Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Jean-Pierre Fortin, and I am the acting national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, which represents front-line officers of the Canada Border Services Agency. So that you are clear, our members include the officers assigned to work at all ports of entry into Canada, as well as immigration screening and enforcement officers, and intelligence and enforcement officers for all the customs, immigration, and food inspection functions of CBSA.
My duties include work on a number of areas, including the issue of counterfeit cigarette smuggling, because it involves illegal cross-border activity. This is especially relevant for us because it highlights a security vulnerability for which we have been seeking action for a number of years, namely, the absence of a joint force and intelligence-led mobile border patrol in Canada.
Most Canadians, we suspect, would be surprised to know that we lack an effective capacity to detect and interdict people and what they are bringing into Canada if they enter illegally between designated ports of entry. Whether they are entering in one of the more than 200 unguarded roads in the Maritimes, Quebec, or the Prairies, or across the vast marine environment of the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes, or inland lakes that straddle our border with the U.S., Canada has a continuing border vulnerability that must be addressed.
Today's hearing is focused on the illegal cigarette trade and the harm it causes to Canadians. There is no question that this illegal activity includes the movement of these harmful goods across the border, and that our lack of mobile Canadian border patrol and interdiction capacity contributes to that problem. Let me also add that this vulnerability extends beyond the smuggling of illegal cigarettes into Canada. We know from Canadian and U.S. intelligence reports that this illegal cross-border movement includes the southbound and the northbound flow of counterfeit goods, drugs, guns, and people. Toronto police reported, for example, that at least 50% of the guns used in crimes in that city have been smuggled from the U.S.
It was this committee as well that produced the admission from RCMP Commissioner Elliott in 2007 that the enforcement surveillance on the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes was, to use his word, inadequate. As one senior police official put it, what gets through the border ends up on our streets and in our communities within Canada.
This government made some significant improvements to border security, but despite this, and for reasons we hope you will pursue, Canada still lacks this necessary patrol and interdiction capacity.
Thank you for your consideration of these issues. I'll be pleased to try to answer any questions you may have.