Thanks for the questions.
I'll start with the sufferance warehouses. As I mentioned earlier in my opening comments, in essence, these sufferance warehouses allow the supply chain and the trucking industry that's moving those supply chains to, instead of clearing loads at the border, which sometimes can be very congested....
Going back to the Gordie Howe bridge, now you'll have what's referred to in our industry as the "secondary" inspection. If you don't clear, the truck has to go for inspection at the secondary inspection, and some of those secondaries can be very crowded.
What a sufferance warehouse does is allow the carrier and the customer to potentially clear inland into a secure area with Canadian customs present. Obviously, that requires investments and technology and secure yards—all of it. The request has been to bring these sufferance warehouses back in greater numbers.
I'm oversimplifying everything, but it requires investments.
As we see currently, when we have labour disruptions, like at marine ports and all the rest of it, the same thing could apply. You could bring those containers out, bring them to the sufferance warehouse yards and clear them in those yards. The ask of the CBSA, and through budgets, is to increase the spending here, both on technology and on labour, because you need someone physically at those yards.
With regard to the CFIA, the USDA and the rest of it, as mentioned earlier, the border is open 24-7. Trucks clear it 24-7. When it goes to Agriculture and FDA, in particular in the United States, they are not there 24-7. It's much to their chagrin, as well. These are their customers we're moving, so a long-standing request is to correct this.
We're always amazed, as an industry. We spend billions of dollars on both sides of the country to make trade work. I'm always accused by some folks of oversimplifying things, but we're talking about a few people here, folks, not billions of dollars. That needs to happen, because what happens once those people leave is you are shut down. When it comes to food and produce, that product cannot move inland; it needs to stay, because we have health and safety rules and food security rules. If there is a recall, everything needs to be traced.
Those trucks wait. Sometimes they wait for hours, and sometimes they wait for days, just for someone to come back to work.