Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, honourable members of the committee.
We appreciate the opportunity to speak to the roles and responsibilities of the Canada Border Services Agency in identifying and combatting biosecurity threats to agriculture at our borders.
In managing the border, the CBSA works closely with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency to ensure that goods that may pose a biosecurity threat to Canada are interdicted at the earliest opportunity. The importation of food, plants and animals, and related products is regarded by the CBSA as high risk, given the potential negative impacts to the environment, the economy and the health of Canadians should tainted food, foreign animal or plant diseases or invasive species enter the country.
The CFIA, Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans establish the requirements for importing and exporting food, plants, animals and products. The CBSA in turn is responsible for ensuring the goods being imported to or exported from Canada are compliant with our partner government agency program legislation and regulations. The CBSA's role is to enforce these policies as they apply at Canada's border ports of entry.
The agency fulfills this role by employing a layered and risk-based approach to biosecurity, including assessing pre-arrival data for goods, receiving near-real-time recommendations from the CFIA, issuing targets and lookouts, conducting examinations and inspections and, where required, detaining and seizing goods, issuing penalties and ensuring that international waste is declared and disposed of using approved methods.
The CBSA screens travellers for inadmissible food, plant and animal products and ensures that commercial shipments are also reviewed or referred.
Based upon CFIA expert advice, the CBSA regularly updates our direction to our frontline officers to manage the handling, interdiction and release of at-risk goods. More specifically, the CBSA inspects food, plant and animal goods carried by travellers; certain low-risk commercial goods; wood packaging materials; goods potentially contaminated with soil; live animals that are low-risk; and the control, monitoring and disposal of international waste.
To increase compliance, the CBSA enforces the CFIA's agriculture and agri-food administrative monetary penalty system for contraventions to the legislation. Under this system, border officers may issue monetary penalties to travellers who fail to declare goods that could cause harm to biosecurity.
Finally, as part of budget 2019, the CBSA received up to $31 million over five years to acquire, train and work closely with the CFIA to deploy 24 new food, plant and animal detector dog teams at our high-risk ports of entry. Detector dog teams continue to be one of the CBSA's best tools for detecting food, plant and animal items.
The CBSA is also employing further funding to enhance prevention activities related to African swine fever.
This concludes my opening remarks, and we'll be happy to take any questions.
Thank you.