The voice of Canada’s airports.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007 -
Government largely adopts airport recommendations
OTTAWA (Sept. 4, 2007) – The Canadian
Airports Council (CAC) today applauded the government‘s decision to “stay the
course” for the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA), largely
adopting recommendations made by the CAC.
“Canada’s
airports endorse Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon’s first round of decisions
for the future of CATSA in its important role for air travel security in Canada,” said
CAC President and CEO Jim Facette.“We
look forward to working with the government as it tackles the next round of
decisions that have to be made about CATSA’s future.
The CAC felt that CATSA’s focus needed to
continue to be on aviation security for the security of all Canadians and said
so in a position paper filed with the panel reviewing CATSA’s future during
2006 – most notably:
The CAC’s position paper also called for a
review of CATSA’s accountability and funding, including the establishment of
national performance standards for CATSA, and site-specific metrics against
which the authority’s performance can be measured.
“Canada’s airports believe that
aviation security is a matter of national security, and should be paid for out
of general tax revenues,” said Mr. Facette.“Failing that, while CATSA currently gets its funding from the federal
government out of money collected by passengers from the Air Travellers’
Security Charge, there should at least be a mechanism to gauge the authority’s
effectiveness in how it spends this money on an airport-by-airport basis. This
would ensure, in a transparent way, that all ATSC funds collected from airline
passengers are re-invested in aviation security.”
About
the Canadian Airports Council
The
Canadian Airports Council (CAC) is the voice for Canada’s airports.Its 44 members represent more than 150
airports, including all of the National Airports System (NAS) airports and most
significant municipal airports in every province and territory. Together, CAC
members handle virtually all of the nation’s air cargo and international
passenger traffic and 95% of domestic passenger traffic.They create well in excess of $30 billion in
economic activity in the communities they serve.And more than 150,000 jobs are directly
associated with CAC member airports, generating a payroll of more than $8
billion annually.
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For more
information:
Daniel-Robert
Gooch,
Director of
Communications
Canadian
Airports Council
(613) 560-9302
ext 16
daniel.gooch@cacairports.ca