Evidence of meeting #24 for International Trade in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was app.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6:45 p.m.
Liberal
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
Is that because, from your perspective, what your staff are doing is helping people with an app?
6:45 p.m.
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
Yes, and about quarter of the time, that app is not being completed or even started when people arrive at the border. You can imagine the numbers.
6:45 p.m.
Liberal
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
I'm going to apply a bit of lawyer's logic here, so please forgive me.
You are here representing the union; you're here to protect your members. That makes sense. I get it. But you've indicated that you have concerns not just with this form of digitization via the ArriveCAN app, but also with the PIK kiosks. Are there any technological innovations that you and your union do support at our borders?
6:45 p.m.
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
We support technological innovations as long as the officers are still in place to do the work. What we're seeing now is that the numbers of officers are being greatly reduced as the technology gets increased. Technology, like a PIK machine, really doesn't work if you have no officers available to verify people's declarations. You essentially—for lack of a better way of putting it—don't really have a border. That's all it is. If everyone can come in and it's just a self-declaration—
6:45 p.m.
Liberal
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
I guess you and I will disagree on whether we have a border.
6:50 p.m.
Liberal
Arif Virani Liberal Parkdale—High Park, ON
I would note for your edification that many of the cuts to the CBSA services actually predate our government coming into office. I presume you're aware of that.
6:50 p.m.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
I will throw out an open question. Anyone who wants to answer it can do so.
The Public Health Agency tells us that they are preparing for the next wave. So there will continue to be health measures.
How can we use technology to enforce these measures at the borders? If not through ArriveCAN, what should we do?
6:50 p.m.
Liberal
6:50 p.m.
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
I think you put the officers in place to process the travellers as they come through one at a time and use those resources, rather than having them help complete an app that, clearly, people are having a very difficult time completing.
6:50 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, Policy and Government Relations, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
I don't want to sound too philosophical about it.
The technology is ultimately a reflection of the policy. I think from our standpoint, we recognize that there will be another wave of COVID at some point, but I couldn't tell you what the plan is right now. We've been asking for a plan and we hope that the government will produce one for how we're going to respond to that, because reverting back to lockdowns and imposing the tools that we used in the earlier waves is not a situation that we'd want to go back to ideally.
6:50 p.m.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC
If health measures were to continue, how could we improve cross-border trade, Mr. Agnew?
6:50 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, Policy and Government Relations, Canadian Chamber of Commerce
It's hard to have a crystal ball to know for sure how we help them, but I think what we need to make sure of, though, is that there is a plan in place that is durable, because we can't keep flip-flopping around, as we've seen.
6:50 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
To Mr. Weber again, with regard to the training that's necessary, how long does it take to train an officer?
6:50 p.m.
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
Rigaud College has an 18-week program. Then there's one year of essentially apprenticeship before you become a full officer.
6:50 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Even ramping up, it's going to take so much time that we should have been on this before. We should never have cut...but that's another story.
Again, with the documentation that you're suggesting be handed over, we do that with passports and other documents that are asked for. We're essentially getting, with ArriveCAN, a NEXUS program, but not the screening that NEXUS provides, so if you don't see anybody.... You also have your members trained to interact with people so they understand their personalities and can target behaviours. Is that not correct?
6:50 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Then we're diminishing public safety. Is that why you said that at the beginning of your remarks, that it's diminishing public safety?
6:50 p.m.
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
That is absolutely the case. As I said, our officers go through all of this training specifically on how to enforce the law, interdiction indicators and all of those kinds of things, and it's essentially not being used. When I use the term “IT consultants”, that's pretty close to what most of our jobs are now.
6:50 p.m.
NDP
Brian Masse NDP Windsor West, ON
Ironically—I'll quickly finish, Madam Chair—when you get your ArriveCAN done, one of the things you're told that you should do is to take a picture, as I did on my ArriveCAN thing, so that if it happens to be failing, you could hand it to the officer so the officer could look at it. This is the same thing as if you were presenting them with documentation that you had your vaccinations to begin with, making it all redundant.
Thank you.
6:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much, Mr. Masse.
Our last speaker is Mr. Baldinelli for four minutes, please.