CBSA President grilled by Senate Committee on National Security and Defence
JUNE 14-06

The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 10 a.m. to examine and report on the national security policy of Canada.

Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) is in the chair.

Before us today, colleagues, we have Alain Jolicoeur, President, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). He has been president of the Canada Border Services Agency since December 2003. He has been with the public service of Canada since 1973 and has served in a number of different positions with Environment Canada, the Department of National Defence and the Treasury Board Secretariat. In July of 1999, he became Associate Deputy Minister of National Revenue and Deputy Commissioner of the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. In December 2002, he was named Deputy Minister of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, a post he occupied until assuming his current position.

Mr. Jolicoeur is accompanied by Barbara Hébert, Vice-President, Operations Branch, Canada Border Services Agency. Welcome to both of you. I understand you have a brief statement, Mr. Jolicoeur.

Alain Jolicoeur, President, Canada Border Services Agency: I am pleased to join you today. It has been about eight months since my last appearance at your committee.

I would like to thank you for your support in passing our legislation. As you know, this has given the CBSA the legal authority necessary to continue forward with our modern border management agenda.

I am happy to share with you some of our progress that we have made since last October and some of the key priorities currently facing our agency.

We are moving ahead and further refining our three basic approaches — with their accompanying tools and technology — to manage, control and secure border operations; collect advance information and turn that information into intelligence; and expand our pre-approval programs to expedite legitimate travel and trade at the border.

Examples of progress include the Advance Passenger Information (API) and Personal Name Record (PNR) agreement that we signed with the European Union. As well, the Advance Commercial Information program, which has been operational in the marine mode since 2004, will be fully implemented by this summer for the air mode. We have integrated training programs for new recruits so that new border services officers can operate technology, work with newly implemented systems and better manage risk. Thus, they will be better able to keep pace with the evolution of our business. We ran successful NEXUS air and marine pilot programs. We continue to invest in research, development, and the acquisition and deployment of radiation-detection technology. The first units were installed in Saint John where testing is taking place. Further deployments are planned for 2006 in Montreal, Halifax and Vancouver. Once fully implemented, our radiation-detection program will allow us to screen virtually 100 per cent of incoming marine cargo immediately upon its arrival in Canada.

We continue to deliver on our plans to provide enhanced connectivity for remote ports and we have made significant progress to connect unconnected sites. Most sites are now connected with only three seasonal sites left to fully connect by the end of summer 2006. We are replacing the existing Primary Automated Lookout System files with an updated system to ensure that border services officers have access to the information they need. We will continue to invest in building a smarter, more secure and trade-efficient border that relies on technology, information sharing and biometrics.

The CBSA will receive $239 million over the next two years to help fund some of the highest profile initiatives under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). These initiatives include NEXUS air, e-manifests, business resumption planning, partners in protection, and the passenger name record program. We are moving to the next generation of smart-border management. These SPP initiatives will improve border security by complementing our existing risk-management strategies. They demonstrate innovative measures to ensure the free flow of trade and travel across a secure border.

The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) is the most important bilateral border issue currently facing Canada. We share U.S. security objectives and want to work with them to ensure that both countries continue to streamline the movement of low-risk traffic in both directions. Prime Minister Harper and President Bush discussed the issue earlier this year and agreed to appoint Public Safety Minister Day and Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff as the leads to discuss this matter. They created a working group led by me on the Canadian side and by the head of the US-VISIT program and the new Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Ralph Basham. This working group will examine issues and develop proposed solutions for discussion at the ministerial level. We have had a number of meetings and conference calls to date. Minister Day and Secretary Chertoff met in April and plan to meet again this July.

Specifically, as part of the SPP, we are now actively engaged with our U.S. counterparts to identify jointly acceptable document security standards that will help us to identify other alternative secure documents in addition to the passport and the U.S. n PASS card, already announced as acceptable. The CBSA will receive $100 million over the next two years to begin the process of providing frontline border services officers with side arms and of ensuring that they are no longer required to work alone. We plan to arm approximately 5,000 officers, not only at land border crossings but also at marine ports and, in some cases, inland. We plan to have the first group of officers armed by the fall of 2007. We are actively engaging the union in our implementation planning.

I am committed to broadening our intelligence networks and to ensuring that CBSA staff are well trained and well equipped. We must constantly invest in new and modern tools, adopt innovative approaches and capture the benefits of the best science and technology. The CBSA has built strong partnerships within the security community, as was made clear by our participation in the investigations that led to the arrests earlier this month of the 17 terrorist suspects in Toronto.

We continue to protect the health and safety of Canadians and to maintain the security of Canadian society by removing individuals that might pose a danger to the public or to the national security of Canada. We are investing heavily to ensure that our intelligence networks and tools are the best. We recently moved detainees under security certificates from provincial remand centres, where all high-risk immigration detainees are held, to the newly operated Kingston Immigration Holding Centre to improve conditions of detention for our security cases.

This is an overview of the progress since October 2005 when I last appeared before the committee. As senators are aware, I am committed to the CBSA evolving into an innovative science- and technology-based learning organization. Achieving security and prosperity simultaneously is an enormous responsibility and a constant balancing act between security and facilitation that requires diligence, innovation and flexibility. Thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to your questions.

Senator Banks: We are pleased to hear your reference to improvements made since you last joined us at committee, Mr. Jolicoeur. We are in the process of developing a report card of the recommendations we have made to the government in those respects. Your visit here is timely. Almost one year ago, this committee issued a report called Borderline Insecure to which we drew the attention of the government and all Canadians to some of the issues you mentioned.

The first one is the connections that you said have been made with respect to land border crossings and to the central intelligence capacity with the computer system. I understood you to say that they have been connected except for three seasonal posts. Are the connections via high-speed access? Could you tell us why those three seasonal posts are not connected yet?

Mr. Jolicoeur: When CBSA was created, 110 offices were not connected. You have asked me on other occasions to report on the status of those offices. During 2005, we connected an additional 31 offices, which leaves us with work to do on 21 offices. The three remaining seasonal offices that are not connected are small but I agree that it could be a problem. We have asked Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) to secure a contract for CBSA for satellite connection for these three offices. They are working hard to obtain that contract for us. I am not sure why but there has been an administrative delay. We are confident that these offices will be connected through satellite before the end of the summer. It should have been done by now, but it is not done yet.

Senator Banks: Has anyone explained this to you? If you and I wanted a high-speed connection from the middle of the Gobi Desert, we could get it in very short order. Why is this delay happening?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Procurement in the public service is something that can be problematic on occasion because of the challenges and rules.

On a different note, we have spent a year and a half trying to obtain new uniforms for our employees. We are approaching the end of the process and will finally be getting our new uniforms. It is a complex process. Those questions may be better directed to PWGSC. We are approaching the end of the process and these offices will be connected.

I want to refer to another 18 offices that have been connected for some time. We are not comfortable with the high-speed connection or wave-length aspect, the space sufficient for them to obtain all the services other offices are getting.

We are planning to first analyze how the connection works with these three final examples. If satellite connection provides us with everything we think it will, that will probably be the solution for the other 18 offices that are not sufficiently connected.

Senator Banks: At the moment, let us talk about the three examples that are absent. We will take this to Public Works and Government Services Canada. We see the minister every day in the Senate and we will ask him those questions.

I can understand why you must get competitive bids on which uniform manufacturer to use. However, matters directly related to national security, particularly at these times, seem to be able to leapfrog those considerations in some way.

With respect to those three "offices" as you call them, I am presuming they are small and are probably manned by an officer at a given time. Is that a reasonable presumption?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes, they are small. They are probably one-person offices.

Senator Banks: How does that person get information about an emergent event? How is that person told that a truck driving up to their office might have something wrong with it, might contain something that ought not to be there, or has people in it about whom they should be careful? How are they notified?

Mr. Jolicoeur: If there is advance intelligence about something such as a vehicle, a person or an event to be aware of, we can always contact those offices.

Senator Banks: By what means?

Mr. Jolicoeur: We would speak to them directly by phone.

Senator Banks: In the event there is something untoward based on advanced intelligence, would you be able to get additional people to that office in short order?

Mr. Jolicoeur: I could not tell you right now how long it would take to get a person to these three offices but I can look into that. If there was such a need, we would send someone for sure.

Senator Banks: This is one of the questions addressed in our report.

If that vehicle drives through the land border crossing and does not stop, and there are a number of instances of that happening, can you tell us about the recordkeeping in that respect? How many instances were there in Canada last year of vehicles that just drove through a border crossing and did not stop? What is the percentage of those vehicles that were likely to have been found after the fact? Do we have that information?

Mr. Jolicoeur: You recommended to us and we agreed that we needed to start measuring and reporting on that, which we have done. I do not have the exact number but we started reporting last year.

If you recall the first time you raised that issue with us, the number used the year before was 1,600 across the country over a year. So far, for the six months of this year, we have a number in the 300 range. There has been a significant reduction of those occurrences.

They are reported, and that reporting has lead to about 70 people being arrested. I do not have the exact number but I do have that information if you want it.

Senator Banks: Will you please send that information to the clerk of the committee?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes.

Senator Banks: I think most Canadians would be surprised, shocked and unhappy to learn that 300 vehicles in half a year drive through the border, are not stopped and get away with it, at least for a while. Whomever or whatever they have in their trunk could be let out in fairly short order.

In a case such as that, the policy of CBSA now is to notify the police. The police may or may not be able to do something about it. We have had other issues about how quickly the police are able to respond to that, and it has not been good news.

Will that policy change when your border officers at those land border crossings are armed? When there is an armed and dangerous person known to be coming to the border, or when a vehicle crosses the border without stopping, will that policy change when your officers arrive?

Mr. Jolicoeur: The policy in terms of what to do when someone crosses the border without stopping will not change when our people are armed. Our policy will be similar to that of the U.S. They will not be allowed to use their guns to shoot at a car that passes through or anything like that. They will advise the police when someone runs the border. That policy will remain the same.

Senator Banks: We will still have to rely upon a police response, and sometimes they are too busy or cannot get around to it. Will CBSA officers have an added capacity to pursue a car or truck that has crossed the border without stopping?

Mr. Jolicoeur: No, we have no means to pursue; we are not foreseeing situations where we will need the means to pursue those cars ourselves. We will continue relying on the police.

Senator Banks: In that case, we are interested in receiving information about the number of vehicles that are somehow intercepted and how long it takes to find them. They could have offloaded whatever it was they had — which is presumably the reason they ran the border — in 20 minutes.

Mr. Jolicoeur: I agree. However, I should point out that we have reduced those numbers significantly using signage and different methods. We need to continue reducing that number.

At the end of the day, yes, we are dependent upon the police to capture the remaining offenders.

Senator Banks: We have already heard from CBSA officers that the police sometimes cannot respond and when they do it takes a long time.

If I drive a car across the border with a 20-minute head start, there are a lot of places in Canada I could go where you would never find me again. Is that right?

Mr. Jolicoeur: That is true at the moment. The solution is to reduce the number of people crossing without stopping and to get quicker service from the police. There may be alternative solutions in areas where it is difficult to obtain that service rapidly.

The Chairman: I have a supplementary question on that, Senator Banks.

Just so we are clear, Mr. Jolicoeur, you said that 300 vehicles ran the border in the first six months of this year?

Mr. Jolicoeur: The number is roughly 300 vehicles over six months.

The Chairman: Only 70 of those vehicles were apprehended?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes, I think it is about 70.

The Chairman: Is it correct that there are 230 vehicles in the country about which we have no clue?

Mr. Jolicoeur: That is true. I would like to point out that it is a very significant reduction over the previous number and it is our belief that the vast majority of cases where people run the port is by confusion. People are confused about signing. The vast majority think they have gone through the whole process when they have not.

The Chairman: If that is the case, why do you not have a barrier? It is easy to raise and lower a barrier.

Mr. Jolicoeur: We could put barriers everywhere. This will slow the process considerably, but it is a possibility. There is also a cost to that.

The Chairman: There is a barrier when you go into a parking garage and, when someone wants to leave, it is a matter of someone pushing a button and saying, thank you very much, have a nice day and they drive off.

Mr. Jolicoeur: We could have barriers everywhere. I would point out again that our process is measured by seconds. There are cases where it might be a problem, but that could be a permanent solution.

The Chairman: For people running the border, why not have something farther down the road, not by the post, that incapacitates the vehicle? We see police dragging across spikes and it would be an easy matter to automate that and have the vehicle incapacitated 200 metres farther down the road, not at the post.

Mr. Jolicoeur: There are locations where this could be considered. I am not sure it would be applicable to all locations because of the width.

The Chairman: I agree. It is not applicable to all. I am not hearing you say we are really concerned about the 230 that are getting through.

Mr. Jolicoeur: I am concerned, and this is why we have moved from 1,600 to a much smaller number. We need to keep on reducing that by using different techniques, and one of them might be, at the end of the day to bring it down to zero, to consider what you are suggesting.

The Chairman: I am surprised that I am suggesting them to you. I am surprised that you are not saying, I am sorry to report that 230-plus folks made it into the country, but here is our plan: One, we are going to put up a barrier to stop the ones who are just doing it accidentally and, two, we have figured out a way to stop the other vehicles. You seem passive about these issues and I do not understand why you are not coming before us and saying — here are the problems and, by the way, we have solutions that we are working on. We will test some of these and have some in place by this date. You come and say, well, Public Works is slow putting in equipment and we are also having problems with uniforms and, by the way, 230 vehicles with maybe more people snuck into the country, but I do not have anything to tell you about the solutions to stop that.

Mr. Jolicoeur: Let us take this problem one by one. We are flagging the port running and the difficulty we are having with port running. The last time we discussed that with you, we were collectively unhappy with the number of port runners, which was at 1,600. The plan that we discussed and implemented was to work in the area where that was most prevalent. We flagged two areas where we had some difficulty — one port in B.C. and a secondary commercial one at Windsor. We have worked on both and this is why we have progressed a lot.

I am not saying we are finished, but I am saying we have progressed a lot and we will continue to do so. If we do not find a better or more practical way to bring it close to zero — it is never going to be zero — we will use barriers. However, sometimes this occurs when our ports are closed. We get information about some people crossing the border point when the port is closed.

Senator Banks: That is not okay. How is it possible to say in this day and age, with everything that is happening, that if a criminal finds a border post that is closed, he or she can just drive across it? It is not okay that we have made progress in these things. Following the chairman's point, at each and every land border crossing in Canada, there is a road that vehicles have to drive down before they get to the fork in the road or the maze of streets or the other highways. There is a choke point, to use your language, by the use of which, the numbers of vehicles that drive into Canada without having been stopped and inspected, could be zero. You know better than we do what they are. There is a hydraulic mechanism in the road that stops the car or a set of teeth that come up and ruin tires, which half the parking lots in the country use.

Are you planning those kinds of things? Are you going to install those things so that the next time we talk to you the number of cars coming into Canada without having been stopped will be zero? Making it better is not good enough days, is it? Does it not have to be zero?

Mr. Jolicoeur: I understand your frustration and I would also like this to be zero, but as you know and as I have reported, we have many roads that are unguarded between Canada and the U.S.

If I take all of the former border crossing points and turn them into fortresses, at some point there is a limited return on the investment because —

Senator Banks: Is that the consideration — it costs too much?

Mr. Jolicoeur: The governing consideration is if you have a chain and you try to strengthen three or 15 of the links to make them better, it does not make your security any tighter because of the other ones. So, at some point we have to live with the reality that we have this huge border and there are many places where people can actually go through.

Senator Campbell: With all due respect, you are copping out. I am new here. I cannot believe this. I just cannot believe what I am hearing here. Are we serious about taking care of terrorism and people crossing our borders here? You cannot cop out by saying there are hundreds of places you can cross in this country. I know there are hundreds of places. You are responsible for the crossings. You came here in October. At that time you said there was no log being kept that would tell you how many people were jumping the border. Now we have a number of 1,600. Where did that come from?

Mr. Jolicoeur: The number of 1,600 was not a formal number. It was a number that was captured by, if I remember, employees across the country that reported on these things. Now we are —

Senator Campbell: There was no formal process of keeping it so the number could have been 3,200 for all you know — correct?

Mr. Jolicoeur: That is correct.

Senator Campbell: And so now we know that there are 300 in half a year.

Mr. Jolicoeur: That is correct.

Senator Campbell: You say there are lots of places to cross. You are responsible for making sure that people do not cross that border. Is that correct, at the crossings?

Mr. Jolicoeur: We are responsible at the crossings. We will reduce that number of 300 in six months.

Senator Campbell: This is not good enough.

My second question is — you cannot tell me that you should not have a pursuit vehicle at those big crossings. You simply cannot tell me that. It does not make any sense. What you are telling me is a joke. If someone runs the Vancouver crossing, chances are they will probably get popped because the Surrey-White Rock detachment is there. If someone runs North Portal in Saskatchewan, you do not have a prayer unless you have a helicopter there.

Either Canada is serious about this or we should stop telling the public that we are. I look at all of this and it does not make any sense. Let us go to a single officer at a crossing. How many of them do we have?

Mr. Jolicoeur: In the last budget, we received resources to double up in all of these areas. We will need 400 new employees to ensure that in each single-officer location, there will be two officers on each shift.

Senator Campbell: How many places are there?

Mr. Jolicoeur: I believe there are 138.

Senator Campbell: In 2005 there were 139, so we have taken this seriously. Why do we not forget about the new uniforms and put two people at the border so that they are safer? This is simply not acceptable. What are your priorities in order here — new uniforms? Last year you said you would do something about this. You pledged $101 million to begin arming the border officers and eliminating work-alone posts. How many of those work-alone posts have you eliminated? One, according to these figures. What is the timeline for eliminating them? When are we going to not have single officers sitting in the middle of Saskatchewan, Alberta or Manitoba?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Do you want me to speak to the question of single officers?

Senator Campbell: I do.

Mr. Jolicoeur: In Budget 2006, we have, for the first time, money to deal with work-alone posts. Now, we have to hire people and train them for which we have a plan. I admit that it will take about three years before we have no work-alone posts in Canada. That is the time it will take to complete the recruitment and training, given the space we have at our training centre. However, this problem is being resolved.

Senator Campbell: If this is so important, why are you not sending trained and knowledgeable people from the big border crossings to be the second officer and then putting a rookie into the big offices where they could be trained? There had better not be someone killed at one of these work-alone border crossings during the next few years. There is a way around this. I understand about bringing in more officers and the training. However, simply take 139 trained officers from the big offices across Canada and put them into these smaller, work-alone posts. My biggest fear is that someone working alone will be hurt at one of these crossings. Worse, the fact that there are 230 vehicles wandering around likely has nothing to with their missing the signage, as you suggested. If you cannot read the signage at Windsor, then you are coming across with something to do something. This is not acceptable.

Senator Banks: Is the principal constraint money?

Mr. Jolicoeur: For what?

Senator Banks: Doing all of these things, such as ensuring that no sign at a border crossing indicates "Closed for the night. Come back later," which is kind of silly.

Mr. Jolicoeur: If we want barriers, rules and a system that prevents people from crossing illegally then, yes there is a money consideration.

Senator Banks: Has that money been requested? Does CBSA have a plan for which it has requested the funds to reduce these numbers to zero? This committee argued with the previous government about it not providing sufficient resources. We will not change our minds on that simply because the government has changed. The previous government was deficient in providing the necessary resources for these jobs. However, you need a plan to take to the government in order to secure the appropriate funds to fix the problem. You need to tell the government how much it will cost. Have you made such a plan?

Mr. Jolicoeur: We make requests to every federal budget for additional resources for CBSA. This year, we received over two years $365 million for two improvements to security across Canada.

In the last budget, our request included a piece specifically dealing with running the port. No, I did not have a piece there. We of course were asked to prioritize all of our requests. No, there was not a specific request for that in the last budget. If we were to consider all of the areas where we could strengthen the border then, you are right, the amount requested to fund all of them would be very high. It would take a significant amount of money to add the number of people we would like to have at the borders and consider the areas between border points and post-border points — much more than we are talking about now.

Senator Banks: Most members of this committee believe that most Canadians would think that that would be money well spent. Aside from the specifics of border crossings, it would have a great impact on relations with our neighbour and the things that they suspect are happening in Canada. We argue against some of those suspicions when we send people to Washington to argue the incalculability of the costs. It is not only the fact of those 230 vehicles whose locations we do not know, but also the impact of that on our overall situation. Most Canadians would be extremely supportive of the necessary funding to ensure that we do not have "closed for the night" signs on our border crossings.

The Chairman: Mr. Jolicoeur, you just described a plan that you have laid out in order of priority. Could you make a copy of that available to the committee, please?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Do you mean in terms of the funding in Budget 2006?

The Chairman: No. We know those figures. We would like to know what you did not receive in that budget and we would like to see your list, in priority, of issues that you want to address across the spectrum. For example, are barriers on your list? Do you have a list of other deficiencies? We are anxious to know that you are on top of the job, and we do not want to be unreasonable in terms of our criticisms of what you are doing. If you have a plan in place that is not being funded, we would like to see what that plan is. We would like to have a look at what you have been arguing for so that we can see that you have a system that will resolve some of these problems. Failing that, we have to assume that you are not focusing on some of these issues.

It would be much fairer to you and to the agency if you were to provide us with what you think you need and what you have on your lists for material, equipment and devices, et cetera, to ensure that the border crossings work in the way that we expect them to work. Can you provide us with that?

Mr. Jolicoeur: That is fine. Yes.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[Translation]

Senator Poulin: Safety has become a major concern for Canadians because of a bad experience in the United States and also during the past few weeks. The quality of our relations with the United States is important to us. Since you are responsible for managing our border posts along the longest border in the world, could you tell us how many border posts there are and over how many kilometers?

Mr. Jolicoeur: The border is about 8,000 kilometers long. Along the land border, we have 119 border posts. When one talks about the border, one should not forget that it refers to all the points of entry into Canada. In addition to the land border, we have a number of marine ports. The three major border posts in importance for the number of containers are Halifax, Montréal and Vancouver.

Senator Poulin: We only have three?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Those on the largest ones. We also have marine points of service which are not always open.

We also have small marinas which open occasionally. There are also 200 airports that are used as points of entry into Canada.

Senator Poulin: What is the annual budget of the Canada Border Services Agency?

Mr. Jolicoeur: It will be between 1.2 and 1.3 billion dollars next year.

Senator Poulin: Considering the environment we’ve been living in since 2001 from the point of view of security, have you developed a plan identifying clearly the black holes? You’ve referred to long sections of the border without any post. What would be the solution to this problem and how much would it cost?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes, but I was referring to the management of the border as a whole. Our responsibility is limited to entry points. Despite that, we have discussed the possibility to create something equivalent to what the Americans have, which they call the Border Patrol and has a responsibility between the official points of entry. In our case, this responsibility belongs to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Senator Poulin: Are you saying that the responsibility for the border is shared between two agencies?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Indeed I am.

Senator Poulin: Does that not create problems for needs identification?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Obviously, especially since 9/11 but it had started earlier. The agencies work in close cooperation. We have common groups with staff from both organizations who cooperate, among other things, on the «high belt» concept, in an integrated manner, with all the safety agencies and US agencies. We are wondering now if it would not be better to have one single agency at the border instead of two. It's an open question.

Senator Poulin: I was a bit surprised to learn that the new government has given only 101 million dollars in the last budget for an issue as important as border post security. We are informed that this budget should allow us to eliminate single agent posts. The other objective was to provide weapons to officers at the border. You stated of while ago that even if the officers were armed, the present policy would not change. Why give them weapons, then?

Mr. Jolicoeur: In the 2006 budget, the first objective of the 101 million dollars was to give weapons to our staff. That was not the only amount for our organization. In total, for the first two years, we got 365 million $. So there are many other important projects that have been financed in the last budget. The plan to give weapons to our officers was not specifically aimed at resolving the problem of people running the border but rather to give some tools to our employees when they are faced with dangerous situations at the border. In those cases, our operational policy will change because, if our officers are armed, they will be called upon to intervene more directly in those situations whereas they could not do so in the past when they had no weapons.

To put that in context, we talk to our American colleagues about their level of comfort with our strategies and with what we’re doing. It is important to underline that we continuously compare our operational methods and our effectiveness to those of our American friends and that they are comfortable with them. Improvement is continuously made on both sides on the border as we go along.

Senator Poulin: Do American officers have weapons?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes, since the seventies.

Senator Poulin: Will our officers receive training on carrying and using weapons?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes, we're working with the Police Institute in Nicolet and with the agency training American officers to develop a course that will last about three weeks. That course will ensure that our people have the proper knowledge and training to use their weapons.

Senator Poulin: This is roughly what this committee had recommended a few weeks ago.

[English]

Senator Atkins: While at airports, one gets the impression that the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) has all the personnel it needs and then some. Can you tell us how many personnel you have increased by since the last time we met?

Mr. Jolicoeur: I do not know the exact number of increase but we will have about 13,000 employees within a year. It has been a gradual increase since we started.

The difficulty in reporting an exact number is that CBSA was not created in one shot. It was created gradually by adding pieces. Our numbers have been increasing steadily since our creation.

Senator Atkins: Getting back to the barrier question that the chairman addressed, if someone arrives by plane and goes through immigration, they see an officer who interrogates them and are then given a card in order to be put through another process where that card is examined.

Is there not a simple way of implementing a system where you could avoid having vehicles go through the border without examination, such as by having some form of barrier that could not be broken unless they provide evidence they have been examined?

Mr. Jolicoeur: If you are relating to the point raised by Senator Banks and Senator Campbell, to develop a physical means of completely preventing people from racing through the border, the answer is yes, it is certainly doable. There is significant cost related to it, but it is doable.

Senator Atkins: Would that process require more personnel?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes, more personnel and more capital to build infrastructure.

Senator Atkins: Have you any idea of the number of people or the amount of capital needed?

Mr. Jolicoeur: No, I do not have an estimate on that.

Senator Atkins: That would be helpful.

Do you have a waiting list of people applying to be members of your service?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes. Every time we open a competition, there are many applicants. However, our budget allows us to hire only a certain number. At the moment, the real challenge is to schedule training for these people through our institute at Rigaud. It is fully booked for at least a year.

Senator Atkins: With regard to the infrastructure for training, can you handle the increase of personnel or will it require serious adjustments to your training process?

Mr. Jolicoeur: There is no question that we need additional financial and human resources on the training side because of what I just described. We obtained additional resources in the last budget specifically for the new training aspects that are coming with the arming of employees. There will be a requirement for additional space and expertise due to that. We received the resources and have a plan to deploy that over the coming years.

Senator Atkins: I understand that you are extending the training period.

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes. It is a bit more complicated because now we are one organization. Our employees are coming from three different organizations. We have created a new integrated course that includes all the expertise that was covered by three organizations in the past.

Senator Atkins: What are the three?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada and customs. We have created a new program that is currently being tested that is more integrated.

Senator Atkins: Is three weeks long enough to train a student?

Barbara Hébert, Vice-President, Operations Branch, Canada Border Services Agency: The training we give our students covers the requirements they have to carry out their assigned responsibilities. Our students do not fulfil the full range of responsibilities that a regular border services officer would have.

Earlier you expressed interest in the air mode. Using that as an example, even full-time indeterminate officers would receive three weeks of training if they were to work in the air mode. A student who is to work in the air mode would also receive three weeks of training to do primary processing. From that perspective, they are quite compatible. If a student were asked to do more than that in the example I just gave, additional training would be provided.

Senator Atkins: Do you have the facilities to provide that training?

Ms. Hébert: The students are trained locally and regionally. They do not go to our training facility in Rigaud. That facility is for our indeterminate officers.

The Chairman: Are the students on land crossings fully trained?

Ms. Hébert: The students who work at the land borders also receive three weeks training. They receive the training required to carry out the responsibilities they are assigned.

The Chairman: That is a vague answer. Are there times when students are working alone and unsupervised?

Ms. Hébert: No, Senator Kenny, they are not.

The Chairman: What would you say if we produced examples of that happening?

Ms. Hébert: I would like to have that information because it is the policy that they should not be.

The Chairman: This is a policy that you monitor and that you are certain is in place?

Ms. Hébert: I can assure you that I regularly raise it with my management team.

The Chairman: Do they monitor it?

Ms. Hébert: I believe they do.

The Chairman: How often do they tell you that it is not observed?

Ms. Hébert: I have had this conversation with them no less than once every quarter in the last year, and I believe that any discrepancies have been corrected.

The Chairman: You are telling me that on a number of occasions in the past year you have found that students were in charge of a border post?

Ms. Hébert: No, that would not be an accurate statement.

The Chairman: Clarify for us, if you would, what you meant when you said that any discrepancies were corrected. You need not correct something if there is no problem.

Ms. Hébert: Students are never left alone at a port. I was referring to the latter clause of your sentence. Students would not necessarily be only at the port of entry.

The Chairman: My question stands. Have instances been reported to you of students being alone?

Ms. Hébert: Instances have been reported, as a result of appearances before this committee, and I have taken action to deal with my management team as a result of those representations.

The Chairman: In the past year, how often have you found that there were students working there alone?

Ms. Hébert: I am not aware of any student in the last six months who has been working alone. You asked about a year. Off the top of my head I am not aware of any, but I do not want to mislead the committee. However, I am sure about the last six months.

The Chairman: You can be assured that every time you appear before us that question will come up. If you could, double-check before your next appearance.

Ms. Hébert: To be clear, I believe that we have no students working alone now and have not for some period of time.

Senator Banks: Some students have done wonderful work.

Ms. Hébert: I agree.

Senator Banks: A student is not a bad thing. However, the policy is that students are always working under the supervision of an experienced officer, most of whom I assume would be indeterminate officers.

Exactly what does "under the supervision of" mean? I know that if a student is in a booth at a border crossing, there will not be an experienced officer sitting beside him in the booth. How far away is the supervision under which that student is working, and what exactly does "under the supervision of" mean? Is the experienced officer at a different place or at home where he could be reached by telephone, or does it mean that there is sight contact with the supervisor?

Ms. Hébert: You are absolutely correct about a student working at a primary inspection line (PIL) booth. There will undoubtedly be people working in the office or at the commercial primary inspection line. The supervisory presence to which I referred could be in another booth or inside the actual facility at the port, but would absolutely be on site.

Senator Atkins: With regard to PIL booths, it has been suggested to us on other occasions that there is an unofficial time allotted for the processing of a car. Is that a practice that is implemented by your senior people?

Ms. Hébert: We have statistics that indicate the average processing time for the average traveller over the course of history.

Senator Atkins: What is that?

Ms. Hébert: I believe it is 30 seconds.

Senator Atkins: I believe we heard that it is 20 seconds.

Ms. Hébert: I would generally use 30 seconds. That is certainly the average time history has shown us. Having said that, I am not aware of any instance where we direct officers that they shall take no more than 30 seconds or, in your example, 20 seconds.

Officers are expected to exercise discretion and process the traveller until he or she, being the officer, is satisfied that that traveller can be admissible to Canada. Some processing might take 17 seconds; some might take much longer than that.

Senator Atkins: Therefore, they would not be penalized if they are slow in their operation?

Ms. Hébert: That is correct.

Senator Atkins: How is CBSA working with the RCMP to combat organized crime in the ports?

Mr. Jolicoeur: We are working at different levels, but the main instrument we are using is the IBET, the integrated border enforcement teams we have across the country. They are led by the RCMP but with participation of our agency as well as others. We also share intelligence regularly at different levels and feed that intelligence through our national risk assessment centre to the local level when it is important that the information be available. We are working as teams.

Senator Atkins: Could you describe the experiment in Saint John?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Are you talking about RADNET?

Senator Atkins: Yes.

Mr. Jolicoeur: RADNET is a system that we have developed in house to measure radioactivity that might be present in containers. We first deployed RADNET to Windsor. It is a sophisticated way to discriminate between radiation readings that would be problematic and related to something illegitimate and the radiation readings that you get regularly from products that properly contain radiation. We have that system in place. Every container is basically screened or read by the readers and the information fed into our risk-assessment system TITAN and compared with the information we have on the importers and carriers, et cetera. A decision is made on the system as to whether or not there is a need to flag a concern and trigger an action by our officers locally. It is a more-advanced system than what they have in the United States for making that decision and will be deployed to other ports this year.

Senator Atkins: I am surprised you would pick Saint John because there is not that much container traffic there.

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes, but when you test a system and deploy a big machine, a big system, you want to do it in a secure way. You do not want to create havoc so the decision was made to start there for that reason. It could have been somewhere else.

Senator Moore: I want to follow up on what Senator Atkins was asking. In your opening statement, Mr. Jolicoeur, you have mentioned at the bottom of page one that once fully implemented our radiation detection program will allow us to screen virtually 100 per cent of incoming marine cargo.

When do you anticipate the implementation to be complete?

Mr. Jolicoeur: This calendar year, I believe.

Senator Moore: By the end of December 2006?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Yes.

Senator Moore: Senator Banks was asking at the beginning about the type of technology used in the connections of the various posts. You mentioned there were three unconnected posts but you were waiting for a contract to be procured and there are 18 others that you may upgrade to that type of new technology. Will all 21 be via high-speed Internet?

Mr. Jolicoeur: That is what we are aiming for. That is why we want to continue with those 18 to bring them to the level of high-speed Internet but it is a separate line. I could not describe more precisely than that but it is at that level, yes. It is the same level that the others have.

Senator Moore: When you started out there were 110 not connected and now you have it down to three, but 18 you want to upgrade. Are all the others connected via high-speed Internet?

Mr. Jolicoeur: I would not call it high-speed Internet but it is that standard or better. We have our own network.

Senator Moore: It is not dial up then?

Mr. Jolicoeur: The others, no; they are not dial up.

Senator Moore: I am interested in the Canada-U.S. border Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. We had your colleague, Andrea Spry, before our Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce on June 8. On that day we also heard from U.S. Congresswoman Louise Slaughter from the state of New York. We were talking about access, moving people, equipment and goods across the border but primarily part of that discussion focused on tourism. When Congresswoman Slaughter crossed the border she was told she had to have a passport. When Ms. Spry gave her presentation she said that was not required. I am wondering where the idea came from whereby the border officers required that visitor and her staff to provide a passport. Are we now moving towards implementation of passports only, or are we using photo ID and citizenship or birth certificates?

Mr. Jolicoeur: At the moment the passport is not required. It may be that some officers have asked for that but our direction at the moment is that a passport is not required. It is not required in the air mode when you go to the U.S. either and they are asked all the time. However, it is not required.

Senator Moore: How often does the working group that you chair meet?

Mr. Jolicoeur: In the last two months we have probably had three meetings. The U.S. is presently into a rule-making process where they have limited ability to communicate on WHTI while decisions are being made about the specifics of the requirement for the air and marine modes at the moment.

The Chairman: What is the WHTI?

Senator Moore: That is the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. It is referred to as WHTI.

The air and marine crossings have one date. What is their date when a card or some other type of identification will be required?

Mr. Jolicoeur: January 1, 2007.

Senator Moore: Is land the following year?

Mr. Jolicoeur: That is correct.

Senator Moore: We heard evidence that there are 123 million crossings each year of people going back and forth between Canada and the United States. We are aware that the United States Senate has passed an amendment to the immigration bill extending the implementation dates by one year, and that the House of Representatives has not.

Do you have any information, in terms of your meetings with colleagues in the U.S., on the likelihood of that one-year extension being put in place?

Mr. Jolicoeur: Everyone is planning on the basis that those target dates will remain the same. There may be some changes at the end; first, the immigration bill would have to pass in the House of Representatives. People do not think that the date will be changed and there will be an amendment in place that will effectively change those dates. If there is a change, it would come close to the end. There is no question that both sides feel we have to plan for those dates to remain in place at the moment.

Senator Moore: Is there any possibility that the provisions with respect to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative would be carved out of that immigration bill and, perhaps, dealt with separately or do you think we are locked into that bill?

Mr. Jolicoeur: At the moment, I believe they are part of that bill and their survival is linked to the survival of the other bill.

Again, there could be other amendments introduced in the future. There could be some changes. We do not believe we will see, certainly before the end of the calendar year, a change in the official implementation date.

Senator Moore: You do not think there will be a change?

Mr. Jolicoeur: No.

Senator Moore: That is certainly the position of Secretary Chertoff a little over a week ago. He said they are sticking by those dates and they think they can do it. What do you think will be the card or document of preference here, given that only 20 to 24 per cent of U.S. citizens have a passport, and they do not think they would support a NEXUS card, for which I understand the application fee is $100?

Mr. Jolicoeur: I think it is $80.

Senator Moore: Okay, $80 for a NEXUS card and I think there are less than 100,000 of those in existence — 75,000 to 100,000 have been issued. We are talking about millions of travellers. Practically speaking, given these dates of implementation, how will that be achieved?

Mr. Jolicoeur: First, I have said many times I do not think they will be ready, if we define ready as meaning that people will have cards to cross the border. I know the official administration position is that they will be ready.

Senator Moore: Practically speaking, I do not see how they can be but you are closer to it than we are.

Mr. Jolicoeur: I do not think they will be ready. In terms of what we are doing about it, we are trying to get an agreement with the U.S. administration on a standard under SPP — the Security and Prosperity Partnership — that could be met by different