The Gazette - September 7, 2002
By Colin Kenny
Canadian air travellers will dole out over half a billion dollars in flight surcharges this year at $24 a pop for round trips. The surcharges are allegedly earmarked for beefing up security at Canada’s airports. But the traveling public is getting for its money may not amount to much more than one of those fake stickers that claims that a house is protected by a security system, when the owners never installed the system.
That may be an unfair assessment. It’s hard to know because most of the people responsible for airport security in this country seem to eat Crazy Glue for breakfast before appearing before parliamentary committees. Their lips, for the most part, are sealed. They say “trust us.” But people who have worked behind the scenes at Canadian airports are essentially telling us that only a fool would trust them.
Not only are security problems at our sea ports and airports too big to hide, they shouldn’t be hidden. Organized crime clearly knows where the gaps are, which means any terrorist paying attention can figure them out too. The Canadian public has a right to know what kind of urgency officials are assigning to sealing the leaks.
Last February, after an investigation of several months, the Standing Senate Committee on National Defence and Security issued a report that said that Canada’s sea ports and airports were both infiltrated with organized crime and vulnerable to terrorist infiltration. Following publication of the report, committee members got a flurry of phone calls and e-mails.
The gist of what we heard was that the problem was more serious that we had described it, especially at Canada’s airports.
More than 85 million passengers pass through Canadian airports annually. They pay the surcharge. They deserve to know whether they are flying in relative safety, and they deserve to know whether coughing up half a billion dollars a year is getting better security, not just more inconvenience when they check in. The Committee has been charged by the Senate to find out whether this money is being spent wisely and responsibly. Officials should be telling us how the public’s money is being put to work.
The Committee continues to investigate security at both airports and sea ports. At first it appeared that security gaps were most pronounced at sea ports. During our investigations, for instance, we learned that 15 per cent of stevedores and 36 per cent of checkers at the Port of Montreal have a criminal record, and that police believe Canadian ports to be riddled with organized crime. But recent testimony suggests that the situation at Canada’s airports may be just as bad.
Several of the witnesses that have appeared before us recently bear some share of responsibility for security at Canada’s airports. Many of them bordered on hostile in their reluctance to answer simple questions that would give Canadians a clearer picture of (a) whether it is safe to fly, and (b) what they are getting for all that money in terms of security upgrades.
Saying anything about the reliability of screening technology, for instance, seems to be verboten in Canada, even though one report out of the United States last March showed that infiltrators testing the system were able to get guns past screening check points 30 per cent of the time, knives 70 per cent of the time, and false bombs 60 per cent of the time. Is the equipment Canadian airports are using now giving us better results. We don’t have a clue, because nobody will say,
When officials did deign to share information with us, it was not comforting. Here are just a few examples of what we heard. Most of these examples come from sessions focusing on Pearson, but the committee fully intends to return to have a look at other airports, including Dorval, in the wake of allegations that there are more problems than we uncovered the first time around.
We heard testimony that Pearson uses photo ID cards to restrict entrance to secure areas. Pass numbers are checked against a list of numbers of cards that have been lost or stolen. But witnesses also told us that passes are easily forged. So why not introduce an electronic swiping system to ensure that passes are valid, rather than relying on rejection of those known to have gone missing? The answer, from Paul Kavanagh, Regional Director, Security and Planning, Department of Transport, Ontario: “An airport is faced with a substantial cost when it has to replace a system.” Well, yes it is, but the flying public is providing a substantial bundle of money to cover these kinds of costs.
We heard testimony that, while flight crews are checked rigorously when they are prepared to board, maintenance and service personnel with regular access to aircraft are not. Why would baggage handlers, groomers and refuellers not be checked to determine whether they have box cutters or other potential weapons on them when they access aircraft? Because many of these people need tools, we were told, and they have all undergone security background checks (so did Kim Philby and every other spy who betrayed their country during the cold war). But mainly, it was a matter of trusting airport employees. “Do you know whether Air Canada employees are bringing explosives or weapons to work with them?” we asked. “We cannot say,” replied Larry Fleshman, Toronto General Manager, Customer Service, Air Canada. The aircrews, who have everything to lose if their flight goes down, are checked scrupulously. The ground workers, who stay behind, are not.
We heard testimony that organized crime has infiltrated the work force at Pearson. Inspector Sam Landry of the RCMP’s Toronto Airport Detachment told us that “We have identified [criminal activity] at Toronto Airport that is linked to . . . traditional organized crime, eastern European-based organized crime, Asian-based organized crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs.” He went on to say that officers often find luggage containing drugs abandoned, presumably because the criminals assigned to pick the luggage up have been spooked in some way. This luggage is usually either untagged, or falsely tagged. Said Landry, “That speaks for internal conspiracy starting at some point.” Despite Landry’s testimony, Larry Fleshman, Toronto General Manager, Customer Service, Air Canada, said “I have no knowledge of any [organized crime] infiltration or the fact that anyone is trying to infiltrate.” His colleague, Iain Fernie, Regional Security Operations Manager for Air Canada, said Mr. Fleshman had not been briefed on this issue, and did say that in 2000, a drug smuggling ring from Jamaica had relied on inside complicity. One incident. No mention of motorcycle gangs or gangs from all those other parts of the world.
To detail all the testimony that worried the Committee would take more space than this newspaper has room to allot to one story. But, in compressed form, a few more examples:
We heard that passengers on chartered business flights go unchecked, and can leave the airport without checking in because customs doesn’t even know they have arrived – since air traffic control was privatized, there is no communication between the two.
We heard that Air Canada sometimes acquiesces to police requests to investigate internal operations, but sometimes doesn’t. We heard that police staffing at Pearson has been cut significantly in recent years.
We heard that customs officers who scrutinize passports have no way of correlating those passports with criminal activity, because they have no access to the Canadian Police Intelligence System that the RCMP uses. They do not have permission to use this system, nor training to use it. So scrutinizing a passport is not going to tip them that they may be dealing with someone dangerous.
We heard that background checks are not done on employees of the feeder companies that deliver mail to carriers.
We heard that the airlines are responsible for screening packages, but that Transport Canada has made an arrangement with Canada Post to do this screening, but witnesses from Canada Post said they do not.
And if you think what we heard was bad, what we didn’t hear was even worse. Several witnesses, particularly those from Air Canada, hid behind a clause in the Aeronautics Act that they said prohibited them from commenting on security measures at airports. In fact, the clause does no such thing. It merely says that directives from Transport Canada should not be made public without the minister’s permission. We were not asking these witnesses about any of Transport Canada’s directives. We were asking the authorities not what Transport Canada is telling them to do, but what they are doing to improve security at Canada’s airports in the wake of September 11. Not to mention the fact that a parliamentary committee requiring the provision of testimony in what that committee deems to be in the public interest overrides any such legislative directive.
Our witnesses said they just couldn’t level with Parliament on what they have been doing right. But all kinds of other people, through their phone calls, their e-mail, and their testimony before the Committee, are telling us what they have been doing wrong.
If those who are responsible for security at Canadian airports are indeed spending our money wisely, all those bad guys that the police say have infiltrated the system sure know a lot more about the improvements than the paying public does.
Senator Colin Kenny is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca