Call for faster security checks

a Continued from FP1

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority, which manages and operates Pearson International Airport, the biggest airport in the country, issued a report last week that called on governments to improve transit in the region, reduce wait times for passengers and improve the flow of international passengers.

Similar recommendations were made by a recent review of the Canada Transportation Act (CTA) by former MP David Emerson, which called Canada’s existing airport model “antiquated” and “cumbersome.” The CGCC report echoes lot of the same points, calling on the federal government to ease congestion at security checkpoints by setting minimum service standards for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), the Crown corporation responsible for screening passengers. It also proposes linking CATSA’s funding to rising passenger volumes and implementing new technologies to reduce wait times.

CATSA’s 2015-16 budget forecast that half the passengers at Canadian airports would wait longer than 15 minutes for screening, whereas airports like London Heathrow and Hong Kong International screen 95 per cent of passengers within five minutes.

“Canada is dramatically behind global best practices,” the CGCC report says.

CGCC also criticizes the current “one-size-fits-all” screening model and calls for a “risk-based, intelligence-driven approach” that would speed up the processing of regular business travellers while creating separate security lines for families and people unfamiliar with the system.

For international travellers, CGCC says Canada’s current approach of only allowing passengers from a small number of low-risk countries to travel without a visa is the “opposite” of what successful hubs do. Instead, it calls on the government to reduce visa requirements and expand trusted-traveller programs.

Like the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, CGCC also calls on all levels of government to improve transit access to Canada’s airports, pointing to the fact that 92