CBC News: the fifth estate - Fasten Your Seatbelts

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Aired November 9, 2005
Updated November 22, 2006

WATCH the fifth estate ONLINE

Watch this story online.

(Runs 40:29)
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(Runs 8:48)
REPORTER: Hana Gartner
PRODUCER: Marie Caloz

UPDATE
In response to the fifth estate's story Transport Minister Jean Lapierre promised a review of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. More

WEB EXCLUSIVE

the fifth estate asked
Steve Elson to visit Canada and assess some of our airports.

Read more of his interview with the fifth estate.

FASTEN YOUR SEATBELTS

September 11, 2001. Airport passenger screeners allow 19 men to board four airplanes with box cutters. Further security failures aboard the airplanes allow these men to hijack those planes.

In the wake of 9/11, the US government and Canadian government take immediate action. They insist that security screeners conduct more thorough searches of passenger luggage. Long screening line-ups become the norm. Screeners confiscate anything that can be used as a weapon, including tweezers, scissors and Remembrance Day poppies.

NEW SECURITY MEASURES

In its December 2001 budget, the Canadian federal government announces $2.2 billion for air security 'to make air travel more secure in accordance with rigorous new Transport Canada standards'.

It creates the Air Travellers Security Charge. That's a tax we pay every time we board a plane to help make our airports secure.

The government also sets up a crown corporation called the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) . With guidelines from Transport Canada, CATSA oversees screening and policing at 89 of Canada's major airports. The estimated price tag for CATSA and its operations: $1.9 billion

Over the next three years, CATSA purchases high-tech machines and implements new training standards for security screeners. It begins purchasing explosive detection machines for all checked baggage going in to the belly of a plane. A single machine can cost more than $1 million. CATSA says it is on target to have all luggage screened by these machines in many of Canada's airports by the end of 2005.

ARE AIRPORTS SAFER?

This may give travellers the feeling of increased security, but how much safer are our airports and planes? The fifth estate wanted to find out, so with unprecedented official access as well as the assistance of a former FAA security inspector, Steve Elson, and our own undercover cameras, the fifth estate went behind the security curtains at some of Canada's airports to reveal how security has changed five years after 9/11 and whether or not the money spent has made us safer.

Steve Elson easily gained access to restricted areas of Toronto's largest airport.

THE FIFTH ESTATE'S INVESTIGATION

What we found was that there are gaps in the chain of security from the screeners who check passengers and their carry-on baggage to the security clearances of the screeners themselves. Unchecked cargo ends up inside the belly of the plane and access to restricted areas can be gained easily by unauthorized cars and people. And a man intending to board a plane, whose clothes bore evident traces of a powdery substance that could be a potentially explosive chemical, was allowed through security without any swabbing of his clothing.

It took only twenty minutes for Steve Elson to determine the combination that would open locked doors in restricted areas of an airport.

People who work at airports and have access to restricted areas are supposed to undergo random security screenings. But, some of these employees told the fifth estate that they can go months without being checked.

A 2003 Senate committee report

confirms that there are huge security gaps in the screening of airport workers, checked luggage, mail, and little or no screening of cargo. Despite the report, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, who headed the committee, says many of the main issues of concern remain. Sources the fifth estate spoke with said the 'rigorous new Transport Canada standards' being implemented to address these issues are often vague or too slow being implemented.

^TOP