Evidence of meeting #78 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was goods.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:15 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
I agree that we could have done, and we are doing now, a better job of targeting this particular sector to make sure we understand the importance of that to the Canadian economy and to these producers.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
Exactly what are you guys doing to address that? I know you talked about it a bit.
9:15 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
We're doing more targeted verifications.
9:15 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Absolutely.
Not only that, but also for the duties relief program, which is where you would get relief if the good were subsequently to be exported. If it was not exported, then we would go back and reassess and collect the appropriate taxes.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
My concern was is in your comments at page 4, where you say, “In response to this recommendation, the CBSA acted quickly to strengthen pre-existing compliance measures.” If they were “pre-existing” and strengthened something that already exists, I'm concerned that it wasn't properly done in the first place.
What did you do to strengthen that? Was it basically more specific audits in that—
9:15 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Yes. As I mentioned, we changed our bias from random to more targeted and focused on that area of concern, about which industry had expressed concern to us as well, before the Auditor General.
Honestly, what it's about for us every day is managing risk and the way we apply the resources at the border to the risks we're aware of. We rely on work such as the Auditor General's, consultations with stakeholders, and intelligence with our partners to decide where we can focus our efforts, but we will never be able to manage the risk down to zero.
9:15 a.m.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
I understand that.
You talked about the duties relief program. It says at paragraph 2.56 in the report:
In 2016, the Agency completed six compliance verifications of Duties Relief Program participants that import supply-managed goods and suspended the licences of all six participants because they did not comply with these program requirements.
Six out of six did not properly do this. If we had done 10 audits, would it have been 10 out of 10? It is extremely concerning that the management practised before would let these types of imports not be properly verified. As well, these were actually people who qualified for the duties relief program.
What measures have you put in place to ensure that this does not happen again?
9:15 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
We're working very closely with Global Affairs Canada on this. Ideally, in the future we would look towards an automated system that would allow us to ping at the border to verify with the Global Affairs system that this licence is actually in place and the goods are being imported and declared properly.
We have an initiative called “single window” now whereby we basically are trying to be the “Publishers Clearing House” between what importers are bringing into Canada and the requirements of various government departments and agencies throughout the importation process.
We've on-boarded nine departments, I believe, and many members of the import community to try to automate the process so that everybody has that “back and forth” and we get real-time intelligence. We look to work with Global Affairs to on-board them into this initiative and automate it, so that at the point in time during which the good is still at the border, officers can inspect it and validate it, and so that I have real-time intelligence with respect to the participants of the duty relief program.
9:15 a.m.
Conservative
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I want to commend you on the quality of your French.
Gentlemen, welcome to your House of Commons.
There are three topics I would like to raise in this first round of questions. If necessary, we can continue the discussion later.
Mr. Ossowski, generally speaking, we see that your employees' workload is increasing because of the increase in trade. I would like to address the issue of online trade more specifically. I am talking here about purchases citizens make on the Internet from their homes. These goods have to go through customs, which has an impact on your work and your employees.
Has there been a major or modest increase in e-commerce, as compared to the business done between large enterprises, large plants and large markets?
9:20 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Thank you for the question.
First of all, I have to say that e-commerce is a challenge for the agency.
Right now, we have over 300,000 postal and courier shipments per day coming into the country. I would encourage members, if they get the opportunity, to take a tour, which I'm happy to facilitate, of one of our postal facilities, at which you can see the volumes.
What's hard about this, particularly with the e-commerce aspect of it, is that we don't often get, in the postal mode, the advance information and clear description of what the good is to allow us to make the proper assessment. That's particularly worrisome when it comes to the importation of synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, which is something that's of huge concern for us.
9:20 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Such as fentanyl, the synthetic opioids; it's a huge concern for us on a daily basis.
It's something we are working on with my Border Five colleagues. The Border Five is Canada, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain. In fact, we just met in Sydney, Australia, to talk about how we can work more closely with the postal union and Canada Post to try to get better data in advance, so that we can target, because with that volume, it's simply impossible to keep up with the risk we're trying to mitigate. It really relies more on data.
It's less of a problem on the courier side, because we get good data analytics from companies such as FedEx and UPS, allowing us to target our efforts and manage the risk better. On the mail side, though, e-commerce is a huge problem.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
9:20 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
It absolutely is growing, in leaps and bounds.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
9:20 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Health Canada has a lead right now, an initiative with respect to the fentanyl crisis. We're working with them to see how we can do it better. It's a broad issue, however. As I mentioned, we're working with our colleagues to the south and our other counterparts in the Border Five community.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
How will you address the new challenge beginning on July 1, 2018, with marijuana, when it will be legal?
9:20 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
As you're aware, the government has tabled legislation on this, and we're preparing for our role. The importation and exportation of marijuana will still be illegal. There will be personal use issues. Our officers will be trained to do drug-impaired driving tests, as we do now for alcohol-impaired driving.
This will have a huge impact on us. To be clear, however, the importation and exportation, without proper permits in certain circumstances, will be illegal and will remain illegal.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
9:20 a.m.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
I think it's an adjustment. Our officers will be well trained to manage this, but this will be a big change for Canada and for all departments and agencies, quite frankly.
9:20 a.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
How do you intend to address it? Do you have some training plan? Do you need to hire new people?
