Published by Senator Colin Kenny on 22 April 2009
Monday's hijack attempt of a CanJet airliner in Jamaica should remind us that we've got a problem at Canadian airports that could lead to an attempted hijacking or worse.
Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper has finally shown signs that he realizes that we have a problem. Speaking after the event in Jamaica, Harper said: "We all know from our experience in our own country, systems are not perfect."
No kidding. Why is it then that I've told the last three transport ministers that Canada's airport security systems are anything but perfect, and all I got back were blank stares?
In John Baird, the current minister, we finally seem to have someone who cares. But experience tells me that Baird is in for a big fight with his bureaucrats if he really wants to fix serious airport security gaps.
On the surface of it, the connection between the Montego Bay incident and Canadian airports may not seem all that obvious. Early reports suggest that that a "mentally disturbed" young Jamaican managed to get through security with a gun. Most Canadians probably assume that passenger screenings are more haphazard in Jamaica than in Canada. So why worry here?
I'll tell you why -- and it has very little to do with passenger screening. While I would like to see more blind testing of the screening system, with results published, these checks really aren't my big worry. My biggest concern is what is going on behind the scenes.
Airside workers at most Canadian airports are allowed to wander in and out of secure areas at all hours of the day and night, just by punching in with their biometric passes.
These passes are fingerprint-based ID. They show who a person is, which is a good start. But biometric passes alone are powerful tools that can be abused.
They do not show what a person is carrying. Searches of airside workers are random and scarce. Transport Canada has testified that only one worker in 50 is searched. A worker I talked to hadn't been searched for two years.
Think about that. There are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 100,000 people working at Canadian airports. The vast majority of them are honest and in their right minds.
But not all of them are honest, and not all of them are in their right minds. Both the RCMP and the Auditor General have gone public with the fact that Canadian airports are riddled with organized crime.
Then there are the disturbed. Given our stressful times and the incidence of depression and other mental afflictions in Canadian society generally, you don't expect every person at every airport to be on an even keel every minute.
Background checks are done on workers every five years. But while these checks tell about criminal convictions, they aren't comprehensive field checks. Furthermore, things can change a lot in five years. Marriages break down. Financial and health problems crop up. Pressures arise. People like the young man in Jamaica can succumb to illnesses that leave them doing things they wouldn't normally do.
So for years the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence has recommended that workers get searched when they go in and out of secure areas -- the way passengers are searched whenever they get on a flight.
Why is it that at Lester B. Pearson International Airport -- the busiest airport in Canada -- airside workers can bring anything they want onto the tarmac? Why can they also come into the secure passenger area and mingle freely with boarding passengers who have already been screened? The potential for exchanging contraband or dangerous devices is obvious.
Can Baird order that airside employees be searched whenever they enter or leave secure areas? The minister is clearly interested in airport security. He is toughening up background checks for airport workers. According to one report they will soon have their names run through 10 police databases before they are assigned to secure areas. Not only will they be checked for criminal records, but for their association with suspected criminals or terrorists.
"This is a big step forward," Baird is quoted as saying, "but obviously more work needs to be done."
It sure does. But, before Baird arrived, neither airport authorities nor Transport Canada have shown much enthusiasm for tougher scrutiny of airport workers on site. Transport Canada's main mandate has been to make Canadian airports more efficient, not more safe.
Rigorous scrutiny can cost time and money. But sometimes things get out of whack with people, like they did with the young man in Jamaica. Sometimes spending more money and being more prudent just makes sense.
We do it with passengers, who are mostly good, stable people. Just like the airside workers. But "mostly" is the operative word.
Colin Kenny is chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence.