ADDRESS BY BRIAN FLEMMING, CHAIRMAN, TO THE CALGARY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

November 20, 2002
Calgary, Alberta

Thank you very much and good afternoon.

First of all, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and congratulate the Chamber for its 110 years of service to Calgary and the economic development of this dynamic and exciting community.

The Calgary Chamber has a rich and storied history, whereas the organization which I chair is still very much in its infancy. Nevertheless, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, or CATSA, does have a paramount responsibility for protecting air travelers and Canadians across this country, and ensuring that the skies over Calgary and the rest of Canada are safe and secure. And so, with that in mind, I welcome this opportunity to mark and outline some of CATSA's early milestones and accomplishments, and to peer into the future at the prospects for aviation security in Canada and around the world.

As you are all aware, CATSA was conceived in the whirlwind of security activity following the barbaric terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. We have all put the mind-numbing events of that terrible day behind us and moved on with our lives.

But, just as everyone in my generation remembers where they were the day President Kennedy was shot, for a newer generation, everyone --- including all in this room --- will never be able to forget where they were, and how they felt, when those hijacked planes slammed into the New York skyscrapers.

In my case, that late summer day was destined to be a memorable one even before all the carnage took place because, on that morning, I endured the emotionally exhausting experience of taking my 91-year-old mother to a nursing home.

When one of my sisters and I arrived at the home --- a new and welcoming facility --- a large cluster of elderly residents were gathered in a corner of the lobby, riveted to the TV set. I turned to my sister and said, "My God, is that what they do here in the morning, sit here and watch TV?" Then, one of them turned to us and said, "You better see this."

I stepped up to the TV and saw the North Tower of the World Trade Center engulfed in flames. A few minutes later, in real time, I watched the second plane knife into the South Tower, creating a huge fireball. We all sat there, immobilized, for sometime, transfixed by the images that are now seared into the world's collective consciousness.

These swift and brutal acts not only reduced the towering symbols of America's economic might to smoldering rubble and snuffed out thousands of innocent lives; they destroyed our most basic assumptions about our own security and left us feeling more vulnerable than ever. Tragically, they were and remain an historic watershed.

Up until 9/11, we naively believed that attacks on commercial airplanes only happened in distant lands, not here in North America. As well, we assumed that airplane hijackers wanted to survive their criminal acts.

What 9/11 taught us - in the most shockingly stark way possible - was that yes, it can happen here and to us. And yes, there are suicidal fanatics who are prepared to kill themselves and untold numbers of other people in the air and on the ground in an attempt to advance their particular ideological ends.

Even though these terrible acts were perpetrated against the United States, we in Canada should be under no illusions. It could happen to us. We have been a target in the past. We know that we could be a target in the future.

It is a little remembered fact, but in 1985, Canada suffered what the Guinness Book of Records listed for many years as the worst-ever single terrorist attack in history.

In June of that year, two pieces of luggage were checked by a supposed passenger at Vancouver International Airport. Hours later, the first suitcase exploded at Tokyo's Narita airport killing two baggage handlers. Exactly 55 minutes later, the other bag exploded in the forward cargo hold of Air India Flight 182 as it approached the coast of Ireland. Three hundred and twenty-nine people were killed -- eighty-two of them children. The majority of those lost were Canadian citizens.

Almost immediately thereafter, provisions were put in place in our airports to match passengers and their luggage on international flights - a move not taken in many other countries, including the United States, until some years later.

Canada was also a forerunner - relative to the US - in implementing other measures designed to make our airports more secure. We banned curbside check-ins and put a stop to the time-honored tradition of relatives and friends meeting arriving passengers at the gate. We took these steps many years ago, long before 9/11 forced the Americans to follow suit.

Notwithstanding our brush with terrorism through the Air India explosion and the more stringent security measures put in place in its wake, the horrible events of September 11, 2001 radically raised the bar for aviation security. On September 12th, governments around the world reacted to the new, more perilous paradigm by beginning a process of re-examining, re-thinking and rebuilding their air transport security systems.

Here at home, the Canadian government moved swiftly: it announced immediate and further measures to bolster security at all our airports; it also directed security policy makers to develop a long-range plan for the highest level of air transport security services possible.

Out of this review came CATSA, the agency I now chair. We are an arm's length, independent Crown corporation accountable through the Minister of Transport to Parliament and all Canadians.

The creation of CATSA was the centerpiece of an ambitious $2.2 billion commitment over five years to enhanced air security that was prominently featured in the December 2001 Budget.

And to illustrate just how seriously the government took these new threats to Canadian air transportation, our organization went from concept, to legislation, to funding, to operations in just five short months.

When I arrived in Ottawa to set up shop on the morning of last April 2nd - along with my excellent Vice Chair, Ghislaine Richard of Montreal - we had no office, no board, no staff, no money, no phones, no nothing.

Today, nearly eight months later, we have a staff of about 75 people; we are about to move into permanent quarters; we have a full board of directors appointed from every region of the country - with a strong contingent from western Canada, I should add; and we recently appointed CATSA's first President and CEO - Jacques Duchesneau, an experienced security hand and the respected former Chief of the Montreal police force.

We are on-schedule, or ahead of schedule, in assuming our mandate.

CATSA has taken over the responsibility for paying the approximately 3,000 pre-board screening employees required in our 89 designated airports. As of January 1, 2003, all of these screeners will have undergone training to upgrade their skills to CATSA standards.

In addition, CATSA will introduce a new multi-level training and certification program for all screeners - also to take effect the first of the New Year. These screening agents will not be government employees; rather, they will be employed by individual security companies who themselves, will be on contract to CATSA.

CATSA also is responsible for the purchase, deployment, operation and maintenance of new explosives detection systems - or EDS in the vernacular - and other security equipment at airports. New pre-board screening equipment has been installed at most major airports across the country to test for explosives. In addition, at key airports serving U. S. destinations, CATSA has installed hold baggage screening equipment and has recently completed a deployment plan for the remaining airports.

As well, the agency works closely with the RCMP on the Canadian Air Carrier Protective Program, which places armed officers - Aircraft Protective Officers (APOs) - on board selected domestic and international flights. We also provide funding to support increased airport policing by municipal and provincial police agencies as well as by the RCMP.

And, recently the Hon. David Collenette, Minister of Transport, expanded CATSA's mandate in two additional areas. CATSA now has the responsibility to work with industry stakeholders to enhance the restricted area pass system for our airports and is as well as the responsibility for the screening of non-passengers entering our airports' restricted areas. These include all non-passengers such as flight crews and other airline personnel, airport employees, refuelers, caterers, aircraft groomers, maintenance personnel and so on. The program will incorporate the use of biometric technologies such as iris recognition as well as fingerprint/hand scan and facial recognition systems, some of which are now in place in several airports in the US.

That's the present and the past. Now, what about the future? What does the future hold for airport security in Canada, and globally for that matter? As someone once said, prediction is a very difficult art -- especially with respect to the future!

Will the formidable arsenal of high-tech gadgetry that I just alluded to render our air security systems impenetrable and impervious to attack? Will machines go 'beep' when they spot a potential terrorist and "beep, beep" when they spot a real one? Can we imagine a future where we are safely wrapped up in some technological cocoon that will protect us from all such threats forevermore?

If only it were that simple! We all know that it isn't.

As sophisticated as the technology may be, and I am not for one minute diminishing the utility of the security technologies we are putting in place, they are, after all, machines. They are our tools. We can never forget that we will always need human beings to operate them, human beings to interpret the data, and, most importantly, human beings to actually physically prevent terrorists from realizing their plans. That is why we at CATSA place great emphasis on the training and certification of screeners, as I mentioned earlier in my remarks.

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

Our job in the airport security business, in the new environment, is quite straightforward really: do everything we can to stop the terrorists before they can achieve their murderous goals.

I have every confidence that the men and women who will soon wear the CATSA uniform will be up to that job. A motivated and highly-trained workforce; stable and adequate funding; state-of-the-art screening equipment - with these vitally important instruments, along with our partners in the air travel industry and the police and security communities, I believe that we will soon create a safer, more secure and therefore, more competitive and financially viable air transportation system in Canada.

Thank you.