Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank all our witnesses for being with us today.
As you know, today is World Tourism Day, and I'd like to thank all stakeholders for their advocacy efforts. I thank not only our stakeholders, but all Canadians, the residents of my riding and colleagues who sit at this table with me for their actions and for working so that we could get these restrictions and the ArriveCAN application eliminated at our borders, beginning this weekend.
But again, it's this weekend. During COVID we lost two tourism years, and unfortunately we lost another tourism year this year. The two years we could blame on COVID, but this year, ladies and gentlemen, was self-inflicted. We have been advocating for months that this application and the restrictions at the border be removed, joining the over 60 countries that are out there ending the restrictions at their borders.
Why did it take this government so long to take these actions? I have a community of 40,000 people who work in the tourism sector, and they deserve better. My understanding was that the Liberal caucus met in Niagara in August, yet they did not hear from local stakeholders on their efforts and their need to have this application removed.
With that, I'd like to begin asking some questions, if I could. I'll start with Mr. Weber.
It's interesting that one of the stakeholders I talked to this summer was Mr. Bieger, from the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission. He talked about the difficulties and the staffing shortages. He also told me about the fact that the Canada Border Services Agency training centre in Ottawa was closed for two years, and that was confirmed by Mr. Vinette from CBSA, who mentioned being short of a cohort of about 600 officers. I wonder if you could build on that and talk about the staffing needs that are required so that communities like Niagara can have proper CBSA staffing levels.