Transport Minister Abuses Power By Ordering Illegal Searches at Airports

I started to wonder by what authority CATSA was performing unconstitutional searches at airports, so I dug thru the relevant notices & legislation.  This is easily done using Google and I encourage others to do so.

It turns out that CATSA has only the authority to perform searches as granted to them via the Transportation Act.

A close reading of the Transportation Act reveals that CATSA can only perform searches prescribed by regulation or an order-in-council.  No regulatory changes or orders-in-council were made following the Christmas airline scare.  So CATSA has no authority to pat down passengers or to institute virtual strip searches.

The Transport minister ordered these unconstitutional measures by abusing his power to institute "security measures".  Perhaps nobody told him that the Transportation Act clearly limits the scope of these measures to only actions that can be legitimately regulated under the Transportation Act but cannot be regulated because such regulation would disclose the measure thereby undermining its effectiveness.

Since conducting public searches is hardly a secret, it does not qualify as a "security measure" under the Transportation Act.  The minister clearly has overstepped his authority - in addition to violating the Charter of Rights for every airline passenger in Canada.  Either he did so out of ignorance, arrogance, or willful abuse of his authority.

The minister could have alternatively and legitimately chosen to order "emergency measures" but did not do so because such measures can only be enacted against a specific threat (i.e. knowledge of which flight is at risk) and no such specific threat existed.   In any event, emergency measures are limited to only 72 hours.

So not only do we live in a country without a legitimate Parliament, we are living under a dictatorship where ministers of the Crown can evidently do as they like with total disregard for the law.  It is disappointing that our society is so willing to let them get away with it.