SPEECH: Bill C-59 and Proposed Changes to Canada’s No Fly List

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Thank you, Your Honour. I rise today to speak also on Bill C-59, and I would like to thank Senator Gold for steering this bill in the Senate.

I’m going to focus my comments on a narrow section, changes to the no-fly list. I’m delighted that Senator Housakos and I can agree on this point because this is an urgent matter.

You may have read in the news yesterday or today that the No Fly Parents group  was on the Hill yesterday and were meeting with people in both houses to underline the urgency of their request, and I would like to add my voice to theirs.

The no-fly list has been around since 2007, when it was first enacted as part of the Passenger Protection Program  in 2015 under Bill C-51. It was expanded to enable the establishment of the no-fly list of persons.

The list included those whom the minister had reasonable grounds to suspect for two reasons. First, those who engage or attempt to engage in an act that would threaten transportation security; and two, those who travel by air to commit certain terrorism offences.

The minister, upon identification of such individuals, could direct air carriers to take specific, reasonable and necessary action to prevent a listed person from engaging in the suspected activity, including denying transportation to the person or screening a person before they enter the boarding area.

Colleagues, so far I think this is all reasonable and necessary. As Senator Housakos has said, we need to protect national security for Canadians. We need to protect ourselves from people who are looking to harm us and others, and we need to be vigorous and alert on this matter.

But, as always, another law, and I will call this the law of unintended consequences, kicks in. Ordinary people get caught up in an unintended manner, and they find themselves in a spider’s web that is almost impossible to escape from. In this case, they get caught up in the list because they happen to share a common name with someone else who has been identified as a threat to safety and is therefore on the list. Common names like Adam Ahmed, Bill Graham, David Mathews, David Smith and Mohamed Ali  are all thought to be on the list, and some of these names will resonate with you because they’re former parliamentarians. These names generate false positives, and all of a sudden you will find yourself on the list.

The list is also opaque and shrouded in secrecy. The list only contains the most basic information about the individual. No other identifiers, such as a social insurance number or a passport number, are recognized. You only find out you’re on the list once you try to board a plane or a cruise ship. Imagine the consternation when you find out that you, your child or in fact even your newborn baby is on the list.

My meeting with the No Fly List Kids  was a true eye-opener. I met with two parents of the same child, one is an active member of the Canadian Air Force and the other is a retired Forces member. I can’t share their names with you, but I can tell you that they have ordinary Canadian names. They told me that their son shares the name with someone on the list. Their son is not an adult but a toddler, and the first time they were stopped at the airport their son was in a stroller. Certainly everybody could see, the airlines, the CBSA officers, this toddler is not a terrorist, but the law is the law and they must follow the process.

So what does that mean? They can’t check in online, so they have to be at the airport well in advance of any flight. If they don’t, they may miss it because they will be stopped and questioned rigorously. Since they can’t check in online, they often don’t get to sit together in the plane. They are stopped, they are questioned, and they have to line up for secondary security to be cleared for travel. They are flagged. It is no wonder they feel unduly stigmatized and leery of travel. Even if they manage to get clearance to fly the one time, the same ugly situation rears its head the next.

So they fear travelling to other countries because they don’t know if they can get there, and, even worse, they don’t know if they can get back. This has generated, obviously, a great deal of anxiety for the parents.

The delegation from the No Fly Kids List also told me about the very real impact being on the list has on the children outside of family trips and family vacations. Their ability to participate in team sport events, like soccer or hockey, is limited when the teams have to cross the border to compete. And, of course, this extends to academic exchanges, music, culture, youth leadership opportunities, et cetera, and all because of a name.

The No Fly Kids List was formed by Sulemaan Ahmed . Sulemaan’s son Adam has been flagged since he was a newborn, since his name “Adam Ahmed ” is a pretty common name. On a trip to Mexico, they almost didn’t make it back to Canada. They had their passports confiscated with no explanation and almost missed their flight home.

In 2015, they travelled to the NHL Winter Classic  in Massachusetts. That was going to be a great trip for the family. At the airport, their son was flagged again. This time Sulemaan tweeted out the picture and the story went viral, and he was contacted by hundreds of families in the same situation, and so the No-Fly List Kids was born.

The group has grown to over 200 families, but there may be as many as 100,000 people who are affected. As children age, simple delays may well turn into outright detention. What if the person is falsely identified in a country that doesn’t share our values and processes?

It’s not just kids but adults as well. I will give you a story from an adult. Stephen Evans is a digital technology leader and works with companies such as Microsoft, the Toronto Star and Kijiji. He travels all the time and was shocked to find out that he was a listed traveller. As someone who travels tens of thousands of miles a year for business, ease of travel is essential for success in business.

Curiously, if a Canadian is on the American no-fly list they have the ability to apply to the Department of Homeland Security and there is a program called the Traveller Redress Inquiry Program . He did that and was taken off the U.S. list, but not off the list in Canada because we don’t have such a process.

Bill C-59 provides a simple and pretty straightforward solution to deal with this problem. It maintains the no-fly list, but creates a new system to deal with false positives and provides a better remedy for people to get their names off the list. It authorizes the minister to include more identifiers, such as a middle name, and other identifiers that will be determined in regulation. This just makes common sense.

The minister will be able to issue a unique identifying number to travellers when checking in for a flight. This will allow airlines to screen them in a unique way once they arrive at the airport. Both objectives are met: Catch and contain those who pose a risk to security, but not those who are accidentally impacted.

The minister will also be able to inform a parent or a guardian that their child is not a listed person. Currently, the minister has no authority to disclose that information.

Bill C-59 adjusts the procedure for a listed person to request to be removed from the list. If the minister does not make a decision within the allowable time frame — which is 120 days, up from 90 days — then it is deemed that the minister has decided to remove the name from the list. Currently, it’s the reverse.

Honourable senators, budget 2018 allocated $80 million over the next five years to revamp the no-fly list, but before the money can go out of the door the changes contained in Bill C-59 need to come into force.

I welcome this change, but I would want to be assured that it is enough to establish a true redress system. I would like to hear more on this matter at committee.

My meeting with the parents ended with them urging the Senate to move the bill forward. I want to commend these parents who have come together on their own. They are not an organization or an institution, they are just a group of parents who are self-confessedly not experts in legislation. But they do have a very big voice and they have made their voices heard here and outside of Canada. They want to get their names and those of their children off the list, or at least have alternative ways to address the misidentification. They want this sooner rather than later because children age with time. Children become teenagers and teenagers travel alone, so this creates greater anxiety for them. I believe, therefore, that we should be moving this legislation forward. Let’s examine it closely at committee, see if there are any improvements we can make and work together to help these families. That would indeed be a wonderful Christmas gift for them from this chamber.

Thank you