HALIFAX - Four stowaways who came to Halifax from England aboard a container vessel are going to spend at least another week in custody as investigators attempt to unravel the mystery of how they slipped into a double-decker bus that was transported on the ship.
Jennifer Morrison, a spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency, said a closed hearing was held Tuesday before Immigration and Refugee Board officials.
She says it's "standard procedure'' for the four men to be held while investigators try to determine if they pose any security risk to Canadians, or if the men might attempt to flee upon release.
"There are a number of reasons to hold individuals when they come into the country. We need to identify their identity, and we have to determine that they're not a security risk,'' she said in an interview.
Morrison wouldn't release the names of the men or their nationalities, despite previous statements by border services that the men are likely Algerian.
They were being held at a correctional facility in a nearby industrial park on Wednesday.
The men hid on double-decker buses being delivered to GO Transit in the Toronto area during their voyage from Liverpool. In Halifax, they sprinted away from an unarmed commissionaire at the Cerescorp terminal.
The four men took a taxi to Halifax's Via Rail station, but they weren't able to buy tickets with their European currency. They then travelled by taxi about 100 kilometres to Truro, where police arrested them before they attempted to board a train to Montreal.
The case has drawn criticism from Senator Colin Kenny, the chair of the Senate committee on national security and defence, who has argued the incident illustrates "a long list of failures'' in port security.
A Via Rail clerk has said he tried to warn a Canada Border Services tip line that the men were at the station in Halifax, but was told they couldn't assist without names.
However, some Canadian authorities argue the key question is how the men managed to board the bus, which was manufactured by Alexander Dennis, a company in Falkirk, Scotland.
"I would think the port of loading of this (bus) would be very interested in knowing how this transpired,'' said George Malec, the director of business development at the Halifax Port Authority. "How was illegal access to their terminal gained? How was illegal access to the vessel obtained.''
In a statement, port police in Liverpool said it's still unclear if the men boarded the ship there. It is one of several ports of call for the Atlantic Container Lines vessel Atlantic Cartier.
"We're liaising with the Canadian immigration service and the shipping line to establish the circumstances in which these individuals boarded the vessel, which called at several continental European ports before arriving in Liverpool,'' Eric Leatherbottom, a spokesman for the port police, said in an interview.
Bill Simpson, the head of public relations at Alexander Dennis, said it would be virtually impossible for stowaways to get on its buses before they went aboard the ship, because there are security checks done during the drive from the factory and before the bus enters the port area.
"Our drivers take the vehicle right onto the ship and before they leave them they do a final delivery inspection. They go through every aspect of the bus, from A to Z,'' said Simpson.
Canada's public safety minister, Stockwell Day, repeated his concerns about the incident Wednesday, and said port security must he tightened.
Day has already said the Canada Border Services Agency would be reviewing what happened.
"Any time there's a breach of security, that's a concern for me and that's why I demanded it be addressed immediately,'' Day said during an unrelated news conference in Quebec City.
"If there are improvements that can and should be made, then we want to see those done and we want to see them done quickly.''
Immigration lawyer Lee Cohen said the lack of information being disclosed about the four men by the border agency was worrying because it's not clear if they had been given legal counsel.
"There seems to be a real veil of secrecy that seems to have been cloaked over this whole affair,'' he said from his office in Halifax.
"It generally raises the suspicions of the public and any potential stakeholders about what's really going on here.''
