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Airport security firm fires whistle-blowers

Airport security firm fires whistle-blowers

By ALEX DOBROTA, The Global and Mail
August 23, 2007

The private company in charge of checking passengers at Toronto's Pearson International Airport has quietly fired three screening officers who blew the whistle on alleged security breaches, The Globe and Mail has learned.

In February, the officers lodged a complaint with Canada's Industrial Relations Board against Garda World Security Corp., alleging their managers took over security checkpoints at Pearson to rush passengers through screening.

As a result, luggage and passengers boarded planes without being checked, the screening officers said. Garda has repeatedly denied the allegations.

The three officers were suspended last month. They received their dismissal notices last week.

A fourth screening officer, who made the same allegations against Garda, was fired in April.

A Garda spokesman refused to comment, but did not deny that three of the company's officers had been laid off.

Senator Colin Kenny, a vocal critic of airport security, vowed to investigate the matter. He said he met the three jobless screening officers Tuesday and was concerned by their allegations.

"It's serious," said Mr. Kenny, who is the chair of the Senate committee on national security and defence. "They certainly gave me enough information to want to ask more questions."

In an interview last month, Garda senior vice-president Allan Bentley said security was "at no time" compromised at Pearson and suggested the officers making those allegations were disgruntled employees.

But The Globe obtained internal Garda documents that showed one air traveller completely circumvented security at Pearson in April by walking through an unstaffed screening gate.

Similar documents showed a screening officer checking passengers for U.S.-bound flights at Pearson worked without proper certification for more than a year.

And, in interviews with The Globe, several screening officers said Garda managers used termination threats to speed up the screening process.

The Montreal-based company manages screening at 28 airports across the country, including Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Calgary International. It was awarded those contracts by the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority, a federal agency that reports to Parliament.

The three screening officers fired last week also complained that Garda had withheld bonus money destined to screening officers that it had received from CATSA. Mr. Bentley said the company is "negotiating with the union to provide that additional compensation to employees."

During the latest airport security incident, planes were grounded for several hours at Trudeau airport over the weekend, after a man managed to pass through the screening checkpoint with a multipurpose tool in his carry-on luggage.

The man showed up at an international departure gate shortly before 6 p.m. on Saturday. On the X-ray machine, screening officers noticed he had an object that looked like a Swiss Army knife in his carry-on bag.

"We don't know how the person managed to take the bag and disappear," said Constable Lynne Labelle of the Montreal police, which was called to the airport.

He was found after 20 airplanes were grounded for more than four hours, stranding 8,000 passengers in the airport and delaying arrivals and departures.

Calls for an interview with a CATSA official were not returned yesterday.

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