OTTAWA (CP) - A Senate committee is recommending the federal Transport Department be relieved of its responsibility for airport security after finding that improvements in lax security at Canadian airports are "few and far between" more than five years after the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The Committee recommends that Transport Canada be relieved of its responsibility for security at airports and that this responsibility be transferred to the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada," says the all-party security and defence committee in one of 16 recommendations contained in its update on airport security.

The committee urges Ottawa to put the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority in charge of security operations and the RCMP in charge of security strategy.

"Then, perhaps, it wouldn't be taking years of consultation with stakeholders before half-measures get taken," says the 144-page report. "Then, perhaps, full and responsible security measures would be put in place within a reasonable time frame."

It says the federal government should boost the size of the RCMP by between 600 and 800 full-time equivalents so the national police force can expand its "security, investigative and analytical capabilities at airports."

Departmental responses to the committee's three-year-old recommendations aimed at overcoming "serious gaps" in airport security were typified by "vagueness, obfuscation, non-response and seemingly endless procrastination," it says, adding the federal bureaucracy is bogged down in "more talking; more consulting (and) more thinking."

Despite the damning report it filed in January 2003, the committee says it found "even less urgency about fixing serious problems" such as organized crime at airports, inadequate background checks and access control to aircraft and a lack of screening of mail and other cargo aboard passenger planes.

"Canadian airports and seaports are riddled with organized crime," says the report. "There have been some well-publicized arrests in recent years, but the police know that those caught only represent the tip of the iceberg."

The senators say they cannot assure the public that the numerous gaps that remain in airport security are being treated with some degree of urgency by government and the relevant departments.

They acknowledge their last report is "gathering dust" but they say the public should at least know it is gathering dust and they assert that "without public pressure, nothing gets done."

The Senate document was released as CBC reported chaos during a labour dispute at Calgary airport caused a serious breach in security last December when a rushed airline manager let 30 pieces of luggage fly to Houston without the owners on board.

Internal documents CBC obtained under the Access to Information Act show that Transport Canada is investigating the incident, a direct violation of major international security rules Canada adopted after the 1985 Air India bombing, which killed 329 people.

Continental Airlines has since issued an apology for its mistake last December, but in a scathing letter to the government agency in charge of security, Garth Atkinson, president of Calgary's airport authority, called pre-flight screening out of Calgary "the absolute worst in Canada."