Canadians not getting air security they deserve: Senate

Last Updated: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 | 11:57 AM ET

CBC News

More than five and a half years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, security is still dangerously lax at Canadian airports, according to a Senate report released Wednesday in Ottawa.

Employees of airports and airlines should be searched more often, says the Senate committee report.
(CBC)

Transferring responsibility for airport security to the Department of Public Safety from Transport Canada was among the 16 recommendations made in the report by the Senate national security and defence committee.

In their second report on airport security since January of 2003, the senators also recommend:

• Recruiting 600 to 800 new RCMP officers with specific responsibility for airport security.
• Drastically increasing regular checks on the airport workers who have access to aircraft, baggage and cargo.
• Making bullet-proof cockpit doors mandatory for aircraft in Canada.

Releasing the report at a news conference on Parliament Hill, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, the chair of the committee, said Ottawa has failed to provide Canadians with the security they deserve when they fly.

Organized crime 'airside'

He said the RCMP had told Senators that organized crime was present at all major airports in the country, and criminals had access "airside" — a reference to the secure zone at airports where employees can board aircraft or handle baggage and cargo before it's loaded.

Senator Colin Kenney said Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon and Transport Canada are not up to the job of overseeing security at Canada's airports.
(CBC)

Yet the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority performed only random security checks on airport employees, searching about two per cent of staff every day. The committee recommended that all airport workers be searched as they arrive at work, and at least 10 per cent as they leave.

The latest Senate report says Ottawa hasn't acted quickly enough to fight organized crime at airports or to tighten other lax measures identified in an earlier report on airport security released in 2003.

According to that earlier report — The Myth of Security at Canadian Airports — these security gaps include inadequate background checks for people with access to aircraft on the ground, lack of screening of mail and other cargo carried on passenger jets and reduced levels of policing at many airports since the privatization of local airport authorities.

No sense of urgency

"The committee would like to assure the public that the numerous gaps that remain are being treated with some degree of urgency by government," the 2007 report says. "But we cannot."

The report's findings were a long time coming, aviation security expert Peter St. John told CBC News.

"It's just a consistent failure over the years to produce and develop a system of airport security that works for ordinary people," he said.

Canada has 89 "designated" airports where Ottawa handles security measures, the committee says, but there are other airports in major cities where there is little or no security.

Two glaring examples are the floatplane bases on the waterfronts of Victoria and Vancouver, where dozens of flights arrive and depart every day within a few metres of major buildings and the British Columbia legislature.

"There is no security at all in these places," Kenny said.

The report also criticizes government departments concerned with airport security for being vague in their written answers to the committee's questions. There is a long list of examples of government replies to questions that the committee finds objectionable.  

These include: 

• "We are directing new attention …"
• "We are consulting with …"
• "We are developing guidelines …"
• "We are taking a comprehensive review of …"

Kenny described such phrases as "extraordinarily evasive, weasel words." 

Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon and Transport Canada had shown themselves incapable of handling sensitive and crucial matters of airport security, Kenny said.

"These guys are a dead loss," he said. "That's why this committee has recommended that Transport Canada be removed from this responsibility." 

Findings under review

Responding to the Senate report, Cannon said his department was reviewing the findings and would act accordingly.

"We are much vigilant in our airports today than we were a couple of years ago," he said.

Asked by journalists whether the committee had one overriding recommendation that Ottawa should act on immediately.

"Search them all," Kenny said, "Search all the workers that are coming, all the trucks that are coming in [at airports]. If those inspections were taking place, then we'd move forward significantly.

"We search every passenger, why not the other folks?"