Thank you, Chair and committee members.
The CBSA is looking to make three additions or amendments to the Customs Act to address a situation called “mixed traffic corridors”. Mixed traffic corridors occur when we have to move an office farther inland from the Canada-U.S. border and it causes the mingling of domestic traffic in Canada with traffic coming from the United States into Canada.
In the long term, we want to be prepared for a situation like that, which we're calling an “extenuating circumstance”. It doesn't happen every day, but a flood, fire damage, or a spill at one of our locations could cause us to have to move the office inland. We have a short-term need, and I'll explain a little later what that is.
There are three sections that we're proposing. The first section would provide the minister with the authority to direct a portion of the public roadway—not the entire roadway—or other right of access leading directly from the Canada-United States border to a designated customs office. That designation is required when there is no sterile corridor leading directly from the border to the customs office and persons arriving in Canada from the United States are co-mingled with domestic persons before they actually reach our office.
The second section would obligate all persons travelling within this mixed traffic corridor, which would mean international travellers as well as domestic travellers, to briefly report and advise the officer whether they are travelling domestic or arriving from the United States.
The third section would provide us with the enforcement authorities that we require. The previous section that requires travellers to report to us engages all our authorities that we currently have to deal with international travellers. That means stopping impaired drivers, stopping people for wants and warrants, and stopping people for abducting children—it means all of that. Currently, we don't have much authority to do that with domestic travellers. These three sections would provide us with the authority to do our job every day the way we need to do it.
We appreciate that it might sound a little harsh to be questioning domestic travellers, but unfortunately we have not found another solution when we encounter a situation where we have to move an office inland and we are co-mingling traffic. We've found no way other than to shut the border down, which is not the best thing to do.
We had to do that for six weeks a few years back at the Cornwall-Massena crossing. There were great economic impacts on the area, not to mention social impacts. People who live in border communities don't really recognize the border, because they use it daily to commute to work, visit friends, and do all sorts of other things. There was a lot of hurt that went on for six weeks when we had to close it down. We don't want that to happen again. These three sections would prevent that from occurring.