Canada’s border services agency has no infrastructure in place to search trains for drugs, people and other goods entering the country illegally by rail, the head of the union says border agents – a security gap that adds to concerns about a general lack of border control.
Mark Weber, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, says due to lack of staff and equipment at official ports of entry, less than 1 percent of containers moving through Canadian seaports are searched looking for illicit goods.
This rate is even lower for cross-border rail traffic, he added.
“We don’t do it at all,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview broadcast Sunday on The West Block. “We don’t know what’s coming by train.
“It could be products, it could be people (coming in, but) we don’t have the infrastructure to do that research. … This is really something that Canada should invest in.
In 2019, the Ontario Provincial Police discovered nearly 200 kilograms of methamphetamine hidden in the spare tires of new vehicles shipped from Mexico to the province by rail. The drugs were first discovered by car dealership employees in four Ontario communities, and police later said cars in the shipment were also trafficked to Quebec and New Brunswick.
The Canadian Press reported in 2009 that an internal CBSA report obtained through access to information laws revealed that just two officers screened some 400,000 rail cars and containers entering Canada each year, after a control program launched in 2000 has fallen into disrepair.
Premier and legislators of British Columbia called for strengthened police and resources for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to search shipping containers at ports, a key entry point for fentanyl products and equipment from China.
A report last year said Canada’s port security was similar to the lax enforcement and corruption seen in the Marlon Brando film At the water’s edge.
Canadian border security is under increased scrutiny as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump calls for a crackdown on irregular immigration and drug trafficking in North America.
Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico unless those countries address his concerns, which center on illegal entry into the United States.
But Weber said ongoing staff shortages and the growing reliance on new technology, such as self-declaration kiosks at airports, mean Canada is also unable to properly control what goes into the country. He said people with bad intentions can simply lie in a self-declaration, whereas a CBSA officer could determine whether that person is being honest with just a few questions.
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“Every time you remove human interaction with the traveler, you decrease your security,” he said. “So we find that there are a lot of things going on that we really don’t know about right now. … We hardly speak to anyone anymore.
The union said it is short 2,000 to 3,000 CBSA staff members to fulfill its core mandate, which, in addition to ensuring compliance with official ports of entry, also includes intelligence gathering , searching cross-border vehicles and shipping containers, and searching and returning people who are in border areas. the country illegally.
The previous Conservative government cut 1,100 CBSA positions in 2012, and Weber said those jobs had not been restored since the Liberals came to power in 2015.
He said the situation is similar for domestic law enforcement, with only “a few hundred agents” tasked with tracking down and deporting people across the country.
“Given the volumes that need to be found and removed, it’s really an uphill battle,” he said. “Again, you’re largely relying on people to self-report. And again, if someone doesn’t want to leave and doesn’t want to be found, it’s a human being who has to do that job.
The CBSA told Global News that 2,774 deportation orders had been issued this year as of November 18, already a higher number than in previous full years dating back to 2016. So far this year, there have been 1,290 forced removals by the CBSA.
Since 2016, the number of forced evictions per year has been approximately half the number of eviction orders issued.
Last year, a total of 15,179 people were returned by Canada, either by law or voluntarily following a removal order, including 12,401 so far this year. Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters last month that the numbers were records.
Weber said the CBSA regularly collects intelligence to determine where fentanyl seizures in Canada are coming from and whether organized crime groups like Mexican cartels are trying to enter the country. But he said knowledge only goes so far.
“When you don’t have interactions with most of the travelers that come through, you don’t know what you’re not looking for,” he said.
Is Canada ready for mass expulsions from the United States?
Weber said understaffing at the CBSA means the agency “simply does not have the staffing levels necessary to deal” with a potential flood of people fleeing the United States for Canada when Trump holds his promise of mass expulsions next year.
He noted that many of these potential arrivals will be between official entrances – parts of the border that are patrolled by the RCMP.
Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation union that represents more than 20,000 RCMP members, told Stephenson that the force is “uniquely positioned” to send additional resources from across the country until the border.
He said newly graduated cadets can be recruited to supplement existing border security teams on a rotating basis, a strategy deployed following the 2014 Parliament shooting to bolster security in Ottawa.
The RCMP Academy is seeing a record number of applicants and is on track to be near full capacity next year after reaching similar levels this year, Sauvé added, meaning there will be plenty of these cadets to use if necessary.
The NPF has asked Ottawa for $300 million over four years to hire 1,000 additional RCMP officers and strengthen its overall resources.
“Longer term solutions, greater investments in the RCMP for the workforce directly assigned to federal policing roles, will certainly keep the border more secure,” Sauvé said.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told MPs last week that Canada will dedicate more personnel and equipment to border security before Trump’s inauguration on January 20. He said the RCMP and CBSA were consulted.
Sauvé said RCMP members “certainly make regular arrests coming from the north” of the United States, “but also notice a flow to the south.”
“It’s obviously a concern because there are weapons that come from the states, weapons that are used to commit crimes in Canada,” he said.
The United States is the largest source of illegal firearms in Canada, according to Justice Canada, but data on gun tracing is limited.
An RCMP spokesperson told Global News last week that police have “no evidence or intelligence to suggest an increase in the number of asylum seekers crossing the U.S.-Canada border has occurred” and that its position at the border remains unchanged.
“The more we can enforce this border, the more we can make Canada a safer country, I think that’s good for Canadians,” Sauvé said.
—with files from the Canadian Press and David Akin of Global