Notes for Remarks by Jacques Duchesneau, C.M., President and CEO, Canadian Air Transport Security Authority

At a meeting with the Commons Standing
Committee on Transport
May 30, 2005

Check against delivery

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for asking me to meet with you today.

I look forward to our question period and, to make sure that we can answer you in real time, I have asked members of our senior management team to join me this afternoon.

Please allow me to introduce my colleagues:

• Michael McLaughlin, Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer;
• Ian MacKay, Vice-President, Law and Strategy;
• Kevin McGarr, Vice-President, Risk and Quality;
• Jacques Grilli, Vice-President, Operations.

We have also done our homework on the issues the committee raised earlier this month during its hearings to confirm General Maurice Baril as chairman of our board of directors.

I read your report with great interest. I am happy to address the issues that you have raised. I will also take the opportunity to clarify our role in certain aspects of airport operations.

Mr. Chairman, much of what CATSA does is not reflected in the interim report. But our work is directly relevant to the broad issues that the report has raised. And so I think we need to talk about who we are, what we do, and how we get it done.

CATSA has been operating since April 1, 2002. The Authority is a Crown corporation. It reports to Parliament through the Minister of Transport.

As part of the aviation security system, CATSA is one of many layers. Air travellers see us on the front line at 89 airports. Behind the scenes, we work very closely with other partners in aviation security. These partners include intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, airlines, airport authorities, and Transport Canada .

Transport Canada sets policy and regulates air transport security. Our role is to operate an effective security screening system.

CATSA has six specific responsibilities. We screen passengers and their carry-on baggage. We screen checked baggage. We screen non-passengers accessing restricted areas. We have introduced a biometric based ID card that will be used to ensure the identity of airports workers. We pay the RCMP to place its officers on selected flights, and we pay eligible airports to contract with police services for effective aviation security.

Now, with respect to the committee's interim report, there is a discussion of the Air Travellers Security Charge and a linkage to CATSA's operations. I can understand that people would make this link. After all, Bill C-49, the legislation that created CATSA, is also the legislation that created the security charge.

But the security charge does not fund CATSA directly. Our Crown Corporation obtains all its funding from parliamentary appropriations. We draw upon the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and not from any specific revenue measure in particular. And so I urge you to direct your remarks about the security charge to the Department of Finance, as it is the organization responsible for this fee.

That being said, the issue for us is whether our funding is both adequate and flexible enough for us to provide the aviation security system that meets Canada 's needs.

A second issue arises from the interim report in its discussion of our relationship with airports. In particular, I noted the concern that CATSA may be making unreasonable demands on airports, and asking for services for free.

Mr. Chairman, CATSA provides Canadian airports with benefits that are fundamental to their business. The CATSA Act requires the airports to provide the space and services needed to operate passenger screening. We provide a fully installed system that protects their customers from threats that could be hidden in checked baggage. We provide a secure environment for their customers, employees, and suppliers. We provide selected airports with funds to hire police services.

In addition CATSA rents space for offices and training centres for approximately $600,000 per year. Our service providers pay rent for screening officer staging areas which are of course recaptured from CATSA within the fixed portion of fees.

So, Mr. Chairman, in many respects, we are paying our way.

As I read your interim report, I noted that we share some common concerns. One area that stands out for me in particular is the issue of official languages.

As I have mentioned to this committee in the past, we take our official languages requirements seriously and we expect to see progress. To ensure that we do, we are preparing to designate a managerial position with primary responsibility for official languages and to designate a vice-president as our official languages champion.

In addition, we have written into our contracts with screening service providers a requirement to provide services in the two official languages. And we have enhanced our training program in order to raise our staff's capabilities to the required level.

As well, we are operating a pilot program in Toronto and Montreal that links passengers to our security communications centre in Ottawa . If we fail to provide front-line service in one of the official languages, we can certainly provide that service using our communications technology.

Mr. Chairman, we may want to talk about the committee's interim report at length, for it covers a number of issues in Canadian civil aviation. We may want to talk about CATSA, and how it has improved since 9/11, because we have.

For example,

• CATSA screens over 35 million passengers per year.
• CATSA introduced new high-technology detection systems, such as X-Ray technology and explosives detection equipment, and established a comprehensive training and certification program for screening officers.
• CATSA has established clear quality standards and operating procedures for the screening of passengers and their baggage. This has contributed to the more effective use of financial resources and reduced wait times for air travelers.
• In December 2004, CATSA further enhanced its multi-layered security concept by implementing non-passenger screening for air crew and airport employees.
• The establishment of a Security Communication Centre at CATSA headquarters enables the organization to react quickly to incidents and potential threats to air travel security.

These are clear improvements over what we had before.

But what I would like to talk about is how our air security system should work in the future. We need to have this strategic discussion because we at CATSA are seeing how the system needs to evolve to maintain and improve protection.

There is every risk that the air security system we operate today will turn into the Maginot Line of the 21st century.

For those who don't follow military history, the Maginot Line was a series of defensive installations installed by France along its eastern border following the First World War. To the French, the Line was a robust, muscular defence against any threat. But when the Germans came over the border, their response to the Maginot Line was simply to drive around it. Paris fell because its security system failed to adapt to the threat.

Look at the threat we face today. Is it passengers wielding box-cutters? If it is, then CATSA is remarkably effective at protecting travellers. I have a collection of 738,000 prohibited items consisting of everything from rifles and bullets to pocket knives and nail scissors.

But is the threat we faced on 9/11 going to remain the threat of the future? Are we trusting our future to a Maginot Line?

Look at what the terrorists are learning today in places such as Iraq . They are testing themselves every day against a modern fighting force that operates with leading-edge technology and tactics.

Sooner or later, this knowledge will be put into practice as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of operatives sneak into Western Europe and North America . They will not carry box-cutters, Mr. Chairman. We are ready for that. Whatever they do carry, we must be prepared.

The bottom line is that the threat is constantly changing. Our air security system has to adapt faster than the threat.

Unfortunately, we are operating within a system of regulations that amounts to a Maginot Line. In this system, Transport Canada determines policy and issues regulations. Our role is to operate the system according to their regulations.

We need to move beyond our current system. After all, as you certainly know, regulations do not change quickly. In a race with terrorists, the rule book will always lose. And so we should think about new ways that promote our flexibility, that help us to anticipate the unexpected, and that allow us to adapt quickly, while maintaining continuous protection.

We need three things, Mr. Chairman. We need flexibility, innovation, and public acceptance. We are making advances on each of these today, but there is much more that should be done.

Flexibility takes many forms. Let us look at our financial flexibility first. We need the ability to adapt to new threats in real time.

Financially we need to meet sudden contingencies. We may need to reallocate our spending urgently. We may need to re-cast our budget rapidly.

We cannot do any of that under the rules we follow now.

We could achieve it under a performance-based framework that measured us on outcomes rather than our process. We need to be judged on results.

Beyond flexibility, we need innovation. We need to concentrate our resources where we are most likely to find the threat.

We have talked in the past about a registered traveller program. This approach would allow us to clear travellers who we know are not a threat, and to concentrate on those travellers about whom we need to know more.

This program would be the first step toward a risk-based security system. Other elements could include improved watch lists. We could make judgements based on passenger behaviour. For instance, we would take a close look at travellers with one-way tickets. We would have access to intelligence information online.

In essence, where today we have equipment to screen passengers for the metal in their pockets, tomorrow we would have a security dashboard with a great deal more information than we would have now.

Instead of a boarding pass that tells me that a passenger is on a certain flight and in a certain seat, a CATSA officer would have a full risk assessment for that passenger. We would have a full spectrum of information about that passenger at our fingertips right there at the screening point. We would then be able to ask the questions and make the checks we need to make to let that passenger board that flight.

And our detection technology will eventually need to change as well. As technology grows cheaper and faster, we will deploy it. And we will need to do that quickly, to keep pace with the changing threat.

But we need more than flexibility and more than innovation. We also need to provide a strong focus on customer service so that people who use the system embrace it rather than resent it. CATSA has to move beyond the perception that we are a hassle. That we are interested in your keys, and your nail scissors.

In the airport of the future, perhaps it will be CATSA that greets you at the curb, checks you and your baggage, and ushers you inside. Not only would we protect aircraft, but we would also protect the airport itself - a clear benefit to the airport's passengers, customers and suppliers.

We need to be seen as the people who ensure, and even who guarantee, that your flight will not be interrupted by terrorists.

I have always said that CATSA welcomes any input that helps us do our job better. We received valuable advice from the Auditor General as she prepared her last report. We are also looking forward to the five-year review required by the legislation that brought us to life. And we are also very interested in seeing what comes back from the security audit conducted earlier this month by the International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO.

I am very serious about this issue of feedback, learning and continuous improvement. We welcome scrutiny. Close inspection enables us to prevent errors. In our work, there is no room for error. If we make mistakes, then people can die.

I'll stop there, Mr. Chairman. I think we have a lot to talk about, both from the committee's interim report, and from your members' continuing interest in our work.

Our bottom line is that we are here to ensure that people can fly the Canadian sky with confidence and peace of mind. And we will consider any input that helps us keep our skies safe.

Mr. Chairman, my management team and I welcome your questions.