noted on this list were all pre-9/11, and that is one of the reasons we're doing these follow-up audits, which will come this spring and should give a bit of a status report on improvements.

He is also correct that the departments agreed many of the systems need to be significantly updated, if not changed. Most of them are quite old and are very complex systems that have been patched, if you will, over the years. I mentioned a few of the initiatives that are underway to improve those systems, given new information needs.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Did you look at all at the relationships, particularly at land border points, between CCRA officials and CIC officials, and would you recommend cross-training or sharing of job responsibilities, etc.? If so, do you have any thoughts on the union complications that might arise from such a situation?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Mr. Mahoney has raised a very interesting and pertinent question. We will be dealing with this in our upcoming report.

If I go back to the previous audits, one of the issues we brought up was the lack of a memorandum of understanding between the two departments so that the roles were clear. We try not to give specific comments on how the departments and government organize themselves. It is really up to government to decide how it wants to organize. But it is clear there needs to be a solid understanding between the two departments as to their respective responsibilities and there needs to be close cooperation. That was one of the issues we brought up in an earlier audit, and we will be looking at that specifically in our April report.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I'm almost out of time, but I have two quick questions.

One, do you audit the privacy commissioner, and if you do, when will that report be available?

Number two, when you look at the relationship with our employees--of whichever department--at the border, is there any interaction with your counterpart on the U.S. side? How does that interplay? Again, it's not so much at the airports; it's more at land border crossings.

¿ (0925)

Ms. Sheila Fraser: I'll ask Mr. Kasurak to deal with the second issue.

I would just say that the privacy commissioner is subject to audit by the Office of the Auditor General, yes.

Mr. Peter Kasurak: We haven't specifically looked at land border crossings in depth, but I'm sure the committee is aware that post-9/11 there have been a number of international initiatives to get police and customs officials working together on both sides of the border. We've started to take a look at those as part of our security audit. I think our future reports will touch on that matter. There obviously is interaction now and there are more formal structures in place than there were 18 months ago.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Laframboise.

[Translation]

Mr. Mario Laframboise (Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, BQ): When it comes to Bill C-17, which is currently being studied, several witnesses have appeared before us and have given us diametrically opposite testimony. The Canadian Bar Association, the Privacy Commissioner and the Information Commissioner of Canada have told us to be wary of Bill C-17. Police associations have told us that we must pass it without any amendments.

In the end, what Bill C-17 would do is create a database for regular travellers. You have told us today that there are a number of databases that exist, but that they are not linked, that from a technical standpoint, it is difficult to connect them. You recommended investments and you will audit them.

You told us that you will be commenting on the $7.7 billion investment announced in the 2001 budget for national security, and you listed six issues in connection with this: strategic resource allocation; air travel security, human resource capacity; information technology; consequence management; and reporting to Parliament. Could it be that you will be taking into consideration the issue of privacy? I am not asking for an investigation, because the Liberal Party has had a lot of problems with the commissioner, but what concerns me is the protection of privacy. In your audits, will you be verifying whether all of these databases created by all of these organizations, in addition to being linked, will guarantee citizens, Canadians and Quebeckers, that there will be no abuse of the information for purposes other than that for which they were created? Bill C-17 is suposed to create a database to protect against terrorism. It is not supposed to monitor all travellers, including regular travellers.

So, have you included the protection of privacy as part of your mandate in assessing the national security system and the recent investments?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Thank you Mr. Chair.

We recognize that there must be a balance between security and privacy issues, but obviously it is up to parliamentarians to strike that balance. We will certainly be making reference to privacy issues in our report, but that is not part of our mandate. It is up to the Privacy Commissioner to do a more exhaustive report on this issue.

I think that we will probably mention it. We may touch on the subject briefly, but it would be inappropriate for us to interfere in an area that really comes under the purview of the Privacy Commissioner.

Mr. Mario Laframboise: We need to be careful, Ms. Fraser. The Privacy Commissioner is asking that he have the right to examine files that have been kept for a certain amount of time, to ensure that there has been no breach of privacy. He has been refused this right, since this is the jurisdiction of police forces. This afternoon, the RCMP and CSIS will no doubt tell us that our nose does not belong in police matters. However, if you do not have the right to verify that our privacy is indeed being protected, then who does?

The Privacy Commissioner called for amendments to the bill, but so far, they have been refused. I am sure that this afternoon, the RCMP and CSIS will do as police forces do and tell us that the Privacy Commissioner has no right to interfere in their information. What they want is for us to trust the police, the RCMP and CSIS. And you say that it is no more a part of your mandate than it is the commissioner's.

¿ (0930)

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Mr. Chair, I am not very familiar with the Privacy Commissioner's mandate, but I would have thought that he had audit authority over such matters. If you say that it is not part of his mandate, I doubt that it is part of mine.

The Chair: Thank you. Mr. Laframboise.

Mrs. Jennings.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your presentation, Ms. Fraser. I just read the latest chapter issued by your office on modernizing accountability in the public sector, and I want to congratulate you and your team on your work. I think this is an extremely important issue, given the reforms proposed by the Treasury Board president in the bill she recently introduced.

As I listen to you, it seems clear that the federal government, in response to national security concerns arising from the events of September 11, 2001, wanted to create new partnerships or relationships among existing departments or agencies in order to improve the coordination of work and thereby enhance national public security.

Other than the memorandum of understanding that has yet to be signed, unless I am mistaken, did you do an audit of these new relationships, based on the new definition of accountability and the new public sector framework you are proposing? It is obvious now that a large quantity of information, much of it personal, will be exchanged. Are your audits done according to the new definition and concept that you are proposing? That is my first question.

My second question—

The Chair: Mrs. Jennings, you have five minutes. If you want to give the witness time to answer—

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: I will be quick, thank you.

My second question deals with governance. Many witnesses spoke of their concerns with governance, in light of the new powers contained in Bill C-17. Given your audit authority, do you think that existing mechanisms of governance, such as the RCMP Public Complaints Commission or the Security Intelligence Review Committee, are sufficient, since these new provisions will enable a greater exchange of information and so on?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As Mrs. Jennings mentioned, we published a study in December on accountability. We wanted this document to spark a discussion within the government. To date, the people we have spoken to seem to agree with the principles we mentioned, including that of clear roles and expectations. I think that this principle has always been one of our audit criteria, meaning that we see if the role of various stakeholders is clear and if they have a clear understanding of the expectations.

When dealing with horizontal issues, there are often no clear expectations or well-defined roles and responsibilities. We sometimes fear that things get lost in the system. We will continue to use this criterion in all our audits, particularly the one on the additional funding provided. Here too, we will take another, perhaps summary, look to see if we need to dig deeper.

You also raised the issue of governance.

¿ (0935)

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Fraser.

Mr. Barnes.

[English]

Mr. Rex Barnes (Gander—Grand Falls, PC): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Joe Comartin (Windsor—St. Clair, NDP): I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. The order should be to the NDP.

The Chair: If there's a concern over that matter, certainly, Mr. Comartin, if you'd like, you can go first.

Mr. Rex Barnes: No problem.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Thank you, Ms. Fraser, for being here.

On point 5, on CPIC, you mentioned that completing this project and continuing to monitor CPIC's performance should be a priority. Is your office monitoring how the renewal of CPIC is going?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Mr. Chair, I'll ask Mr. Kasurak to give some details.

Mr. Peter Kasurak: Yes, Mr. Chairman, we're monitoring this in two ways. One is a follow-up on previous audits. We last touched on CPIC in the criminal justice chapter last year, so we're just about to go back to the RCMP and ask for an update on that. We do that every spring.

The other thing we're doing is part of the planning phase for the security audit. We are looking at all the information systems involved and we're just about to start a major project. Certainly systems like CPIC, IPIRS, FOSS--the backbone systems for the security agencies--are going to be very much a focus in that. We're keenly interested in understanding the current performance of CPIC and the progress of the renewal efforts.

So that's where we are with that particular system.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Can you tell us how close they are to getting it back up into the level it should be functioning at? When's it going to be finished?

Mr. Peter Kasurak: I believe the target for CPIC renewal is 2005.

Mr. Joe Comartin: I have the same question with regard to point 6. How long is it taking now? The last point you make here is from 1999. Has the number of days for input increased or decreased since that time?

Mr. Peter Kasurak: I don't have precise information on that, Mr. Chairman. We went to the RCMP last February as part of our annual follow-up and we're just about to go again. At that point there was still a backlog, but I don't have precise information on how big the backlog was. The RCMP had changed its strategy and decided to put all its efforts into its new system, the real time identification system, rather than continue to try to improve the old one.

The last time we looked, which was 11 months ago, there was still a backlog, but I'm not sure how big it was.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Were they monitoring it themselves?

Mr. Peter Kasurak: Yes.

Mr. Joe Comartin: With regard to point 16, can you tell us why the MOU has not been signed, what the problem is?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: We do not know, Mr. Chair, why the MOU has not been signed.

Mr. Joe Comartin: With regard to point 17, I think we all recognize, given the nature of this country, that we're going to run into this type of problem. Have you or anybody at the federal or provincial level identified a potential solution for greater cooperation?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: If I could mention, Mr. Chair, in the health surveillance audit we did, there were some good examples from some of the chronic diseases, such as diabetes, of where progress had been made in the sharing of information. Standards had been developed and there was good cooperation from the provinces.

There are good examples. Unfortunately, they tend to be limited and there's no overall information exchange agreement; it tends to be more specific.

I know Health Canada is working on a framework. They have the general framework. They need to get into things like data standards and the rest of it so there's uniformity across the country. So I think it can be done.

I don't know if Mr. Kasurak would like to comment.

Mr. Peter Kasurak: I think that's quite complete. The only thing I would add is that, in terms of disease surveillance, the partners are working through informal means. What we didn't report was that there would be a serious gap. However, the institutional structure is not fully formed yet. Certainly, without the data standards, it's difficult to improve it beyond the current level.

¿ (0940)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Mahoney.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'll just briefly comment, by the way, that I made a note on your statement on page 4, point number 17, that that pretty much does describe Canada.

I'd like to go back, though, if I might, to your audit of some of the systems. The fingerprint database, for example, needs renewal. When you look at this kind of situation, do you simply comment on the status of the existing system? Or would you, for example, have an opinion on whether or not there should be a better system, a more comprehensive system?

I'm thinking of something like the ID card or an iris scanner or something of that nature. It sort of exists hodgepodge across the country. I was in the Saskatoon John G. Diefenbaker International Airport, and they actually have eye-scanner equipment installed right at the gates, which I was surprised to see.

Do you go that route, looking at other alternatives?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: At times, Mr. Chair, we will do benchmarking with other countries or organizations to see what best practice may be developing. We would obviously look, as well, at what the departments or the agencies themselves have identified as needs and best practices.

I could perhaps ask Mr. Kasurak to give you more details on the systems.

Mr. Peter Kasurak: Once again, part of our current audit work is to look at the development of security information systems and how they are being more closely integrated and modernized.

Biometrics is, very obviously, one of the big technological steps in modernization. One of the things we are concerned about is the uniformity of standards in biometrics themselves. If one agency picks a retinal scan and another one picks fingerprints and another picks handprints, then we don't have a common database any more. We're concerned about how the use of that technology evolves. It is very much an issue in our current work.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: In point number nine of your opening statement, you said your findings indicated that the PALS system used to screen air travellers was outdated and customs inspectors used it infrequently. Would the fallout from that be that we need to have a system to provide better screening for air travellers, which is very much what Bill C-17 is attempting to do? I'm not trying to put words in your mouth or read between the lines, just get an interpretation beyond the actual written statement.

Ms. Sheila Fraser: I could reaffirm that this was from a 2000 audit. I think it's safe to say we're looking at it. The report is coming in April, as we've mentioned earlier, but progress has been made on this issue, given the events of 2001.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: In point number eight of your presentation, you say, “We found that Customs officers did not have adequate information to assess the risk travellers pose to Canada”. Could you expand on the word, “information”?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Sure, I'll ask Mr. Kasurak to tell you about that.

Mr. Peter Kasurak: Yes, basically, in the audit we did, we found that customs agents really often didn't know who was going to arrive, who they were to inspect. Our recommendation at that time was that what was then an informal system of advance passenger information be formalized. This is now very much part of your legislative deliberations. So it was really that sort of advance passenger information--it's now called API--we had in mind here.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Barnes.

Mr. Rex Barnes: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairperson.

I would like to thank you for showing up today. It is greatly appreciated that you take time out of your busy schedule.

I was reading with interest as you were going through your report. I'll be looking with great interest to see where the $7.7 billion went. That's a large number of dollars, and we're still trying to do things that should have been done.

It seems like we are becoming more reliant on the transfer of information from department to department to department and gathering this database. Of course, with all databases, things go wrong. I would suggest the reason why the MOU has not been signed is that we are becoming more reliant on databases and less on manpower. Do you see that as a deterrent?

I firmly believe that if we're going to have an impact at our borders with regard to terrorism and people getting into our country to do harm to our citizens, we need to put the manpower in place. I know you've talked about it briefly with regard to human resources capabilities--and that could be many things.

Do you see that we're probably becoming too reliant on databases rather than the human aspect of putting bodies there to do the job?

¿ (0945)

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't see, quite frankly, that better information means fewer people. I think it enables the people who are there to do a better job.

The whole question of allowing people into the country is one of managing risks. One of the best ways to manage risk is to have really good information so you can focus your attention on the cases that could present the highest risk.

If we take, for instance, land border crossings, when you look at the number of people who cross the border, a very large percentage of those are honest people who pose no problem. In fact, there's a great economic component to all that. You wouldn't want to put in very rigid systems where you'd have to test everybody or else there would be a lot of really negative consequences.

So it's important that you are able to focus your activities on those cases that pose the highest risk. To do that, you need really good information. You also need really good training.

So the people at the border need to have good training--which is one of the weaknesses we've noticed--in order to be able to use this information correctly. With the very short time available to them to make judgments about people coming into the country, we believe it's important that they have this information and the proper training to do their jobs well.

Mr. Rex Barnes: What type of information do you think we should be concentrating on more so than what has been talked about in this hearing with regard to having databases on all the travelling public? Are there certain things we should be focusing on, rather than trying to keep track of everyone who travels, especially in this country?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: I know there are considerations given to, and discussions about, having sort of pre-cleared people. Customs in fact has pre-cleared commercial shipments coming into the country. Those people go through a pre-clearance process and can have, if you will, a special lane at the border crossing. It is a question of managing risk.

If you are able to pre-clear people, you don't have to worry about them. If you are able to get information rapidly as to who the other unknown people are and where they've come from--and I'm sure the police forces can tell you all the kinds of information that would be useful to them in developing this.... I think we mentioned this earlier, but even to have advance notice of people coming into the country, to do checks to see who is coming before the person is actually physically in front of them at the border....

The Chair: Do you have another question, Mr. Barnes?

Mr. Rex Barnes: Yes, just one more.

From your perspective, taking the fact that you must travel a lot, I'm interested to know if you think it's the right of any government and any organization to start questioning or tracking your travel modes. This is a loaded question.

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Gee, I have to be careful.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Ms. Sheila Fraser: I think the privacy commissioner would have comments on this.

As I said earlier, I think there's a balance between security and privacy considerations. It is up to parliamentarians to determine that balance for all Canadians.

¿ (0950)

The Chair: Well answered, Ms. Fraser.

Mr. Lunn, please.

Mr. Gary Lunn: I like how you ducked around that one.

The Chair: A fair amount of ducking goes on around this point.

Mr. Gary Lunn: Yes. Absolutely.

My next question is on one of the big concerns I have been hearing since September 11, and the security we have been seeing, which is the $24 fee for airline passengers. I guess what we've seen when travelling through airports is the explosive detection equipment that you go through now in screening, where they scan your computers and electronics, and test for that. Other than that, we haven't seen any other real visible presence.

Have you done any studies, or do you have any idea, on what value we're getting for the $24? Where is it being spent? If not, are you currently studying it, and when can we expect some answers in this area?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There are two elements to my response. First of all, the agency set up to deliver those services, CATSA, will be producing financial statements that we will be auditing as of the end of March. As well, it is subject to what we call a special examination. So once every five years we will be doing a full audit of CATSA.

In addition to that, the Minister of Finance has put together a financial statement showing the fees received until the end of June of last year, as well as the expenses. You my be aware that the $24 fee goes into the consolidated revenue fund, and funds are then appropriated out of that to CATSA for expenses. In order to see what the revenues expenses are, a special statement is required. We have been asked to audit that. Our audit is complete, and I think it will tabled shortly in the House.

At the beginning, I think we have to recognize that the fees in any one year will, of course, not necessarily equal the expenditures in that year. In this first year in particular, the fees only started on April 1. So we had April, May, and June revenues, whereas expenses went back to September 11. So one could obviously not expect an exact matching in a given year. It would have to be over a period of time. I believe that the Department of Finance is working with CATSA and others to develop this projection.

Mr. Gary Lunn: With the data for those three months, would you be able to project the trends to see what the capital costs, ongoing expenses, and kinds of revenue collected are, to see if it is a fair amount to be collecting from the passengers?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: It is my understanding that the Department of Finance is working with CATSA to do those projections to see if the $24 fee is a reasonable one.

I don't know if my colleagues would like to add anything.

Mr. Peter Kasurak: Yes, in the security audit we're working on, we're highly likely to include value for money of some of the major blocks of this charge.

Approximately $1 billion, give or take, goes into explosive detection systems for passenger baggage. You won't see these systems in the airport, because they are generally someplace else in the airport. Certainly, that level of expenditure makes it something we probably have to look at as part of our audit.

In addition to the financial audits Madame Fraser has referred to, we'll also probably be looking in some way at the value for money of EDS in the security audit.

The Chair: The chair will take two single questions.

[Translation]

Mr. Laframboise.

Mr. Mario Laframboise: I want to come back to the question I asked earlier.

Clearly, the Privacy Commissioner does not have audit authority. Bill C-17 states that passenger information must be destroyed within seven days, that other information on certain individuals can be retained up to one year before being destroyed, and that still other information can be kept for more than one year.

The Canadian Bar Association wants to see a measure giving the commissioner audit authority for these matters so that he can ensure that such information is not retained longer than necessary. If such a measure were not adopted and the commissioner did not have the audit authority—and you say that you do not have the audit authority—would you recommend to the government that an independent agency be given the audit authority for this?

¿ (0955)

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Mr. Chair, our mandate grants us the authority to audit compliance with legislation and regulations. I am not an expert in this field and I think that it would be good to have one of our counsel provide a legal opinion, but if any legislation required documents to be retained for a specified period, I presume that we could do an audit to see if that legislation had been complied with.

[English]

The Chair: Okay.

You can ask a single question, Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Joe Comartin: We've repeatedly seen, and most notably in the last week, the U.S. posting levels of security risk. Do we have a corresponding system in Canada, and does it meet best practice standards, if in fact we have one?

Ms. Sheila Fraser: I'll ask Mr. Kasurak to respond to that.

Mr. Peter Kasurak: We don't really have the same system. Indeed, given the amount of skepticism expressed about the U.S. system, and the difficulty explaining to the American public what measures they should take as the U.S. goes up and down the scale, I'm doubtful that what they do represents best practice. It's quite a complex issue, and not something that you can easily do on a national basis in the way they've attempted.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Has anybody done that?

Mr. Peter Kasurak: I don't believe so.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Comartin.

[Translation]

Ms. Fraser, Mr. Kasurak, Mr. Flageole, thank you for testifying before the Legislative Committee on Bill C-17. If Ms. Fraser has a final comment, she has the floor.

Ms. Sheila Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Chair. We greatly appreciate having been invited to appear before the committee. I hope that you will avidly follow our April reports. Thank you.

The Chair: The Hill is very interested in your testimony.

We will take a five-minute break to allow the next witnesses to take their seats.

¿ (0957)

À (1005)

[English]

The Chair: Colleagues, I'd like to reconvene our hearings on Bill C-17. This morning we welcome Commissioner Zaccardelli of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Mr. Commissioner, welcome. I invite you to introduce other members of your group here this morning.

We will subsequently follow up with rounds of five minutes of questions.

Commissioner Zaccardelli.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli (Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have Deputy Loeppky here from the RCMP. I'm not sure if you want me to introduce the other members.

The Chair: Go right ahead.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: They need no introduction, obviously.

The Chair: Obviously, but everything is on the record.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: This is CSIS director Ward Elcock, and this is Jacques Duchesneau, who is now head of CATSA.

[Translation]

Ladies and gentlemen.

[English]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm pleased to be here to address Bill C-17, the Public Safety Act.

[Translation]

I would like to take this opportunity to briefly comment on the RCMP's opinion of the data-sharing regime, and then I would be pleased to answer all your questions.

Simply put, this bill and proposed section 4.82 are tools we need to improve the security of Canadians, our neighbours and air travellers from around the world. They help reinforce the government's ability to uncover potential terrorists and avert other threats to transportation security in order to prevent deadly attacks in or outside of Canada.

[English]

Most importantly, proposed section 4.82 helps to strike a reasonable balance between the privacy rights of individuals and the right for all Canadians to be protected from terrorists and terrorist activities.

I would like to take a moment to address the issue of ensuring that privacy rights are respected while working to protect transportation security, which is of vital interest to this country and its citizens. I know privacy rights were a concern with Bill C-55. I believe the Government of Canada has taken the necessary steps to address such concerns, as reflected in Bill C-17, the new version of the bill.

First, proposed section 4.82 stipulates that only very few selected members of the RCMP and CSIS may request passenger information for the purpose of safeguarding transportation security. Under the bill, the director of CSIS and the commissioner of the RCMP are deemed eligible to request such information. If this bill is passed into law, we must designate any other persons within our respective organizations who can receive and analyze passenger information. In our case, only a small number of RCMP employees will have access to these passenger lists, and those persons will be specifically designated by me.

Second, it is important to realize that the RCMP will not physically come into possession of the passenger information. The airline passenger lists will be sent to the RCMP interface by airlines via an electronic pipeline. This information will be automatically matched or vetted against the RCMP's records in our databases.

[Translation]

A printout would be produced only if there was a potential match between a passenger list and records in one of the RCMP's databases. This printout would be manually verified by an RCMP officer designated in accordance with Bill C-17 and retained and disclosed pursuant to the provisions of the bill. If there is no match between the passenger list and the RCMP's databases, the printout would be systematically destroyed.

À (1010)

[English]

We want to stress that any passenger information collected by the RCMP under this section must be destroyed within seven days after it is provided by the air carrier, unless that information is required for transportation security or the investigation of threats to the security of Canada, as laid out in paragraph 2(c) of the CSIS Act. This means the vast majority of personal information collected by the RCMP under this authority will be destroyed within seven days of being received.

Similarly, proposed section 4.82 requires that at least once per year a review is undertaken of all retained information. If the retention of this information is no longer justified, we are required to order the information destroyed.

Finally, I would like to stress that the information released to the RCMP by the air carriers will be used for transportation security purposes only, with one exception. The exception is that if in the course of reviewing passenger information a designated investigator discovers a passenger with an outstanding scheduled warrant for his or her arrest, that designated person is authorized to release the information to a peace officer to effect an arrest.

It is important to note here that this does not apply to just any type of warrant. Rather, the designated personnel have the authority to release this information only if a passenger has an outstanding warrant for his or her arrest for the commission of an offence that may be punishable for a term of five years or more, or under specific subsections of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, or as per an international warrant for arrest and extradition under the Extradition Act.

Let me be very clear that this does not mean peace officers can use this provision of this act to board aircraft to arrest individuals for warrants in relation to minor offences.

[Translation]

However, this means that if, in reviewing the data for the purposes of ensuring transportation security, a designated RCMP officer comes across the name of a person wanted for an offence defined in the schedules to the bill, the officer will have the authority to report this information to the appropriate police force and facilitate an arrest.

As the hon. members of the committee are surely aware, it is the duty of all peace officers, under common law, to arrest anyone with an outstanding warrant for their arrest, even if the region of return must be extended to include all of Canada.

This bill would authorize designated RCMP officers to use passenger information in the execution of this duty when the warrants relate to the most serious offences listed in the schedules to the bill.

Given the large volume of information we are talking about here, if Parliament were to enforce proposed section 4.82, it would have serious repercussions on RCMP operations. Implementation of this supplementary data-gathering regime would have an impact on many of our activities. It will be essential to consider reinforcing the ability to design and implement the appropriate information technology infrastructure.

[English]

Access to passenger information relating to threats to transportation security would greatly assist in our ability to deliver an effective air carrier protection program.

I would like to clarify, for anyone who is not aware of the term, that the RCMP uses the name “aircraft protection officer” for what others sometimes refer to as sky marshalls. At the present time, the RCMP assigns aircraft protection officers to aircraft based on a threat assessment. Passenger lists would be a significant source of information to help us complete these threat assessments to protect aircraft flying into or leaving from Canada.

As the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, it is my personal responsibility to ensure that our organization does whatever it can, within the framework of laws passed by Parliament, to ensure the safety of Canadians. I am confident that Bill C-17 and specifically the data-sharing regime as laid out in proposed section 4.82 are necessary tools to manage the challenge inherent in a post-September 11 world.

I am also confident that Bill C-17 represents a reasonable balance between protecting the privacy rights of individuals and protecting the safety and security of our people, our country, and our neighbours. I am confident that Bill C-17 reflects the commitment of our government and the law enforcement and security community to detect, deter, and disrupt terrorist factions intent on carrying out their heinous acts on Canadian soil or elsewhere in the world.

Mr. Chair, I am now ready to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.

À (1015)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Commissioner Zaccardelli.

Mr. Elcock.

Mr. Ward Elcock (Director, Canadian Security Intelligence Service): Mr. Chairman, it's a pleasure to be here today to talk about the data-sharing regime in proposed section 4.82 of Bill C-17 and how CSIS plans to give effect to those provisions. As I'm sure you can understand, this is also in the planning stages, but let me try to explain how we currently envisage the system working.

The service will be creating a separate computerized watch list. Only those persons who have been identified as known or suspected to be in support of a threat or use of acts of serious violence, as defined in paragraph 2(c) of the CSIS Act, will be included on that list. Every name put on the list will be approved by a senior manager within the service. This is a similar process to the list of individuals that the service already provides to CCRA and CIC in an effort to keep terrorists out of the country.

The passenger information lists will be received electronically from the airlines. This information will then be electronically compared to the service's watch list of persons who have been legitimately identified as those known or suspected to be in support of a threat or use of acts of serious violence as defined in paragraph 2(c).

The computer system will be programmed to automatically erase all records of passengers after seven days, except for those who match a record on the watch list. Only when a match occurs will the identity of the traveller in question be disclosed to an employee of the service, specifically designated by me to receive that information. In other words, not only will the vast majority of passengers not be matched, but the way the computer system will be structured, we won't even be aware that they travelled.

At this point, only a small number of specially designated officers within CSIS will have access to any of this information. When a designated officer is alerted to a match or a potential match, he or she will consider, verify, and assess the information, initially all from a transportation security context. If this assessment reveals that the information--the match, in other words--is relevant to transportation security, it will be disclosed to the RCMP.

In addition to the assessment of the threat posed to an aircraft and under the provisions of Bill C-17, the designated officer may also believe the information on the passenger's travel may be important in the service's ongoing investigation of terrorist threats. In such a case, a senior designated officer must assess the relevancy of the information to the service's terrorist investigative mandate. Should the decision be made to pass the passenger information to the service's investigators, we will, as required by the statute, keep a record of the information provided and the reasons for the disclosure.

At this point, the information becomes like any other sensitive information we collect from warrants, surveillance, human sources, or whatever. It is retained, analyzed, and disclosed according to our normal policies and procedures, all of course subject to the scrutiny of our review agencies. For example, it may be disclosed as part of an ongoing investigation to an allied service with whom we're cooperating.

Let's briefly look, however, at the safeguards that have been built into the legislation and the resulting process we're creating.

First, all passenger information will be automatically destroyed within seven days of its collection unless it is reasonably required for the purposes of transportation security or the investigation of terrorism.

Passenger information will only be compared to a separate list of persons who are already known or suspected to be in support of a threat or use of acts of serious violence.

Records of all disclosures will be kept and be available for ongoing review.

In the first instance, only designated officers will have access to this information, and only when they decide it meets the provisions of the act can it be further disclosed within or outside the service.

These are only the safeguards intended under Bill C-17. In addition to those safeguards, we are also governed and continue to be governed by the provisions of the CSIS Act. As you may know, our act requires that we may only collect information that is strictly necessary for the investigation of threats to national security, the term that is defined in our act.

Further, we may disclose information to other agencies with whom we have approved arrangements for sharing intelligence. All of those arrangements are approved by the Solicitor General, and when it involves an agency outside of Canada, he in turn must consult with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of course, all operational activities of the service are subject to ongoing scrutiny by the inspector general on behalf of the minister and by the Security Intelligence Review Committee.

I hope that's a useful description of what CSIS intends to do with the tools in Bill C-17. I've attempted to provide you a quick understanding of the overall picture and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

À (1020)

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Elcock.

[Translation]

We will now hear from Mr. Duchesneau, who is speaking on behalf of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.

Mr. Duchesneau.

[English]

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau (President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Air Transport Security Authority): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for inviting us here today to speak about Bill C-17.

This bill touches a wide range of departments and agencies. I would like to outline to you our mandate and how Bill C-17 affects our responsibilities.

As many of you know, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, or CATSA, took over responsibility for passengers and baggage screening on December 31, 2002. I am pleased to report to you that the transition was seamless and successful.

Following the tragedy of 9/11, the Government of Canada acted quickly by committing $2.2 billion to further enhance air security and make CATSA the centrepiece of that commitment—and the organization I am proud to lead.

To illustrate just how seriously the government took these new threats to Canadian air transportation, our organization went from concept to legislation to funding in just a few short months. We went from zero to over 100 employees at our headquarters. We also trained over 3,000 screening officers across the country in just eight short months.

Not only did we establish an entire organization, we purchased and deployed equipment and we created and implemented new training programs for screening officers at 89 airports across the country. This is quite an achievement for a new organization.

The summary of our second corporate plan, which sets out our actions to date and those envisioned for the next five years, will be tabled in Parliament in the coming months.

CATSA's mandate and responsibilities are divided into six main areas: one, pre-board screening of passengers and their belongings; two, screening of checked baggage, which includes the acquisition and deployment of explosives detection systems; three, the Canadian air carrier protective program, which is the joint program with the RCMP for on-board security; four, federal assistance for air security-related airport policing; five, the creation of an enhanced restricted area pass system to control access to restricted areas at airports; and finally, the selective screening of non-passengers entering restricted areas at airports, such as aircraft groomers, refuellers, and other airside workers.

[Translation]

CATSA's budget over five years is approximately $1.9 billion. We are on schedule for assuming responsibility for each aspect of our mandate and our current forecasting has us on target in meeting our budget.

Since CATSA assumed responsibility for pre-board screening, an additional 800 pre-board screening officers have been contracted and, as of December 31, all 3,000 officers have received training to upgrade their skills to CATSA standards.

In addition, CATSA has introduced a new multi-level training and certification program for all new screening officers, effective January 1, 2003. This program requires new screening officers to follow a sequence of three formative stages that represent almost twice the training time of the American training program.

CATSA's training curriculum also provides on-going refresher training, performance testing and quality assurance programs at all levels to ensure continuous improvement and learning.

We continue to make great strides in enhancing air security in Canada. But as sophisticated as the technology may be, we can never forget that we will always need human beings to operate the equipment, to interpret the data and, most importantly, to prevent terrorists from realizing their plans.

I believe that one of our greatest challenges is to make sure that whatever systems are put in place, and whatever smart technologies are used, we never lose sight of the need for human intelligence in all that we do.

A portion of Bill C-17 enables government agencies to share human intelligence information to further enhance our air security system. While some have expressed concerns over the privacy of individuals, it is our understanding that the Privacy Commissioner has raised no objection to the primary purpose of certain sections of the bill that will allow the use of some personal information for anti-terrorist transportation security and national security screening. We have to balance the rights of Canadians to privacy with the collective right to having a secure environment.

À (1025)

[English]

We have to balance the rights of Canadians for privacy with the collective right to having a secure environment.

Part of the Government of Canada's announcement in December 2001 was a commitment of $1 billion for the purchase, deployment, and installation of explosives detection systems. This new equipment will be used for pre-board and checked baggage screening. Our screening operations represent approximately three-quarters of our operating budget and they serve over three million passengers a month.

Also included in our mandate is the Canadian air carrier protective program. In cooperation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Department of Transport, CATSA serves as the program manager. This program was introduced to cover all flights to Reagan National Airport and it has since been expanded to cover, based upon a risk assessment, other domestic, transborder, and international flights.

Another important responsibility is to contribute to the cost of air-security-related policing at airports. This bill will allow regulations to amend the CATSA Act to capture certain airports that are omitted by virtue of the current provisions. In short, this bill will permit us to enter into contribution agreements with additional airports.

In addition to the government's initial investment announced in 2001, CATSA continues to deploy and install new explosives detection systems at airports across the country. Some of this equipment is visible at pre-board screening areas and it involves the swiping of carry-on luggage and electronics with a wand covered at the tip with a cotton tissue. This process detects trace elements of chemicals.

The screening of checked baggage has been raised on several occasions, and most recently in the Senate committee's report on air security. The current process we use in screening checked baggage is to locate the passenger when an anomaly is detected. If the passenger is not located, the bag does not travel. This is the case at all airports in Canada and for all destinations. Once the passenger is located, we get permission to open the bag. As you can appreciate, the location of the baggage-handling facilities and explosives detection systems equipment varies from one airport to the other. In some cases, the passenger will witness the opening of the bag through video-conferencing.

One improvement this bill will provide for passengers is to regulate the ability of screening officers to access luggage in the event that the passenger is not located. Once the bag is cleared, the bag would be allowed to travel rather than remain behind. A notice advising the passenger of the procedure would be placed in the luggage. We will further develop this policy once we obtain the authority.

Another aspect of our mandate is related to non-passengers. While some countries are only beginning to implement a restricted area pass system for non-passengers, we already have a system and we are in fact improving it. This system applies to airside personnel, including flight crews, refuellers, caterers, etc. The use of biometrics is being considered for this program.

We will also be expanding the select screening of non-passengers. We have created a working group comprised of airport authorities, airlines, and the Department of Transport to provide guidance and input into these programs. We value and appreciate the effort and collaboration of our stakeholders and partners. The security of Canadians and the travelling public is our first priority.

À (1030)

Mr. Chair, I'm convinced that we all share the same goal, which is to have the best and most secure air transportation system in the world, one that ensures the security of our fellow Canadians. At CATSA we will continue to look at ways of improving our existing system by working closely with our regulator, the Department of Transport, our partners, and our stakeholders. As president and CEO of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, I am committed to working with all of you to ensure that we succeed with this great challenge.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Translation]

The Chair: The committee thanks all the witnesses for their briefs. We will now begin the first round of questions.

[English]

The first round of questions will begin with Mr. Lunn.

Mr. Gary Lunn: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My questions relate particularly to the RCMP. It is a pleasure to hear you in such a positive vein. I think we always need to remind ourselves that the whole goal here is to ensure enhanced security and safety for our passengers. We've had some witnesses trying to suggest that we're out trying to get warrants to arrest people on planes, but we need to really focus on what we're trying to do.

We have Clayton Ruby here suggesting it would be unconstitutional. I have researched that and looked into it and would categorically disagree with that.

My two questions are more on the mechanical side. Passengers can actually buy tickets up to an hour before a plane is going to depart. If a terrorist or somebody actually wanted to do something, or even travelled to another area and didn't want to be detected, they would be aware of what's happening. Would we be able to do the electronic data matches that quickly, especially if there's a really high security risk, so that you'd actually be able to intervene, and possibly even before the flight took off?

We just heard from the Auditor General—and she didn't give us a very glowing report; admittedly, these were pre-September 11 audits—that the computer systems were not talking to each other even in their own departments, never mind having to have CSIS, the RCMP, Canada Customs, and the airline industry computers talk. That's one question: have we thought that through to make sure it's actually going to work?

One concern we get quite often is that maybe sometimes we're collecting a little too much data. Do we need to know how they paid, where they're sitting, what they are eating? Is it a little bit too much of an infringement on their privacy? I think that's a valid question. Can we get rid of that data?

My last question has been raised at a local level. I come from Sydney, which is in Greater Victoria. As you are aware, there's now been a decision to put RCMP officers in airports where there are, I believe, flights to the U.S.

One of the concerns that have been raised is whether it is a wise idea, or is it more to show just a presence for the passengers' safety? And where are those resources going to come from? A big concern, especially in small areas such as where I live, is that it'll take four or five officers out of a detachment of 25. Will there be increased resources for those areas?

Thank you.

À (1035)

The Chair: Commissioner.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

To pick up on your last point first, we do not have police officers in every airport. What happens now is the police force of jurisdiction provides the security at all airports, and there's an agreement between the airport authorities and the police force of local jurisdiction. If the RCMP happens to be the police force of local jurisdiction—as in Vancouver, for example—we provide the service. That's how that works, and the airport authority pays for it.

We have a presence in a number of key airports that the federal government pays for above and beyond the regular policing done there. In terms of your particular airport, I am not aware of that specific airport or anything being done to provide the policing there. But the intent is not to take away from the detachment to put them at the airport. If there were extra resources going to the airport, they would not be taken away from the detachment, because the detachment has a contract and they have to provide that service there.

In respect to your first point about the question of the timing, obviously the more notification we have of certain information that's of importance to us and that deals specifically with the issue of security and terrorism, the better the time we'll have to be able to verify—to check and determine and take the appropriate action. Last-minute information will require us to really work very quickly to try to do something. But you're right, if we had seven days it would give us a lot more room and opportunity to take a better proactive action on the situation.

Obviously the more information we get, the better we're able to analyze the situation. But we're only interested in the basic information that will enable us to make an assessment about the threat. That's all we're interested in.

On the issue of compatibility, our information systems are very good. For example, we have personnel from CSIS working in our office; we have our personnel working in CSIS offices. There is excellent collaboration and exchange of information.

You can always improve the technology, and a lot has been done, especially since September 11, where the federal government has put a lot of money into allowing us to improve our intelligence capacity and our technological capacity for interoperability. That is being very actively worked on.

The Chair: Mr. Elcock.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Perhaps I might just add to that, Mr. Chairman, on two points.

One, I think the links between us and the force are certainly very good. There is a somewhat facile assumption that if only the computer systems would all talk to each other, we would solve all the problems of the world. The reality is not to necessarily have computer systems that talk to each other, but to have an adequate communication system or computer communication system between agencies that allows the right kind of information to flow.

I think that exists certainly between us and the RCMP, so there should be no problem in moving that information. As I said, in the case of receiving the information from the airlines, we'll be receiving it electronically. That should allow, even in the worst case of somebody buying a ticket an hour before the flight, for the information to be properly analyzed. We'll be analyzing it electronically. It isn't somebody going through a filing system. So in theory, all of that should be relatively straightforward.

In terms of the wider selection of information, from the airline point of view, I suspect they would rather simply provide a feed rather than get into the business themselves of trying to strip out information from their system. From our point of view, we have no interest in whether people have vegetarian meals or red meat. That's information we would have to strip out of the system, indeed, if we were going to go into the system, but the reality is we're only going to be looking at cases where there's a match, in any case. So the rest of it will essentially drop off after seven days.

À (1040)

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Mahoney.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Just an issue, if I might, and I think the commissioner and Mr. Elcock might want to answer it. If I have time in five minutes, I have a lot of questions for CATSA as well.

You stated that the RCMP, for example, will not be physically getting information, that it will come electronically. There would be a printout and then a comparison to all data bank.... In fact, Mr. Elcock's presentation says, “This information will then be electronically compared to the Service's watch list of persons who have been legitimately identified,” etc.

My concern is this. The privacy commissioner has said in his testimony before this committee that although proposed subsections 4.82(4) and (5) of the Aeronautics Act permit the RCMP and CSIS to request any information on any specific flight or “flight specified” or “concerning any particular person”, he understood that the intent was to request passenger information much more broadly.

You could interpret, Commissioner, both your remarks.... I don't have a copy of them here--and frankly I would have appreciated that, because it's easier to follow--but we do have Mr. Elcock's. I can see where he's coming from, frankly. It's the first time I've understood that concern being expressed.

Am I interpreting this wrong? Are you suggesting that you will have a huge database that CSIS will have put together, and that you'll get all of the airlines sending in all their passenger lists and someone will sit there comparing those two lists?

Mr. Ward Elcock: No, Mr. Chairman, I don't understand the concern, frankly. The reality is that we will get that feed electronically. It will be compared electronically. Nobody will ever see it, unless there's a.... There's not going to be somebody sitting at a console looking at all that information flowing through. The computer will compare it. If there's a hit, it will pop up as a hit, and we would look at that name and the match on the list. But there isn't going to be somebody sitting there looking at and pulling down a printout of the information. It will all be done electronically. That's the normal way we do it.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: So you will not need to make a specific request. Every passenger list of every aircraft in every airport--

Mr. Ward Elcock: We would get a feed. There may well be some airports--some small regional airports--where in fact there is no computerized list. Whether they will be fed in or not is not entirely clear at this juncture. But normally we would get a feed of the passengers on the airline. It would run through the system. If there was no hit, after seven days it would disappear, and we wouldn't be looking at it in any case.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I appreciate the fact that you wouldn't be looking at them, but your interpretation seems to be in contradiction to the actual bill, to the clause in the bill, because it says that you must make a request of a specific flight.

Mr. Radwanski's assertions have been all along that this allows you to go on a fishing expedition, to look at every flight, every list, every occurrence in the country, and whether you do it electronically or whether you do it manually is somewhat moot, I would suggest.

Help me in interpreting the requirements under proposed section 4.82 of the bill. It says you have to make a specific request of a flight--flight 222 flying from Vancouver to Toronto on February 14--about which you have concerns, or a specific person, namely that John Doe is on that flight and you have concerns. What I'm hearing this morning is that there's going to be a constant flow of data electronically between every airline in the country, every flight in the country and CSIS. I don't think that's our intent.

Mr. Ward Elcock: I think that's precisely the intent, Mr. Chair. Otherwise, Canadians can't have any certainty that indeed those lists are being checked to see whether there is a terrorist travelling on the airplane.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: We're going to have to look at the wording in the bill. I would invite you to look at page 13 of the bill. Under proposed subsection 4.82(4) it says: “The Commissioner, or a person designated...for the purposes of transportation security”--which I've heard you say--“require any air carrier or operator of an aviation reservation system to provide a person designated”. Proposed paragraph (a) says: “concerning the persons on board or expected to be on board an aircraft for any flight specified”. The wording is very clear. Then the other option in proposed paragraph (b) is: “concerning any particular person specified”. Again, the wording is very clear. In proposed subsection 4.82(5) it refers to you, Mr. Elcock, the director of CSIS, and the same thing applies.

So I'm a little disconcerted, I must tell you. I've not been supportive of Mr. Radwanski's assertions. I considered them to be somewhat hysterical and scare tactics, but what you're telling me leads me to rethink that.

À (1045)

Mr. Ward Elcock: I can't in fairness go very far in addressing the member's concern, since I'm not entirely sure I understand it, Mr. Chairman.

The statute permits us to do it in respect of a specific flight. We would obviously be doing it for a wide range of flights going out of major airports, for the most part. There may be smaller regional airports where it would simply not be feasible. For example, for somebody getting on a float plane somewhere in northern Manitoba, it may not be possible to manage that flow of information. Normally we would be looking at a wide range of aircraft precisely to ensure that people who are dangerous to the security of Canada and may in fact be dangerous to a particular flight are not travelling on those aircraft.

The Chair: I'd like to hear from Commissioner Zaccardelli.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I support Mr. Elcock's position. There is no question that we are getting some additional powers here. As I said in my statement, it is a very good balance between the privacy rights and the need for security services and law enforcement to have these new powers to be able to do their job.

If we were to take the position you've advocated whereby we would have to justify or have the information before we could act, we wouldn't need this new legislation. When we have reasonable or probable grounds to suspect somebody, we can intervene in those cases.

This gives us the ability to highlight and identify people who are threats to the security of this country. That is why the minimal intervention is the fact that the information flows from the airlines and goes right directly into our computer through an electronic feed. It is not looked at. We would not get our hands on it unless a specific person who is a threat is flagged or there is a warrant for a serious offence. It is only in those rare cases that would happen. If I know that somebody is wanted or there's a threat by somebody, I can act. I don't need this new legislation to act. So this is an additional means we have to identify people who are serious threats.

The Chair: I'm going to take a little liberty here. Hopefully, I have the cooperation of members on both sides. I know this is an issue that has been before the committee, and there has been a tremendous amount of interest in it. So I'll be a bit more generous, and I'll allow a supplementary to Mr. Mahoney on this issue.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I just want to point out that I'm not advocating that position. I am concerned that there is some legitimacy to the criticism that after this bill is in place CSIS and the RCMP will have the ability to go on fishing expeditions and that all aircraft will be monitored.

I generally don't have a problem communicating, Mr. Elcock, so I don't know why you wouldn't understand my question. My question is very simple. The bill specifically says “flight specified” and “person specified”. The bill does not address a computerized link from every airline's database going into your computerized files searching for hits. It's quite a different scenario from what we have been led to believe and what we interpret the bill to say.

I'm not even commenting on whether one system is right or the other system is right at this stage. I'm commenting on the fact that there appears to be some difference of interpretation of two pretty substantial and important paragraphs of this bill, which we're going to have to get our officials to clarify for us, and perhaps for you as well.

There's a question there somewhere.

À (1050)

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, to describe what either we or the RCMP would be doing as a fishing expedition would be entirely inaccurate. All that either agency is doing is creating a system so that data from airlines in Canada can be run through to ensure that if there is a terrorist or somebody who is connected to a terrorist organization travelling on an airline, there will be a hit, which will allow enforcement agencies to actually deal with that individual and, we all hope, make air travel in Canada as safe as we can possibly make it.

This is not a fishing expedition to look endlessly for people on the list. We are simply trying to match against the list of terrorists we have in a separate database the people who would be travelling on flights. I have enormous difficulty understanding that as a fishing expedition.

The Chair: Mr. Elcock and Commissioner Zaccardelli, let me take a little liberty here. I've stayed away from this thus far, but I sense there's some confusion at the table.

Given the proposed section as it is written, do you find it to be consistent with what you interpret it to say? Are you somewhat surprised? I'm not stating an opinion one way or another, but what you have described--and I believe it's supported by the commissioner--to me, I humbly say, does not reflect the proposed section we are presently interested in and concerned about. Do you find your interpretation consistent with what is in the bill right now, as drafted in the proposed sections before us?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, I'm a lawyer, but I've usually found it wise not to play a lawyer, given my other responsibilities. But I have no problem with the wording of the statute in terms of allowing us to run the system that I've described, and indeed, I think it has been clear from the beginning that this is indeed the intention with respect to how the statute would work. Certainly we've never had any different view of how the system would in fact work.

The Chair: Mr. Commissioner.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: I'm not even a lawyer, Mr. Chair--

The Chair: I'm not either.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: --so I would have more problems. But my understanding of how this is to work is totally consistent with what Mr. Elcock has said. We need that feed. The feed will come into our databanks and only the minimal intervention will take place, or the minimal access to this information, because it only flags the serious offences. So that is my interpretation, and obviously I would defer to people who know the law a lot better than I do.

Mr. Ward Elcock: If I might add something, Mr. Chairman, an alternative way to phrase it would have been to require every airline to provide a feed of all of their information. But the reality of that system is then you have to write in an ability to give yourself an exception when you can't have that flow of information. For example, take the flight in northern Manitoba that is a float plane and there is no computer system. Nobody knows for sure who's getting on the airplane and you don't actually even buy a ticket. You get on the airplane and pay later.

If we made it absolute, the lawyers would have to write in a power to have exceptions for those cases you couldn't cover. The fact that it refers to a specific airline does not prevent the creation of the system we're both describing and, indeed, would contemplate it from a legal point of view.

The Chair: Mr. Commissioner.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Again, I'm not a lawyer, but in terms of asking, if the interpretation is who asked and for what information, we probably could create a situation where I would have a constant request in front of every airline over every flight. That is possible to do, which would get me the information according to the act, but the thing is that we would have to make a specific request every time, which is not really practical. In my view, it would make no sense of this legislation. So I could literally submit a request to every airline about every flight and have that information. So that information would then be made available to me.

The Chair: I don't want to monopolize the discussion, particularly as the chair, but I submit respectfully that I sense there's going to be a requirement for us to have some clarification particularly on that proposed section.

I'll move on now to Mr. Laframboise, s'il vous plaît.

À (1055)

[Translation]

Mr. Mario Laframboise: Thank you Mr. Chair.

I can understand your reasoning with respect to what you want to see in this document.

You talk about balance and matching information. This morning, Ms. Fraser submitted a document about your information system which said:

We have found a pattern of inadequate information to support front-line officials and limited ability of national security information systems to inter-operate.

You talk about matching information, but those who have analyzed your system tell us there are major flaws. You are lacking information; in other words, it is inadequate.

When I look at what you are defending, it seems more like this is a system you are in the process of creating. You want to have a larger database. If it is for the purpose of fighting terrorism, I can support that. However, when it is a question of transportation security, the definition is very broad: you can retain information for the purposes of transportation security, because subsections (4) and (5) give the commissioner and the director, the right to retain information for such purposes. Then there is the whole business of seven days, a year, and so on. I have a problem with the fact that you are developing a database on travellers for reasons of transportation security. The way I see it, you are going to create a database—and I am entitled to think so—on regular travellers for all sorts of reasons. Maybe it will be limited to staff that you will have identified, but the problem is that you go much further: as the Information Commissioner says, with this bill you are asking that information retained for air transportation safety, among other things, not be subject to access to information. He said: “Clause 107, if adopted, would make it mandatory for such information to be kept secret forever.” Therefore, for public interest purposes, we could not even be privy to why you want this information. The Privacy Commissioner asked that subsection (14) be amended so that he could check files for privacy protection. You are against these recommendations. You would like the bill to be passed and you want the Privacy Commissioner to stay out of it. The Canadian Bar says you are going too far. It says that the word “warrant” applies to offences that are not extremely serious and especially that are not related to terrorism.

You are going to retain all kinds of information for reasons other than terrorism that no one will be able to audit. I asked Ms. Fraser about that this morning, and she was not even sure she had the right to audit the files you would retain. So we have to take your word for it, since the wording gives you the possibility of retaining all information. Try to convince me that this is necessary and that the average citizen is safe.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Mr. Laframboise, you raised several issues. I will try to respond to some of them.

First, you said our databases and systems do not inter-operate; this is not true, our systems inter-operate very well. We are able to establish effective exchanges with Mr. Elcock's agency and other bodies such as Canada Customs and Revenue Agency and Immigration Canada.

You also talked about the creation of new databases. No provision in this bill gives us authorization to create a new database, and we have no intention to do so. This bill will give us access to some information that we can compare to information in our existing databases; if this information affects air security, terrorism or major offences, we have access to it; if not, the information is destroyed after seven days and we may only retain information that affects security.

Nothing I said, and if I may speak for him, nothing Mr. Elcock said, indicates that we want to prevent Ms. Fraser or Mr. Radwanski from having access to our information. On the contrary, they will have access to all information regarding our activities. They have the means and the right to conduct the checks that they are currently conducting; nothing in the bill prevents them from doing so.

Therefore, I do not understand why you have concerns about access to information on our activities. The information we retain and the files on the measures we take are accessible to everyone.

Á (1100)

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Elcock, did you have anything to add?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, there were a number of questions. Some of them I've responded to before, so I won't go back at them.

Let me just say the only database that we're creating in the circumstances, as I described in my remarks, is a much smaller subset of our database, which is created specifically to give us a list of names of people of concern to us within the definition of paragraph 2(c) of the CSIS Act, against which we would have run any information we received from airlines. That is a much smaller database than our database, the one that already exists within the service.

In terms of the suggestion that either we or the RCMP had an interest in creating a larger database of airline passengers, I have no interest in doing that. We are not doing that. Any information we receive will essentially, unless there is a hit, disappear after seven days. We won't have it. It'll be gone. There is no such database. I'm not sure how anybody could construe the legislation as allowing us to create one.

[Translation]

The Chair: You have a supplementary question Mr. Laframboise?

Mr. Mario Laframboise: Mr. Zaccardelli told us there were no databases, while you have told us you are creating one, but it is small. What guarantee is there that it will remain small? That is my first question.

My second question concerns the Privacy Commissioner who, supported by the Canadian Bar, is asking us to add a section whereby, pursuant to subsection (14), all files would be transferred to him.

Would you agree to giving the Privacy Commissioner additional authority, within the framework of this bill, and eliminating clause 107 entirely, as requested by the commissioner? If ever the public interest required it, this would allow the information to be made public under the Access to Information Act.

I will conclude with a comment. You say that I describe your system as ineffective; yet it was Ms. Fraser who wrote this. I will provide you with a copy of the text. She said:

We have found a pattern of inadequate information to support front-line officials and limited ability of national security information systems to inter-operate.

You inter-operate, but your ability to do so is limited. Those are not my words, but the words of the person responsible for auditing your operations.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Mr. Chair, I would like to comment on both points that were raised.

Nothing prevents Mr. Radwanski from conducting his checks; our databases and our files are accessible to him. Therefore, nothing infringes on the law. In the application of this bill, no one will have the right to hide information. In terms of what Ms. Fraser said, I did not claim that our systems are perfect, but I can say that they are very effective. The CPIC system is the model throughout the world. It has been around for 30 years and although it has some shortcomings, it is generally a very effective system.

In my view, the systems are able to inter-operate. We are able to exchange information very effectively. Can we make improvements? Yes. We are already making improvements with resources we obtained from the federal government. In that sense I agree, but I feel that the systems we have are very effective and respond very well to the requirements of our mandate.

Á (1105)

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Elcock.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, there are several points. One is in respect of the database that we will be creating. Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding, that database is not created from information we receive from airlines or from anybody else; it's a smaller database created out of the database that we already have within the service, which contains information collected by the service or received from elsewhere. It is simply a small subset of that database; it is not a database that results from information received from airlines. I want to make sure that's understood.

In terms of the ability to move information, I only had a chance to glance at the Auditor General's remarks and I'm not sure which system she was referring to. I have no reason to believe that she was referring to any of the systems between the RCMP and CSIS; in fact, I suspect, from glancing quickly at the remarks, that she wasn't. So I'm not sure that the comments are of any relevance in respect to the communications between the RCMP and CSIS. We have good systems to move information back and forth between us and communicate information pretty constantly between us.

There was one other point, which now has escaped me.

The Chair: Let me move on to Mrs. Jennings, and I'm sure we'll get back to it.

Mrs. Jennings.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Merci, madame la présidente.

Thank you very much for your presentations. Given what appears to be some confusion or disagreement about the proposed sections 4.81 and 4.82, the information that you'll be able to require from the air carriers in that, I'd like to move to another area, which I think has become even more pertinent, and that's the issue of governance and oversight mechanisms of your various agencies.

Mr. Elcock, as the director of CSIS, you have quite a bit of oversight. You have the inspector general, you have legislative prohibitions on what your agency can and cannot do, you have ministerial directives that also will limit what you can and cannot do--and when I say “you” I'm talking about the agency--and you have SIRC. Therefore, whatever powers Bill C-17 provides you that you did not already have, or whatever existing powers it enhances, there are oversight mechanisms that already exist.

RCMP, I'd like to know what your oversight mechanisms are. There's the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, which has a certain amount of powers, and there's the privacy commissioner. What else?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: My minister. That's who I report to.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: The ministerial directions?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Absolutely, in certain cases, and the courts, the judicial system.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: No.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: I'm sorry, but I can't dismiss the courts. I hope that wasn't meant that way, but--

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: No, I neglected to mention the courts. When I said that, I meant you're right and I neglected to mention that for CSIS.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Thank you.

Yes, and of course there is my responsibility as the commissioner. I am responsible for and accountable for the RCMP and I take that job very seriously.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: You made a statement to one of the members on the issue of the privacy commissioner and Auditor General having access to all the information and therefore in their particular mandate they have complete oversight authority under their legislation. Does the RCMP Public Complaints Commission have complete access to investigating a complaint that has come before them, complete access to all reports, data, and information that is directly related to that complaint?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: They have access to all the information unless there's a confidentiality or there are certain court orders that prohibit the disclosure of certain information. So in general, they have access. If somebody complains, we investigate everything relative to that complaint, and then we provide them...but in certain cases some information is restricted. This has been dealt with by the Federal Court. The Federal Court has ruled on what they do have or don't have access to, given their quasi-judicial powers as a body. As a rule, they have access to all the information.

Á (1110)

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Can you provide me with that Federal Court judgment?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Yes, I can.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: I'd appreciate that. Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Duchesneau, in your agency, what external mechanisms of governance and oversight are applied, apart from the Privacy Commissioner and the Auditor General? It could involve a mechanism, an individual or employees whose security classification your agency has to rate. Are there external or internal mechanisms that allow for complaints to be filed should your agency abuse its powers or fail to use them properly?

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau: Mr. Chair, we apply several mechanisms, internally or externally, the primary one being the legislation. CATSA's incorporating legislation is very clear on this. The Auditor General follows our actions closely, given that we are a new agency. We already met this week to discuss the framework of the inspections we will be subject to over the next year.

The minister's directives are, in my view, very clear also. What is special about CATSA is that it has a board of directors of eleven people from the field, people who represent airline companies or our airports, and people appointed by the government; they all have a lot of experience. We did a quick calculation of the number of years of air transportation experience that the people around this table have and came up with a total of 300.

The information will never come to CATSA, but will go through the intelligence group at Transport Canada. We recently created a position for a director of ethics and values; this person acts as an ombudsman for all activities that affect employees at headquarters. Moreover, even if we contract out to security companies, this also affects the activities of the 3,000 pre-boarding search officers. Finally, we have a corporate council, which scrutinizes our activities each day.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Thank you.

Do I still have time?

The Chair: No, but if you insist on asking a supplementary question, I will allow it. I have been rather generous up to now.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: I want to come back to the same topic.

The Chair: Ask your supplementary question, Mrs. Jennings.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: I just want to make sure I have understood the explanation given.

[English]

Mr. Alcock, Mr. Zaccardelli, if I understand correctly, you already have information that lists individuals whom CSIS has identified as either terrorists or suspected terrorists or individuals against whom there is reasonable grounds to believe that they represent a threat to Canada's national security or to air transportation security or transportation security. And, Mr. Zaccardelli, you already have access or lists of individuals against whom outstanding warrants exist, regardless of whether that outstanding warrant is a failure to appear before a judge because there's a trial going on or whatever. This bill will allow you to simply verify the information that is contained on airline passenger lists whether or not the individuals whom you have already identified in your files from previous investigations or that proceed from other law enforcement agencies across the world...if those names appear on the list. You could do it right now without this bill, and you do do it, but you have a couple of extra steps in order to be able to do that verification. Am I correct?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Certainly, we already have information with respect to people of concern to us under the definition in the act, in particular in this case from paragraph (c) of section 2 of the act, which is essentially the part of the act referring to terrorism.

In other respects, we indeed generate lists of people of concern to us. We already provide watch lists of people entering Canada, so the database we would create would, in some sense, be entirely comparable with those lists. It would be created from our broader database of information about people of concern to us.

Á (1115)

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: And the difference is?

The Chair: Madame Jennings, I'm sorry. I have to respect somewhat the other members who have not yet participated, unless the commissioner has something to add.

If not, I'll move on to Mr. Comartin.

Mr. Comartin, please.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Mr. Duchesneau, I think it was last month that the Senate put out a report expressing very serious concern about baggage and mail added to flights—perhaps not passenger baggage, but additional pieces put on a flight. In the report, they found that screening was almost non-existent and that, in their opinion, organized crime had taken advantage of it.

Do you have any comments on this, and if you share their concerns, what plans do you have to deal with it?

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau: ICAO has issued a directive that 100% of all checked baggage should be done by January 1. I can tell you that CATSA is way ahead of schedule to meet this target.

The Senate also compares Canada with the United States. We learned in The New York Times today that even the TSA in the United States does not comply with 100% checked baggage—only with equipment. We do the same thing. I think the Senate was referring to the fact that the equipment should be doing the job completely, but there are other ways of doing it, such as by the use of dogs and hand searches, depending on the airports.

As I said, we're right on schedule, and even ahead of it. We will meet this target of January 1, 2006, set by ICAO.

Mr. Chair, my vice-president of operations just came back from different countries around the world, and I can assure you that we are away ahead of most countries, even the ones known to be good on security. I am proud to tell you this.

Mr. Joe Comartin: So you're saying that by January 2006 every piece of luggage and every piece of other cargo, if I can put it that way, will in fact be checked.

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau: Mr. Chair, I'm talking about checked baggage brought by passengers—not cargo. On cargo, we're working with Transport Canada to address this problem, which is a different problem.

Mr. Joe Comartin: I want to know about the baggage that's not checked, the cargo, if we're going to use that term. How much of it is being checked right now? How much of it, or what percentage of it, is being tested or surveilled right now?

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau: I don't know the exact amount. As I say, we need to understand that Transport Canada is the regulator. We only have six mandates, and cargo is not one of them. I know that Transport Canada has a committee looking at that, and they're addressing the problem with other countries in the world, but cargo is not part of our mandate right now.

Mr. Joe Comartin: So you can't tell us?

Mr. Jacques Duchesneau: No.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Commissioner Zaccardelli, the Auditor General indicated in her report today that you're in the process of bringing CPIC up to date, yet in response to the questions from Mr. Laframboise, you were saying that in fact it is quite efficace. I'm hearing some contradiction between those two statements.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Mr. Chair, I don't think there's a contradiction. CPIC has been in existence for 30 years. It still is a best practice around the world, but it simply became old. It was working very well, and we were very lucky to get $114 million from the federal government to modernize it and to enhance its capacity.

So it still works very well. I think that almost 99% of the time it works. It is the workhorse of law enforcement in this country, and thus works very well. We're modernizing it, which is what that $114 million is all about. We have had some dead spots or down times, so we are bringing in new technology and enhancing the system's capability. That's what we're actually doing.

Á (1120)

Mr. Joe Comartin: When will it be complete?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: While I don't have the dates, I think we're looking at about 2004. There's a phased-in schedule, and I think it'll be completed in 2004.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Is this the system that will receive the data transfer from the airline?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: CPIC is one of four databanks in the RCMP. If this information is allowed to come to us electronically, we will check it against the four databanks. So it will be matched against those four.

Mr. Joe Comartin: This question is to both you and Mr. Elcock.

How many people will actually have physical contact with the system over the seven-day period before the data are destroyed—not just agents or analysts, but people who sweep and vacuum the floor and the people who service the computers?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Well, it depends. If there are no hits over the seven days, we never see it. Nobody will ever see it.

Mr. Joe Comartin: That's not my question. How many people have access to it over the seven-day period, not that they would necessarily go in and do it? I just want to know who could go to that system and have access to it.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Just a very few designated people.

Remember, we haven't started working with this yet, so we don't know how many people we will actually need. But it is restricted to a very few people who will actually get the information, do the follow-ups, and then decide who also has to be advised of the information.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Are a very few a handful, five or less, or ten, twenty, or a hundred?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Mr. Chair, I wish I could give you a number, but it's a lot fewer than 100. I don't know the exact numbers yet.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, the number of people who would have access to it would be only those people designated. Unless you have a need to know a particular set of information, the way our systems work is that you can't get access to it. Whether they sweep the floors or go on the computer, nobody would have a right of access or an ability to get access to the information beyond those designated.

To some extent, the number of people who will actually be designated depends on how many hits we will get out of the system. If it turns out that we get relatively few hits, the number of people we'll need to designate will be commensurately small. If it turns out that we get more hits, then obviously we may need more people to do the follow-up work to ensure we have an important hit, as distinct from an irrelevant accidental hit.

Mr. Joe Comartin: Will this system be serviced from within your agency, or will outside people service it if it crashes?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Our systems are maintained by people within the service. We do have some people on contract, who are cleared by us and subject to the other requirements of CSIS, such as a polygraph, and so on.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Comartin.

Monsieur Proulx.

[Translation]

Mr. Marcel Proulx (Hull—Aylmer, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for appearing before us today. My two questions are mostly for you, Mr. Commissioner, and for you, Mr. director.

This entire bill focusses on transportation security to prevent any incidents on a specific flight or flights at certain times. One of the issues that keeps coming up is the information that you would retain for seven days. I have to agree with my colleague, Mr. Laframboise, when he says you are going to create a database, because if you retain this information for seven days, you will have a database that you could search for seven days.

Why seven days? Why not 24 hours? After 24 hours, the flight has concluded. If nothing happened on the flight, you destroy the information instead of keeping it another six days, and using it when there is a risk. Why seven days and not one?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: That is an excellent question and I know it has been raised on other occasions. In my view, seven days is the minimum amount of time that we need. It all depends on the situation. It is possible that the information can be processed in 24 hours, but there could be times when a maximum of seven days is needed to verify the information. When there is a hit we have to begin investigating and looking into contacting other people. Checking all this out can take time.

Á (1125)

Mr. Marcel Proulx: But if there is no hit, as you call it, on flight 222 from Vancouver to Toronto, why keep the information for six more days?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: If there is no hit, we do not keep it.

Mr. Marcel Proulx: Excuse me, but that is not what you told us. You told us that under the legislation, you would keep the information for seven days. I assume the information is given to you on the day the flight departs. Am I wrong?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: If we receive the information, it stays there. It may be necessary, for other investigations, to re-examine the information. The information exists in a database for seven days, after which, it is destroyed. If we do not need this information, it remains in the database and we do not have access. It is not necessary to examine the information. We only do so when there are hits.

Mr. Marcel Proulx: Yes, except that you have access to the information for seven days.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: As I said earlier, there may be circumstances under which it is necessary to go back and do research using this information. For example, it the event of a crisis like that which took place in Washington, it may take three or four days to search through the information contained in the database.

Mr. Marcel Proulx: My second question deals specifically with the next stage, which is the research. From what I understand about the system, the information contained in the database comes from the airlines, and there is an electronic verification that is done. If there are no hits, nothing happens. If there is a hit that indicates that there is someone on board who has bad intentions or a bad reputation, you pull the list of passengers from that flight and start your investigation; you check who is on board that airplane and what exists on those people.

Then we come to the famous issue of the mandates. If you discover that there is a mandate for someone for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term of five years or more, you use the information. If it is less than five years, you cannot use the information. However, you reminded us earlier that peace officers, when they know there is a warrant, have the responsibility to act. Does this responsibility of officers to act—I am not referring to the legislation—apply for all mandates, or only those involving a crime punishable by imprisonment for more than five years?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: It applies to all warrants. However, warrants punishable by imprisonment of less than five years, will not come up and there will be no hit. As a result, we will never have access to that information.

Mr. Marcel Proulx: I am sorry, but if you investigate the list of passengers on board a flight, you will check each person. The first thing you will do is go into CPIC and look up Marcel Proulx. If there are six Marcel Proulx with criminal records and there are arrest warrants for four of them, that is going to show up on your system. I am not saying that it will show up in the transport system, but it will show up in your system, Mr. Commissioner.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: No, it will no appear, because the only persons who will come up are people who have already been identified because there is a problem related to security and because they can be linked to terrorism.

Mr. Marcel Proulx: The name of the murderer who escaped from prison, who has not been identified by the National Security Directorate or the Transportation Safety Board of Canada?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: If there are 300 people on a flight, it is possible that there could be a hit for two people. In such a case, we will only work on these two people. We will not investigate or do research on the 298 others. If there is a hit on one person on the flight, we will not try to obtain information on the other passengers.

Mr. Marcel Proulx: I do not think that that is what the Canadian Bar Association and Mr. Radwanski understand.

Thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Merci.

Mr. Barnes.

Mr. Rex Barnes: Thank you very much.

As you can see, gentlemen, there's a lot of difference in interpretation of what should and shouldn't be. Being the heads of the major police elements in this country, you can of course see why there's such debate on this bill and why there are some concerns.

Since Mr. Elcock's interpretation and your interpretation, Commissioner, are so different from what we interpreted from the bill, I'm just wondering if you could go through what you see your job will be when all of a sudden you find a match between a criminal element and the database. You can use me as an example. If I'm a criminal element who gets spotted on the database, how you will perceive this and what you will be doing under this act? Will we be okay under this act?

Á (1130)

Mr. Ward Elcock: I think that's a question addressed to the commissioner. I don't do criminals.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: He just does terrorists.

Mr. Rex Barnes: The interpretation we got today is totally different from what we anticipated. There's such a big difference in what you feel your powers are.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Working on the assumption that there's a hit and there's a warrant for somebody who's wanted for murder or for somebody who can go to prison for more than five years, the designated person will see that. The system will have a hit, and it will pop up. So if there's a warrant for this person, a warrant for Rex Barnes, he will then go to our computer system and verify that this the case.

He will then call the agency. If Rex Barnes is from Newfoundland, it's the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary. If they have the warrant for Rex Barnes, he will then contact the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary to verify that it is still a valid warrant.

So now he has identified a person, and he identifies the originator of that warrant. It ensures that the information on the system is correct and is not going to be subjected to an Auditor General report or a finding that it's not correct.

If the warrant is in Newfoundland and you are on your way to Edmonton, we verify that it is a legitimate warrant, and then the designated person will call Edmonton city police, because you are going to land in their jurisdiction. The designated person will advise the police in Edmonton that there is a Rex Barnes who's wanted for murder in Newfoundland, it's a legitimate warrant, and he's coming into your area. They then have the information, and they will act on that and execute the arrest.

So how that would happen is a normal process, and then the justice system will look after you.

Mr. Rex Barnes: If I'm a terrorist, does it go to your territory, Mr. Elcock?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Yes.

Mr. Rex Barnes: If I'm a terrorist....

Your interpretation is totally different from what we felt it should have been under the act. As a result, as I said before in these hearings, I don't know if terrorists are going to use their own name with regard to travel, unless there are so many aliases, as they may be aware of. Do you see the same procedure happening the same way?

Mr. Ward Elcock: It's a little bit different in the sense that we're not dealing with a warrant situation. We will have a list of names, and in many cases it will have aliases and different spellings, and so on. The systems are capable of picking up most of that.

If indeed your name matches somebody on our list of, if you will, terrorists, then we would communicate that information to the RCMP. The RCMP would have to decide, and we would provide them with some advice in terms of the seriousness of the individual and the potential threat to the airplane, and so on and so forth.

There would have to be, then, a decision about what action needed to be taken, whether it was a case that would suggest to the RCMP that they should put an officer on the airplane, whether there was authority to arrest the individual, whether there was a situation in which they would simply require additional searching of all passengers, and in particular, attention to the individual in question. There'd be a number of solutions, but it would be up to the RCMP ultimately what course of action to follow.

Á (1135)

Mr. Rex Barnes: What timeframe is reasonable to make sure this individual is apprehended? You get a seven-day grace period here. Where's this fellow going to be after his flight lands?

Mr. Ward Elcock: We would hope all of this would be done before the flight takes off, in the best of all possible worlds.

In respect of an earlier question, the point was made that in some cases people can buy a ticket very shortly before a flight. Since the systems are electronic, and the movement of the information is electronic, we should be able to take care of that, but obviously if somebody purchases a ticket immediately ahead of the flight, that will certainly put the pressure on us, and ultimately the RCMP, to be ready to act before the flight takes off.

The Chair: Colleagues, we'll move into a second round. With the time remaining, I'll be a little bit more forceful in the five-minute rounds.

Mr. Mahoney.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I'll talk fast.

Commissioner, you said you'll only check the individuals that the hits occur on. Would it not be reasonable to assume that if CSIS determined that Osama bin Laden was on an airplane, he might not be travelling alone and it might behoove all of you to check the entire manifest?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Yes, you're right. I did that.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: You would then discover warrants, that's all. I can't imagine that if a hit came up, you would only look at that one hit.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: It would depend on what information we have, if there's information on a hit. It might be a health and safety issue; it may not be a warrant at all. What if we find out somebody was carrying anthrax and the people next to them would become subject to a possible health hazard? We would have to check that. It would become our obligation.

Mr. Steve Mahoney: I have to interrupt you, because he's going to cut me off.

Because the system is not up and running yet, we perhaps don't understand how it's going to work exactly. We understand from our side, as members of Parliament who are the ones required to set the laws here, and you gentlemen, I don't need to tell you, are the ones required to enforce them. But the difficulty I'm having, and maybe this is because it's not up.... I think, Mr. Chairman, we're going to have to get some of the other officials in here to clear this up.

I'm sorry to harp on this, but when I read this statement, it says the commissioner or the director “may, for the purposes of transportation security, require any air carrier or operator of an aviation...system...within the time and in the manner specified”, which is interesting, because it then connotes that there is a time requirement to answer the request, as opposed to a continuous electronic flow that's being checked on every aircraft and every person flying in the country, internationally or domestically. There is a time specified, and then you have to make the specific request.

So it might make your job, Mr. Elcock, particularly more difficult in that you're going to have to, on a day-by-day basis, take a look at criteria such as fuel load, destination, or whether the plane is going into an area where there's a potential for a serious terrorist attack. A fully loaded aircraft leaving Pearson flying Toronto-New York-Tokyo might be a plane you would identify, and there could be other things.

Also, Commissioner, you have to make decisions on when you would put APOs on board these aircraft. I'm assuming you don't make those decisions at the drop of a hat, that you would make them with some advance information. There may be requirements to change it if an emergency or something occurred, and you would get hold of the APO and tell him he's going on the other flight instead, because you have data, you have information.

What we want to do is give Canadians a sense that there is security in this country, but that the information gathering is not so pervasive that their private lives will be unduly scrutinized. If there is one thing I agree with the privacy commissioner on, it's that principle. I may not agree when there's hysteria and with some of the accusations, but I do agree with that principle.

You're giving us a different interpretation from what we expect you as law enforcement and investigative employees to undertake. That's what we expect you to do. I think I can say that. I mean, Parliament hasn't passed this, so it's not law yet. But that's our intent here.

So, frankly, I hope you can find a way to live within those requirements. Do you think you can? There's my question.

Á (1140)

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Mr. Chair, I have to disagree with the premise that we are going on a fishing expedition and checking everybody. The only few people that I'm interested in are people who might be a threat to the security of this country--which comes to me most of the time through our association with CSIS and Mr. Elcock--and those few people who do travel, unfortunately, and have outstanding warrants for very, very serious crimes. Those are the only few people. Nobody else.

I don't want to see and I don't--

Mr. Steve Mahoney: It's how you get the information. That's the question.

The Chair: Let the commissioner speak, and I'll ask Mr. Elcock, because, you were right earlier, I'm going to cut you off.

Mr. Commissioner.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: As I said, the system will only pop up those very few people who are a serious concern to us and a serious concern to the Canadian travelling public, who pose a threat to the security and have committed serious crimes in this country. Those are the only few people who would actually pop up and whom we will ever actually see and act on.

The Chair: Director Elcock.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, my understanding of the legislation is obviously not the same as the member's. I don't presume to provide legal advice to the committee; the committee will have to make its own judgments. But our understanding of the proposed section and what it would allow us to do certainly contemplates the way in which we would intend to manage the process.

The Chair: We'll have to clear that up.

Mr. Lunn.

Mr. Gary Lunn: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to actually stay focused on this proposed subsection 4.82(4), but from a slightly different angle. There is obviously some disagreement on the interpretation of the subsection from Mr. Mahoney.

Obviously, as a committee, when we do the clause-by-clause study we're going to have to actually define specifically what that means and what the intent of Parliament is, so there is no ambiguity.

Having said that—that'll be the job in front of us—I want to ask you this. Some people call this a “fishing expedition”; I think that's a bit of a stretch. If you're going to do your job, there are two ways to look at this. One is that you take all of the airline information—all the flights, all the time. It goes through electronically, and you get these hits saying we have a potential immediate high-risk hazard on this flight—we have a known terrorist, or we have five known terrorists. Red flags come up all over the place and you trigger the advance mechanisms.

The other option would be that you're going to have to do a certain amount of intelligence, saying we know that terrorists are probably going to be moving into Toronto, or they're going to be moving into Halifax from Toronto, so we need the data on the Toronto-Halifax flights. In other words, you're going to have to do a lot of intelligence beforehand to start targeting specific flights.

I want your comments not on what's in here, but on which way you think it should be, and why, and why it's not too much of an infringement on the individual's privacy. That's the concern.

The only valid concerns that have been raised to me are on some of the extra data in the PNR database in which, as you've clearly identified, you're not interested anyhow. You're looking for probably a name and a date of birth, or whatever. As opposed to what's here, what do you think should be there, for when we have to answer that question in the months ahead of us?

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, as I think I said in response to the earlier question, what is there contemplates what we intend to do in terms of managing this process.

Mr. Gary Lunn: If I could just interrupt you for a minute, I don't care what is here; I want to know what you think it should be. Let's not try to interpret this. That's something we're going to have to do down the road. I want you to answer what you think it should be, forgetting what is there.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, if the goal is try to ensure that people of concern as potential terrorists don't travel on Canadian airlines, the only effective way to make that work is a system like the one I described to you. Otherwise, it becomes hit-and-miss, and it is at best a risk management. In any case, it's possible somebody might be travelling under an identity we don't know, or something else might have obscured their identity.

The reality is, if we want to make as effective a system as we can, this is the way to make it as effective as possible. As to whether that's an interference with people's privacy rights, I don't believe it is an unwarranted interference with people's privacy rights. As the commissioner said, and I may have said earlier, too, we're really interested in the hits; we're not interested in the rest of the information. It's there in the ether; it flows through the system. If there's a hit, it will come out and it will require further investigation by us and the RCMP to allow us to make air travel in Canada safer.

Á (1145)

Mr. Gary Lunn: Mr. Zaccardelli, please.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: I couldn't have said it better. I totally agree with Mr. Elcock.

You gave two scenarios. The last scenario you gave is actually what we do now. We try to get the best information, the best intelligence, and then act on that. If we need access to that information, we have to have reasonable, probable grounds to get search warrants, and so on.

That is what we have now. Unfortunately, that doesn't enable us to cover every flight. Unless we have access to that information in a timely manner and get all the information, we can't respond and minimize the risk, because as Mr. Elcock says, we can never do 100%. The process we've described will enable us to minimize it and provide more security in this country.

The Chair: Mrs. Jennings.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Very briefly, to build on Mr. Lunn's question, basically what you say you need is legislative dispositions that will allow you to compare lists that you already have of people who have been identified either as being under warrant for offences of five years or more or as a security risk to Canada or to air transportation. You want to compare those lists of persons that you've already identified with any and all air carrier passenger lists. That's what you want to see in the legislation. I don't want to get into whether proposed section 4.81 or 4.82 allows you to do that. But that's what you're saying you need to be able to do.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: That's right, Mr. Chairman.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Okay, thank you.

The Chair: Monsieur Laframboise.

[Translation]

Mr. Mario Laframboise: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question has three parts.

First, the Privacy Commissioner, backed by the Canadian Bar Association and other stakeholders, made the following request.

—the recommendation made by the Privacy Commissioner, who said that he should receive copies of any files created under paragraph 4.82(14). Thanks to this measure, the independent organization will ensure that the information is only kept for the necessary period.

Therefore, he would like his powers to be well-defined in this legislation.

Ms. Fraser was not sure that her powers were defined when it comes to auditing your work. The Information Commissioner of Canada asked us to strike clause 107. According to him, under the current Access to Information Act, there are secret files and there are provisions that prevent files from being disclosed. I would like to quote him because his text is very clear in this regard:

Clause 107, if adopted, would make it mandatory for such information to be kept secret forever—end of story—and surely that's not reasonable in a healthy democracy.

If we made changes to clause 107 and gave the commissioner more powers, and included the Privacy Commissioner and the Auditor General in the legislation, would you be comfortable, given that based on what you have said, you simply want to have a database and be able to pull up dangerous people? Would you be open to us changing the wording?

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Elcock.

Mr. Ward Elcock: Mr. Chairman, as I think earlier comments have pointed out, we are, as a service, subject to a number of forms of review. To just quickly catalogue them, SIRC has access to every bit of material we have and is capable of reviewing all of that material at any time, in respect of a complaint made or on its own motion, if it will. We are also subject to review by the inspector general on behalf of the minister. We are also subject to review by the Auditor General. I am not sure what she means by saying that she's not sure whether she access to information or not. I haven't talked to her. I know no reason to believe that she does not have access to information that we possess. We're also subject to review by the access to information commissioner and the privacy commissioner.

I can't see any value-added to the proposal by the privacy commissioner in terms of additional review in respect of CSIS. I just don't see the value-added.

Á (1150)

The Chair: Mr. Commissioner.

[Translation]

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Mr. Chair, I think I already answered this question earlier, but I will repeat that Mr. Radwanski and Ms. Fraser have access to all of the information that we possess. If we have information that is covered by their mandate, Mr. Radwanski and his office have access to this information. Nothing is preventing them from having access and auditing. This is also the case for Ms. Fraser. So, I do not see what this type of amendment would add to the bill.

The Chair: Mr. Laframboise.

Mr. Mario Laframboise: Mr. Chair, if the Information Commissioner asked us for further clarifications, it is because he felt that, under the bill, he did not have the latitude or the leeway he required. If we were to give him what he wanted, would you be for or against that? That is all I want to know.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: If my memory serves me well, it was Mr. Radwanski himself who mentioned that he had no problem regarding access to this information. I do not really care. It us up to Parliament to decide what sort of powers it will confer to Mr. Radwanski, but I believe he has all the powers necessary to access this information.

[English]

The Chair: For a final question, Mr. Barnes.

Mr. Rex Barnes: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have just one quick question. The database is kept for seven days. So you have 200 passengers on a plane that went from Toronto to Vancouver and three names are red-flagged from all of that list. What would be the purpose of keeping the other 197 for seven days--well, for the remaining period?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: Mainly for possible follow-up investigation. Once there's a crash, it might take three, four, or five days for part of the investigation to get back to that information to verify and check and so on. So there are potential circumstances where we would need access to go back to that information if something happened. That's why in our view seven days is an absolute minimum. It is a minimum, in my view.

The Chair: Given the brevity, I'll go to Mrs. Jennings for a final question.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Mr. Zaccardelli, I just want to clarify what appears to be a confusion between you and Mr. Laframboise.

Mr. Laframboise was referring specifically to a recommendation of Mr. Reid, the information commissioner, where he suggests clause 107 of Bill C-17 be withdrawn, because present provisions of the Access to Information Act are sufficient to protect against disclosure of information that might cause a prejudice, and that clause 106 be amended so as to clearly state that disclosure is permitted if access to information permits and requires. He says sections 13, 15, 16, 17 and 20 in the access to information legislation provides the legislative framework to protect information.

What Mr. Laframboise was asking had nothing to do with Mr. Radwanski; it had to do with Mr. Reid, who has asked us to recommend or to allow an amendment to withdraw clause 107 and to amend clause 106 of Bill C-17. If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Laframboise wanted to know what you thought about that recommendation by the access to information commissioner, Mr. John Reid.

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: If I misunderstood Mr. Laframboise, I apologize. Can you repeat Mr. Reid's recommendation here? I'm not clear on what his recommendation was.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: May I?

Mr. Giuliano Zaccardelli: But my bottom line position is that I have no objection to as many people getting access.... I'm not interested in restricting that information. Whatever information we have can be made accessible within the laws. Obviously the public would have restricted access and so on, but whether it's the privacy commissioners or other officials of Parliament, they certainly are welcome to have access to examine our reports and whatever we keep here. I have no objection in general to that at all.

Does that generally answer your question?

Á (1155)

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Yes, but I would suggest that your legal counsel may wish to look at the transcript of Mr. Reid's appearance before us and the recommendations and to determine if you have an opinion on that. The RCMP may not have an opinion, but if you do have an opinion, perhaps you could forward it to the committee through the chair.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Mrs. Jennings.

In closing, on behalf of the committee, let me thank each of our witnesses this morning for their participation. As you can see, the committee has done a fair amount of work, but we have a great deal more to do yet. So thank you very much for your contribution, all of you, this morning.

This meeting is adjourned.