Everybody named Adam Ahmed across Canada should be heaving a sigh of relief right about now.

Tuesday’s federal budget includes an $81.4 million investment over five years starting 2018-19 to develop a rigorous centralized screening model that should end no-fly list ordeals for innocent Canadians. The announcement is the culmination of the democratic process of active citizenry and the power of parental love.

On Tuesday, there was jubilation and gratitude from members of the No Fly List Kids group who only had eyes for this one point in the budget.

“It’s affirmed my faith in the system which I feel so grateful for,” said Ruby Alvi, whose three sons were all wrongly tagged on the no-fly list.

One of her sons, 18-year-old Aadam Ahmed, lobbied his MP, Sven Spengemann.

“I’ve learnt so much about how even young people can challenge things that do not feel fair,” Ahmed said.

Said Karen Ahmed, mother of 19-year-old Adam Ahmed: “I’m so happy. I’m super excited because it means he can fly by himself. It means an incredible amount of freedom for him.”

The government will also invest $14 million annually after the five years to “establish a redress mechanism for legitimate air travellers who are affected by the program.”

A cautious optimism had been spreading among the parents after Finance Minister Bill Morneau invited a few of them to his office on Feb. 20 for a talk. Three representatives of the group were also invited to a pre-budget stakeholder lock-up Tuesday.

Until about two years ago, those who couldn’t check in electronically, or were pulled out of lines, had passports confiscated for hours, and missed flights — had assumed it to either be a post 9/11 reality or a problem rooted in paranoid U.S. security measures.

That they were being ensnared by a flawed Canadian system came to light in December 2015, after Markham resident Sulemaan Ahmed was delayed en route to the U.S. for the NHL Winter Classic. He took a photo of a screen that showed his son Adam Ahmed “deemed high profile” or deemed an immediate threat to aviation security.

“Why is our (Canadian born) 6 year old on DHP no fly list? He must clear security each time. He is 6. ” he tweeted, tagging a few people including the prime minister and his local MP Jane Philpott.

It was a tweet that began a movement.

Separately, London, Ont. resident Zamir Khan had shared on Facebook his experiences about domestic flying ordeals with his now 3-year-old son Sebastian Davis since the time he was 6 weeks old.

When friends alerted him to Ahmed’s tweet, he reached out.

Soon this became a scenario that was replicated hundreds of times across Canada.

After a lot of piecing together of experiences, it emerged that the computing infrastructure at Canadian airports had no unique identifying information to separate a suspected bad guy from an innocent with the same name: neither date of birth, address, SIN number nor passport numbers.

The false positives from the No Fly list — called the Passenger Protect Program — are not limited to the Adam Ahmeds of Canada.

It affects Richard Reids who are innocent or who knows, are Britain’s shoe bomber escaped from three life terms in prison.

It affects David Smiths, who could be the 21-year-old New Yorker arrested for pointing laser pens at aircrafts, or who knows, a Liberal Senator.

It has affected Sikh Canadians, Jewish Canadians, Polish Canadians and Dutch Canadians to name a few groups.

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“I can’t even come close to the negative experiences the families have been through,” said Toronto resident Stephen Evans, who as technology manager at RBC, is a frequent traveller and found out in 2015, that he was suddenly unable to check in electronically.

What was the scale of this problem? Two University of Western Ontario students set to find out.

Twenty-year-old Yusuf Ahmed has a lifelong experience of delayed boarding, prolonged check-ins and extended screenings.

“We wanted to figure out the scope of the issue, to provide a compelling argument for why there needs to be a redress.”

He and fellow student Rayyan Kamal took the names of 25 Canadians whose names were reported publicly as no-fly list mistakes and did a reverse check up using 411.ca to count how many other Canadians matched their names.

There found about 50 per name.

The only other data point they had was the government saying there were up to 2,000 people on the no-fly list when it was first launched in 2007.

Simple math: 50 multiplied by 2,000 came up to 100,000 people who could be potentially falsely flagged on no-fly lists. The government has not confirmed or denied this number.

For the parents who put in hours of work, week after week, creating a website, tweeting, sharing YouTube videos and enlisting the support of MPs of all stripes, the question was not just about disruption to their travel.

They feared Canada had shared that list with 111 airlines around the world. Misinformation shared in the case of Maher Arar led to his deportation to Syria, where he was tortured for 10 months.

The federal government under Stephen Harper ended up paying Arar $10.5 million as compensation.

Moral imperatives aside, given the risks inherent in the flawed No Fly Kids case, pouring $81.4 million was a wise choice. What other option existed?

Correction – March 1, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the government had published a list of all the people on the no-fly list.
