Regulations Amending the Secure Air Travel Regulations and the Designated Provisions Regulations

Enabling Acts

Secure Air Travel Act (SATA)

Aeronautics Act

Description

Enhancements to the Passenger Protect Program (PPP) were recently implemented to transition towards a government-controlled centralized screening model of passengers travelling by air to, from and/or within Canada against the Secure Air Travel Act (SATA) list. This also included the creation of the Canadian Travel Number (CTN) to prevent delays at the airport by helping to distinguish legitimate travellers who have the same, or similar name, as someone on the SATA list.

During the implementation of these enhancements, the need to make minor adjustments to the regulatory design were identified. At the same time, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had significant impacts on air carriers, including delaying their implementation of those enhancements.

Accordingly, amendments to the Secure Air Travel Regulations (SATR) are being pursued as follows:

1. Clarify the Minister's authority to collect passenger information provided to the Government of Canada by air carriers for the purpose of the PPP.
2. Remove the requirement for air carriers to retransmit unchanged passenger data at check-in.
3. Clarify air carriers' duty to provide information during an outage as it pertains to changes in passenger information.
4. Extend the deadline for air carriers to permanently remove and destroy the Secure Air Travel Act List from their system to enable more time to those who need it to onboard to the government-controlled centralized screening system.
5. Clarify air carriers' responsibility to offer the opportunity for travellers to voluntarily provide a Canadian Travel Number when making reservations of flights to, from and/or within Canada.

Potential impacts on Canadians, including businesses

The amendments will impact commercial air carriers that operate flights to, from and/or within Canada and are already part of the PPP. This includes the third party service providers that those airlines rely on for passenger data processing technology.

Canadians, including businesses, will benefit from the amendments as they will ensure that Canada's PPP is functioning optimally.

Regulatory cooperation efforts (domestic and international)

The amendments will better align Canada's PPP requirements with international industry standards for data transmission of passenger information as well as the United States' Transportation Security Administration's Secure Flight Program.

Consultations

Preliminary discussions with key commercial air carriers and third party service providers of passenger data processing technology for affected airlines have confirmed the need to amend the regulations to reduce compliance burden, and to clarify air carriers' duty to provide information during an outage as it pertains to changes to passenger information.

Consultations with affected stakeholders in the air transportation industry were conducted during the summer of 2021; this further reaffirmed the need to make changes to the regulatory design which provides the framework for Canada's PPP.

The proposed regulations will be pre-published in the Canadian Gazette Part 1 for broader stakeholder consultation in the spring of 2022.

Further information

N/A

Departmental contact information

Justin Chan
Director
Passenger Protect Office
National Security Policy Directorate
National and Cyber Security Branch
ppp-ppp@ps-sp.gc.ca

Date the regulatory initiative was first included in the Forward Regulatory Plan

June 2021

For more information

Date modified:

2022-05-05