Security issues at Toronto’s Pearson Airport

Last week there was a report in a Canadian newspaper, making claims that security had been lax on more than one occasion inside Canada’s busiest travel hub, Lester B. Pearson International Airport. One accusation is that staff had been instructed to hurry passengers through security checkpoints to speed up the flow of people.

Despite claims made by anonymous staff members, security consultant and former officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police states, “There’s no question in my mind: these guys are in a dispute with their employer. So what are they going to do? They’re going to start pissing and moaning about something people will listen to: airport security.”

“They have their own agenda, and they’re trying to garner support for that,” he continued, saying people need to understand that “airport security is a fickle thing. It changes with public sentiment and recent occurrences.”

Another former RCMP man, Norman Inkster makes allowances when it comes to human error, even when two flights in one weekend were delayed when secondary searches found items that should have been confiscated at the first security check.

“In any system where you have humans involved, the spectrum goes from overzealousness to complacency; that’s human nature, and in there you may find people who did not, on a particular occasion, do their job as well as they might have.”