Notes for a speech by Jacques Duchesneau President and Chief Executive Officer
Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA)

First Aid: not something you learn but a way of thinking

"Safety at Heart"
Safety Awareness Week at
Pratt and Whitney Canada

November 8, 2004
Montreal

Mr. Emile,
Ms. German
Ms. Normand,
Mr. Khan,
Ms. Lambert,

Dear employees of Pratt and Whitney,

First, I want to say that it is an honour to be invited to speak to you during your safety awareness week, the theme of which is "safety at heart". I don't feel at all out of place here, since I am of course familiar with the world of aviation, and I have devoted my whole working life to security and safety. I am also pleased to see my friends from St John Ambulance, your partners in first aid. I remember them well from the days when I served as Montreal 's chief of police.

Impassive witnesses at Dic Ann's

Being here with you in this cafeteria sets the scene for my first little story. One day in 2001, two years after my term as police chief ended, I was having a hamburger and fries in one of those nice little health food restaurants, a Dic Ann's. Suddenly I heard a noise at the front. I asked a guy who was just sitting down next to me if he knew what was going on. "Oh," he said, "someone just collapsed".

I couldn't believe the calm, detached tone in which he said this. I jumped out of my seat and without a moment's hesitation I started to apply cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. The man on the ground had had a heart attack, and none of the dozen customers in the restaurant had gone to his aid. They were all just watching, as if frozen.

I'm not telling you this in order to blow my own horn. Another person could have done what I did, but if someone had not acted, that man would have died. Happily, he was saved.

The point of telling this story is to remind us all of the importance of the first aid courses provided by St John Ambulance. Anyone, anywhere, can choke, burn himself or herself, fall, faint or have a heart attack. My message to you in this regard is that we must conquer our fears. And in saying that, I speak from experience.

Overcoming our fears: that is the challenge

When I first started out as a police constable at the age of about 20, I worked as an ambulance driver. You may not believe me, but every time I drove injured people and heard them groaning at the back of the ambulance, I would clench my fists around the steering wheel and step on the gas to get to the hospital as fast as possible. I couldn't deal with pain. But I didn't run away.

I know that today many people think "If I haven't taken first aid and there's an incident, someone else will come to the rescue". Well, that's the worst possible way of thinking about it. It's like a CEO not making a decision and instead shifting the burden of action onto others. It doesn't make sense, and it's risky.

Alain Bellemare's reaction is the correct reaction

According to data from the CSST, fewer than 1 in 50 employees of large companies have taken a first aid course. This is very distressing. It's not nearly enough. Every year in Quebec , about 60,000 people are trained in first aid, but that's really not very many.

I'm speaking to you here today to promote safety and first aid but I also want to tell you that your president, Alain Bellemare, is an innovator in this area. Last April, while working out on the treadmill in his basement, he was watching an episode of the program Découverte about cardiac arrest. It immediately occurred to him that he would not know what to do if someone had a heart attack right in front of him. And that gave him the idea of having his employees trained in first aid. My congratulations to him.

I also want to tell you that you are privileged to be working for Pratt and Whitney because it will soon become the first company in the world to have such an ambitious first aid program. Worldwide, 8,500 of you will receive training. This is a truly impressive number.

I am excited to think about the impact this program could have on other Canadian companies. Like Mr. Bellemare, I don't see first aid as simply a set of techniques to be learned. It's a culture, a way of thinking, a lifestyle. So once again, congratulations. You're lucky to be working here.

It's good that people are concerned about the fate of those in Rwanda , in Iraq , in Beslan, in Haiti . But it's just as admirable to be ready to save your neighbour when there's an accident.

I'd now like to look at three issues related to safety, drawing on my personal experience.

1. The Order of St John and the training of 125,000 police officers

When I was invited to speak to you, it was suggested that I go over my career and tell you about my vision of safety and security. So I will now do that, though in a somewhat disorganized way.

For me, safety is firmly linked to the Most Venerable Order of St John, of which I am proud to be a member. Have you heard of it? It was established in the year 1023 by knights who wanted to assist their Christian brothers. Ever since, cooperation and mutual aid have been the watchword of this organization.

As it happens, I have been a commander of the Order since 1995. When I tell people that, they always have one of two reactions. Either they think I'm some sort of preacher disguised as a former police chief, or else they imagine that I'm organizing the next St Jean Baptiste Day parade!

I'm always surprised to learn how few people know about the Order, despite its very real activities that are relevant to everyday life.

Thousands of St John Ambulance volunteers assist people who are down and out, and bring comfort to those who are suffering. They also work to improve health, safety and the quality of life.

Did you know that the organization has trained and recertified over 125,000 police officers over the past 35 years? The result is that every time there's a highway accident, an incident at the swimming pool, or someone has a heart attack and the police are involved, St John Ambulance is there in the background.

When I was police chief, I made sure that at least ten of my senior officers were members of the St John Ambulance Brigade or sat on the organization's board. Why? Because I believe in involvement, especially regular involvement. Because I think that every one of us, whether a police officer, an employee of a restaurant or library, or an employee of Pratt and Whitney, can be a first aider and do their part.

Think back to the horrifying events of September 11. What happened the next day? There was an unprecedented increase in blood donors. The Red Cross received over $3 million in individual donations. The United Way received $2.8 million. Almost all the financial institutions in the country set up special accounts to take donations for the families affected.

Major hospitals and organizations like St John Ambulance were also active in providing assistance. It was an example of people assisting on a very large scale. But what I would point out is that the flood of assistance occurred after the tragedy.

For me, 'before' is better than 'after'. I like it when people anticipate, and take preventive action.

Of course, no one could have prevented the events of September 11. But on an everyday basis we can prevent bad situations around us from degenerating.

Look at how my good friend Pierre Péladeau died. He collapsed in his office, cut down by stroke. Here was a man who was worth $1.3 billion but that did not change the outcome because none of the employees who were nearby knew what to do. By the time the ambulance arrived on the scene, his brain had not been receiving oxygen for several minutes.

Being a first aider means that you are always ready in a situation like this. You have a solution to deal with the emergency even if you panic for a couple of seconds before acting.

One of the women who used to work in my office saved her father on two occasions when he choked. She told me that the things she had learned during her first aid course automatically came back to her, as if she had just learned them. In both instances, an ambulance was on the way but would have arrived too late.

First aid in the workplace can save lives and reduce the ill effects of certain accidents. It can also play a preventive role, though it's hard to say to what extent first aid has preventive effects. I myself believe that someone with first aid training will serve as a sort of lookout in the workplace. When an employee takes a St John Ambulance course, he or she will encourage fellow employees to adopt safer behaviour, in a kind of domino effect.  

2. Reflections on the ice storm and the Montreal Polytechnic School

For my second point, I'll refer to the great ice storm of 1998 and to the killings at the Montreal Polytechnic School . From these events, I would draw three lessons about safety.

1. Never underestimate how bad a situation is

When the ice storm began on January 5, 1998 , it did not seem really serious. Only 160,000 Hydro Quebec users were affected. However just two days later, the figure had climbed to 900,000 and by January 9, nothing was working.

Seven Hydro Quebec distribution stations had stopped operating. Downtown Montreal had been plunged into complete darkness. A number of bridges were closed, leaving Montreal Island stranded. There were fears that drinking water would run out and that it might be necessary to evacuate the eastern portion of the island because of the oil fumes accumulating in the tanks of poorly ventilated refineries. It was difficult for emergency vehicles to move about. In short, we were facing a real threat.

I can recall imagining the worst possible scenario right from the start. Some of my senior officers thought I was crying wolf. "It'll pass", they said. But things just kept getting worse. On January 22, seventeen days after the ice storm began, municipalities in the Ice Triangle south of Montreal were still being affected by the collapse of the hydro system.

I'm glad that I didn't wait until the situation got worse before deploying an operational plan. Very soon after the storm started, I made sure the police were in contact with Hydro Quebec, the various governments, municipal leaders and other emergency services. For days on end, our officers went door to door, making sure citizens were safe. They worked shoulder to shoulder with others, saving people who were trapped and evacuating people. Although10 people died, this figure is better than the best scenarios we had imagined.

What I am trying to convey to you is that every situation deserves to be treated with care and discernment. Even when things do not appear to be really bad, there may be a hidden unpleasant surprise in store.

To show you what I mean, here's another story. One day, two police women were answering a burglary call and arrived at a dilapidated dwelling. The young woman who answered the door was poorly clothed and barefoot. She explained that a burglar had come into her house, taken everything he could lay his hands on, and then left. The officers asked questions and listened to the answers. I'll spare you the details about the guy who was with her and didn't even know her name.

The officers asked if they could come in. What they found was blood all over the floor. One thing led to another, and she finally admitted that she was taking drugs and had been mutilating herself by making cuts in her feet. She had been bleeding for the past three days. She was pale as a result of all the blood she had lost. The officers called emergency to get medical help. So you see, nothing is ever all black or all white. By being observant you can sometimes limit the bad consequences of a situation and even save lives.

Being a police officer does not just mean carrying a gun around, and being a first aider does not just mean carrying around in your head a bagful of techniques. These are myths.

2. Never assume someone else will take action

Security may well be a basic value for human beings, part of the survival instinct, but all too often people leave the responsibility for security up to someone else, if not to fate or destiny.

They hope that 'the other guy' will take the situation in hand. But there's no warning of accidents; they just happen, and when they do, what is needed is resources, action, and above all leadership.

In any emergency, someone has to take on the role of leader and direct the response, clearly and quickly. This is absolutely crucial.

Think of the killing of 14 women at the Montreal Polytechnic School in December 1989. When I arrived at the scene, there was panic all around, students were running in every direction, no one knew whether Marc Lépine would start shooting again. No emergency plan could have been prepared in advance for this type of situation.

In only had five minutes to evaluate the situation, identify a strategy, and organize groups of people to take action. It's not easy to do this. I had to think quickly and then give orders without hesitation, even though, like everyone else, I was emotionally shaken by what had happened.

Do you know what helped me the most? It was my instinct. I didn't consciously think "what shall I do?". Instead, I just acted, period.

If you ever find yourself in an emergency situation, don't hesitate: draw on whatever knowledge you have and take action, though of course don't put your own safety in danger. Yours efforts may be a bit clumsy and you may be nervous, but any form of assistance is better than having the ambulance drivers take away a corpse.

3. Learn to handle the unpredictable

My third piece of advice is the importance of handling the unpredictable. You can make forecasts until you're blue in the face, but you will never succeed in predicting that the woman over there will faint eight minutes from now or that the man at the back of the room will choke on a piece of celery.

So what does handling the unpredictable mean? It means being alert and ready to act at times when you least expect any need to act. It also means refusing to adopt a neutral stance. I realize the expression sounds strange but to me, it sounds eloquent.

It is a well known fact that if someone becomes ill in the street, it takes a long time before anyone takes action. People remain neutral; they place themselves outside the situation. They don't go and help because—they plead afterwards—they were not prepared, or they were afraid of being prosecuted if they bungled things.

Is this an acceptable argument? I say no. No one has the right to do nothing. There is always something that can be done. I realize that being the first person to act is a bit stressful and makes you accountable for your actions.

But this kind of pressure is vital, in my opinion. It may seem odd to say this, but saving someone makes you realize that you belong to a community and that you have responsibilities to others. So you should decide that whenever in the future you find yourself a part of a chain of events, you are going to be the first link, which is often the determining one.

Recently I was talking with an employee at CRIM, the Montreal informatics research centre. He suggested to me that the way to handle the unpredictable is to always see it coming. He said that many hackers are successful because they know about the one weakness in an application or a piece of equipment. They can then exploit that weakness.

The same is true of first aid: if there are weaknesses, if there are vulnerabilities, that is, if not enough employees have taken first aid training, then people are exposed to risks.

Speaking of computers and first aid, there are certain contradictions that amaze me. At a time when the sophistication of security-related technologies is almost scary, at a time when security systems can recognize your iris or your facial features, how can it be that only a handful of employees in a company are trained in first aid? How is possible that we can surf the Web with our cell phones but at the same time just one employee in fifty in a big company can help us if we have a heart attack? It's really cause for concern.

CATSA

I would now like to approach the question of safety from a more philosophical point of view, in terms of human behaviour. What is the point of putting locks on doors if you don't use them? To be safe, we need to be aware of the dangers of an unlocked door, we need to have thought of installing good quality locks, and we need to have learned to use the locks intelligently.

For me, being safe means using good sense.

I know some people will find this amusing, but in the time I've been leading the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, I've started to associate good sense with worst case scenarios. When it comes to terrorists, I no longer say "It's impossible that such and such could happen" but rather "How will the terrorists surprise us next time?" We fear big, expensive weapons of mass destruction, but the terrorists use weapons of astonishing simplicity, like box cutters. We fear biological weapons, but they learn to fly airplanes and use them as bombs. So I'm constantly on the alert, and I would be pleased if you would adopt this attitude also, without becoming paranoid of course.

Are you 100% sure that when I finish this sentence, I won't have a stroke? Are you 100% sure that your child won't fall downstairs this afternoon? That your spouse will not choke on a piece of meat? If you're not 100% sure of what will happen five seconds from now, then think about the benefits of taking a first aid course. It will give you a tool to use at work. It will teach you to do the right thing at the right time. It will serve you outside the workplace, because you don't leave knowledge behind when you go home for the day.

And please, don't tell me that 'security is up to the police'. What a mistake that is! If we want to be safe and secure, we have to undo all the reflexes that prevent us from being vigilant.

There are a number of similarities between you here at Pratt and Whitney and the employees I lead at CATSA. For those who don't know, CATSA was set up in response to the events of September 11. It runs a number of key programs related to security, such as the screening of passengers and baggage. Our mission is to save lives.

So how are we similar to you? I see two ways.

1. No room for error

You may know what to do and how to do it, but there is always the possibility of making mistakes. I know the engineers in the room will agree with me about this. Assembling the thousandth airplane engine may seem a simple and mechanical matter, but that is only an appearance. Why? Because it's one thing to know what to do and quite another thing to do it correctly.

The same is true of security in the air. We have a very clear objective, namely preventing terrorists from threatening passengers. We know what we have to do and how to do it, but it's extremely difficult when our margin for error is supposed to be zero.

As a result of the events of September 11, 3000 died at the World Trade Centre, airline companies suffered losses of $25 billion over the year that followed, the industry lost at least three years of growth and development, the American economy was severely shaken.

September 11 was a catastrophe. If it had not happened, there would have been no need to set up CATSA.

We at CATSA live with this reality every day. We know that a terrorist can try to blow up an airplane once, twice, three times, ten times. He'll give all he has to succeed, whether it takes one year or five. His advantage is that if he fails on one try, he can try again, whereas we will not get a second chance. We can't try things out. We have no margin for error.

The same is true of first aid. You don't get a second chance to save someone who is dead or permanently disabled as a result of insufficiently swift intervention. If we make a mistake, if we don't provide enough oxygen to the brain of someone who has had a stroke, if we do nothing or the wrong thing when someone is haemorrhaging, the victim may pay a steep price.

2. Cooperation and teamwork

My second point concerns cooperation. To ensure the safety of airports and travellers, you have to have team work. We at CATSA can't do the job all by ourselves.

It's clear that you agree with me about this because there will soon be 8,500 of you ready to lend a hand in an emergency. That really impresses me. It almost makes me want to recruit you all. You would be a perfect fit for my onionskin model of security.

Let me just take five minutes to tell you about security at CATSA. Think of an onion, with its many layers. Canada 's air security system also has many layers and each of them is necessary to make the system effective and protect the centre of the onion, which is the airplane and passengers.

The first layer is outside the airport, where security intelligence is gathered and shared by agencies planet-wide. The RCMP and CSIS receive intelligence and analyse risks. If necessary, they take action to prevent incidents at airports before they happen.

The second layer of the onion is the security perimeter around each of the 89 airports that we protect. These perimeters are protected by a combination of public and private security services, including local and federal police and airport employees.

The third layer is the check-in counter, for which the airlines are responsible.

The fourth layer is the security checkpoint. This is the layer with which CATSA is most closely identified by the public. Since December 2002, we have been screening passengers as well as their carry-on baggage and checked baggage before they board. Screening officers do the front-line work in the struggle against terrorism in the air.

To give you an idea of the extent of the work they do, over the past 16 months they have intercepted over 1 million prohibited objects across the country, such as knives hidden in shoes, penknives, spiked bracelets and pepper spray.

CATSA and the airports are working together to prevent unauthorized access to restricted areas. CATSA recently established a non-passenger screening program. It has also initiated pilot projects to create an improved identity card for restricted areas, a card that includes biometric data.

The next layer of the onion is the loading and baggage matching by the airlines.

Once again, CATSA and the airports are working together on the question of access to the apron, the runways, and the taxiways. The aircraft and passengers in these areas are at the centre of the onion, the most important things we have to protect.

We are also working with the RCMP, which is responsible for having marshals on certain flights and is therefore managing the contract for delivering this service.

In our work, speedy action is vital and we therefore assign great importance to expanding our partnerships and expanding information-sharing with the airlines, the airport authorities, police forces and other security agencies. I really believe that close cooperation, up to and including integration, is the only way to keep a step ahead of the terrorists, both domestically and internationally.

Well, that is what I wanted to tell you about CATSA. I hope I have not bored you. As a result of your invitation, I've been led to relive many old memories. It would give me great pleasure now to answer any questions you may have. But first let me conclude with this:

Conclusion

To you and to all your colleagues at Pratt and Whitney around the world, let me say 'bravo'. You are the forerunners. To my knowledge, never have 8,500 employees of a single company been trained in first aid in just two years. It will surely be a record. Thanks to you, Pratt and Whitney will have a clear head start.

Bravo! And best wishes for your safety awareness week.

Thank you.