Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good afternoon.
The Peace Bridge between Buffalo, New York and Fort Erie, Ontario is a critical land-border crossing, with 1.1 million trucks and 4.5 million cars crossing annually. Its public authority is governed by a 10-member international board, with the five Canadian members appointed by Privy Council upon the recommendation of the Minister of Transport.
Canada has invested heavily in trade-related infrastructure—almost $5 billion through the national trade corridors fund, or NTCF, and another $6.5 billion for the new Gordie Howe bridge, as well as other initiatives, such as the Niagara trade corridor. However, since the year 2000, truck traffic across the Canada-U.S. border has declined by almost 25%. In 2023, Mexico surpassed Canada as the top U.S. trading partner. Overall, as a share of all U.S. trade, Canada has declined from 21% in 2000 to 15% in 2023.
Infrastructure investment is negated if other government actions or inaction prevent the border from being as seamless and free-flowing as possible.
Here are three examples.
First, because Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada does not have reasonable service standards for processing the paperwork associated with maintaining or changing status for temporary Canadian residents, it forces people to drive hours to the border, where they must cross the border, be denied entry to the U.S. and return to Canada, where they then receive immigration services immediately. This process has been termed “flagpoling”.
What happens at the border when some 35,000 annual flagpolers arrive? At the Niagara River and Champlain crossings, it takes at least 30 minutes for a flagpoler to be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, translating to eight officers a week dedicated to this process. This means they are unable to staff primary inspection lines, resulting in delays for cars and trucks carrying Canadian exports to the United States. This process is repeated when these temporary residents return to Canada, tying up a similar number of CBSA officers. This process simply should not be happening at the border. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it couldn't because of travel restrictions and it didn't have to, because IRCC granted what was called “implied status” if a temporary resident applied online before their status expired.
Second, the Peace Bridge is the recipient of a $5-million NTCF grant to construct an innovative commercial pre-arrival project. We are constructing infrastructure in Canada to support technology supplied by U.S. customs, allowing all trucks to be scanned and manifest data to be collected while in motion, then adjudicated during the two- or three-minute transit across the bridge. The result is a much shorter stop at the U.S. primary inspection booth. It's a game-changer for the border in terms of enhanced security while at the same time significantly expediting Canadian exports to the U.S.
Why is this project so critical? In 2021, the United States passed the Securing America's Ports of Entry Act, requiring CBP to plan for 100% non-intrusive inspection for all land ports of entry within six years. At the Peace Bridge, it would be impossible to implement that mandate in the United States. Regardless, it is common sense to collect that data in Canada and take advantage of the time and space, resulting in a clearance process that is so much quicker than is currently the case.
Unfortunately, we are not able to realize the full potential of this project because, thus far, Canada has not approved facial identity verification to allow CBP to make inadmissibility determination for the U.S. in transit, even though every truck that goes through the non-intrusive scan in Canada must, in fact, enter the United States.
Third, Treasury Board and Canada's Customs and Immigration Union are at an impasse and there will likely be strike action this summer, seriously impeding the border. The union is telegraphing that it will “bring international borders to a standstill through work to rule action”, even though the union states that work to rule is considered a strike action and Treasury Board states that most CBSA officers are considered essential and “prohibited from participating in a strike”. This happened in 2021 when the border was essentially shut down, with truck queues longer than seven miles entering Canada, and supply chains, trade, tourism and travel all hopelessly gridlocked.
If a free-flowing border is as important as everyone says it is for the well-being of Canada, this simply should not be allowed to happen.
Thank you for the opportunity to make these remarks.