International Trade Committee on Sept. 27th, 2022

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

OK, thank you.

I'm curious: How many of your duty-free stores are in areas or countries that still require proof of vaccination?

[Barbara Barrett]

All our stores are on the Canadian side.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

I'm not necessarily talking about Canada, but in the buffer zones, if I can put it that way. I'm thinking of airports when you're waiting for a flight, when you're about to leave for another destination.

You really took a hit in those areas, didn't you?

[Barbara Barrett]

All of our stores are on the land border, so when you go into the store, you have to exit it into the United States. You can't come back into Canada. We're export only. You have to cross the border once you enter our stores.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

So, you don't represent airport duty-free stores. Alright, I understand.

[Barbara Barrett]

That's correct.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Thank you for the clarification.

I'd like to wrap up my time with some questions for Mr. Weber, from the Customs and Immigration Union.

Regarding the ArriveCAN application, do you think it makes a difference, given that there is still a vaccine mandate on the U.S. side?

Do you feel the same way?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Give a brief answer, Mr. Weber.

[Mark Weber]

It's difficult for us to say. We only deal with travellers when they're returning to Canada, so what's going on the other way is really difficult for us to comment on.

Again, when the ArriveCAN app was in place, the greatest difficulty that we had was that people simply didn't know that they had to complete the app, or in some cases people were just refusing to fill it out, so we had to deal with a good 30% to 40% of travellers arriving without having completed it, which caused the four- or five-hour lineups that we saw.

It wasn't so much a matter of not being able to do it; it was simply not wanting to or not even knowing that it was a requirement that more often than not was the issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

We go now to Mr. Masse for six minutes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First, I want to acknowledge that I'd like to see if we can carve out some time to deal with a motion I've tabled with regard to container shippers. There have been talks with the parties, so I'd like to see about doing that motion today if possible, because there is urgency with that matter and also with planning for our schedule.

I'm going to quickly go to Mr. Weber.

One of the first times I realized there was such an incredible amount of ignorance on the Hill here with regard to our customs officers was when Derek Lee called them wimps in the House of Commons. I always remember that moment, because there was a lack of understanding of what they faced with the thousands of people they deal with on a daily basis, especially in a riding like mine. Even with this challenge that we face, I'm still advocating a safe-border task force to deal with this, because we have long-standing border issues that continue.

Mr. Weber, you finally have another collective agreement. It's going to run out again soon because it always comes in late. It's ridiculous that it happens like this.

I want to be careful with this language. Is it fair to say that your officers could have actually refused to do the extra work that they did in dealing with these apps and technology devices that were thrust upon them? Is it fair to say that it could have been a consideration that they didn't have to go that extra mile that they did?

[Mark Weber]

Well, the bad news is that our contract has actually expired now. Were we in a legal strike position at the time, obviously I don't know where that would have gone, but I can say that our officers have absolutely gone above and beyond to make things flow as quickly as possible against incredible odds.

We're dealing with four-, five-, six-hour lineups of travellers who obviously are arriving at our counter extremely irate at what they're having to go through to cross into Canada. I'm hearing from one of our officers in Niagara Falls that he's had travellers come through who had actually urinated and defecated on themselves, having been stuck in the car for so long. To give you an idea of how terrible and drastic the situation at our borders was and how terribly short-staffed we are, I think that says it all.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I do appreciate your raising the issue over training, because we could actually have the Tilston Armoury in Windsor converted into a training facility. It was the first one for the Department of National Defence. It has a gun facility and range testing and all the operations there. I hope that something like that is looked at, because it could be close to turnkey for that, especially with the Gordie Howe bridge coming on board and everything else in the upcoming years.

I want to move to Ms. Barrett, but I want to finish by saying thank you to Mr. Weber and his members. By the way, just for the record, our frontline officers at the border did not have a vaccination program put in place. We had to fight for that, and it took over a year. They actually were spot-vaccinated despite being on the front lines during COVID from the very beginning. They weren't considered essential and had to deal with that. That was something that was wrong, and hopefully we can fix that for future challenges, because we've had SARS and now this.

Ms. Barrett, really quickly, when we did the western hemisphere travel initiative changes and the U.S. was requiring passports, we knew that 60% of U.S. citizens would get a passport and 40% would never get a passport. That was just the raw data. Is that what you're experiencing too now with Americans with regard to this foreign application?

Mr. Lovegrove noted that as well, and that's what I've heard a lot. There are some people for whom vaccination is an issue, but the thousands of complaints I received about ArriveCAN were not from unvaccinated people; they were from vaccinated people. Americans were particularly reluctant to sign on to a foreign government's app.

[Barbara Barrett]

I think the fact that the vaccination rate of the Americans is less than that of Canadians certainly has some effect, but yes, on a broad scale, the issues were coming from vaccinated folks who would have liked to come over but couldn't.

I'll give you another example of how it was difficult for them. The ArriveCAN app asks you to give the address where you would quarantine in Canada if you had to do that while you're here, which doesn't make sense if you're trying to cross the border to go shopping for the day and come back. You don't have an address of a place that you're going. It just didn't take into account how border communities work and how people come across and shop, and it really affected our stores that way. It was just a deterrent for people to come.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, and can you confirm that even before COVID, there were some border changes that affected duty-free shops? You have to really be part of a border community to understand duty-free a little more intimately. People think they're part of the border, but they're actually mom-and-pop shops, really.

[Barbara Barrett]

Yes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

There was a change whereby we got rid of the GST refund before COVID—

[Barbara Barrett]

Yes.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

—and then on top of that, before COVID, they changed the amount you could actually bring back and forth without duty charges. Is that correct, and wasn't that a substantial hit on the industry to start with?

[Barbara Barrett]

Yes. Our industry had been seeing some challenges even before COVID, as you say, with the visitor rebate program being eliminated. That used to operate within our stores. People would go in, get the rebate, get the cash and then actually spend it back into the economy in Canada. That change did have a great effect on our business, but then once COVID hit, we were 95% down for 20 months across the board.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Yes, and then, as Ken said, you have the package of requirements.

Really quickly, Mr. Lovegrove—

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Be very quick.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

—you mentioned doing business. You fall under a lot of the access to employment contracts you can get out of NAFTA, but Mexicans don't have something like ArriveCAN and never have had. The U.S. never had something like ArriveCAN.

How difficult was it to explain to your American and your Mexican business opportunities about this requirement, which they didn't have in their own countries? It's ironic, because with every other policy, we fight to get synced up to compete, but this one was really personal, I understand, from the people I spoke with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Could we have a brief answer, sir?

[Douglas Lovegrove]

Yes, there were a few times when we were on the phone helping people fill it out, working as the IT consultant for our U.S. customer base and trying to help them get across the border, and the fact that it wasn't synced up was definitely an issue.

I'll mention one more thing really quickly. Part of it, yes, is to separate the vaccination from ArriveCAN. The original language used in ArriveCAN and on the website was very threatening. There were quarantines. There were $5,000 fines—very threatening language—and that was a huge deterrent to people even taking the chance of coming over.