Public Safety Committee on Nov. 1st, 2010

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Garry, I will read a letter, and I ask you what you think about the letter. I will be sending it to the congressmen and senators of Vermont and New York.

I am writing today to call your attention to a decision made by the Canadian Border Services Agency that will take effect on April 1, 2011.

The Agency has decided to close or reduce the service hours of a number of border crossings. This decision is unacceptable and shows no regard for security in Canada and the United States.

This decision will also reduce land crossings, no doubt affecting trade between the two countries.

I recognize the efforts you make with respect to border crossings. While you invest money and effort on your side, Canada is closing its border crossings.

This is a poor decision and we must prevent it from coming into effect. I have enclosed a letter that I would like you to send to the Hon. Vic Toews, Minister of Public Safety and minister responsible for the Canada Border Services Agency.

I am seeking your involvement as it will certainly have an impact on this issue. I have included some information on this issue but please contact me if you require further information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you.

I've got to get Mr. Davies in here.

Thank you for your patience, Mr. Davies. Go ahead.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm going to summarize what I heard. I heard this decision is bad for business, it's bad for service, it's bad for safety.

Does anybody here disagree with that? Is that a fair summary?

[Barry Orr]

That's a fair summary.

[Garry Douglas]

Yes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay. It sounds like there was no consultation.

Were any of you gentlemen, business communities, mayors, consulted about this?

[Ron Moran]

Not at all.

[Barry Orr]

No.

[Garry Douglas]

No.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I want to focus a little bit on human smuggling.

Monsieur Moran, in your brief it says the decisions are contrary to the cross-border Canada-U.S. security strategy of the government and contradict the government’s clear intentions in combatting such things as people-smuggling, which is confirmed as growing by empirical reporting from the RCMP.

Now, I'm going to summarize this and I'd like you to expand on that.

If I understand this correctly, you're telling us that people-smuggling, human-smuggling across the border, is increasing. There's empirical evidence of that from the RCMP, and in your testimony you feel that this decision to close borders will make human-smuggling a worse problem. Is that a fair summary of what you're telling us?

[Ron Moran]

First of all, we're just relaying information that's already been reported. The increase is not our take on it; it's a fact. But what we are saying is that it is not unreasonable, by any stretch of the imagination, to suggest that when you take an already very thin law enforcement presence on the border and you reduce it more...it is not unreasonable to suggest you will increase what's already increasing that much more, thereby downloading the very insubstantial, very minute savings that you produced, downloading costs to other law enforcement agencies inland that have to deal with those. That's an increase in smuggling not just in people, but in firearms and drugs--smuggling in general.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

So would it be your testimony that smuggling in drugs and firearms and human beings will go up if we close borders?

[Ron Moran]

Yes. What I'm saying is that it is not at all unreasonable to suggest that this is exactly what will happen. It's already on the increase, and you're reducing a presence, an already thin presence.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Orr, you alluded to this—and this is from our analyst, so I can't really blame CBSA for this. In the figures we were given, in Franklin Centre, an average of 56 travellers and three commercial vehicles go through this office every day. If I heard your testimony correctly, it sounds to me like you would dispute that, that an average of three commercial vehicles go through that border every day.

[Barry Orr]

This period of the year, of course, is the apple season, and we do a lot of importation from western New York that goes through this border. But I'd say our organization imports through that border alone, on a yearly basis, in the area of 1,000 loads a year. It would be pretty easy to check this if you asked CBSA to go into their files—hopefully they're up to date—and just have them check their computer system and check how many B3s have been applied within a period of a year, from October to October, for Leahy Orchards.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

It sounds like if you're doing a thousand a year--my math is a little bit off--that's about three a day, approximately--

[Barry Orr]

Well, three or four a day.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

--with you alone.

[Barry Orr]

Right, just ours alone.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

My last comment is to Mr. Douglas.

You commented that one of the fears of this could be an unexpected and undesirable outbreak of...the word used was “unilateralism”. I'm wondering if you could expand on that and tell us what you are thinking when you say that. What do you think is the long-term possibility?

[Garry Douglas]

Well, we are always fighting—and this isn't any secret to all of you—decisions made in Washington at the border that are unilateral. It's something we always have to keep up with.

We know the dynamic in the U.S. is that most congressmen have no knowledge of the border, as opposed to most members of Parliament in Canada having a knowledge of the border. So we always have a struggle in that regard.

It certainly will not be helpful going forward, again, particularly with a new Congress about to face very tough budgeting decisions, saying, “Well, yeah, but they do the same thing. Look, they closed three border crossings. Why don't we close some border crossings?” It isn't going to be helpful in the conversation going forward for Canada to be seen with such a blatant example of unilateralism, particularly when, wait a minute, we said we were going to spend $6.8 million and they want to close crossings. Maybe instead of investing in the border, we ought to close crossings.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

You have two minutes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

One of the problems that I see, from my party's point of view, is when there is just a slashing across the board of 5%, that sounds good in theory, but when you drill into it, that presumes there's 5% to cut. It presumes that there's 5% of fat.

I mean, if you have 100 police officers in a detachment and you need 120 of them, and you're underserviced and they say, “Well, cut 5%, cut the 5% you need the least”, they can do that. You can identify which five of the hundred you don't need, but it's still going to represent an unwarranted cut that's going to hurt service.

That's the analogy I have in my mind. Is that a fair analogy to what you're seeing here with CBSA officers being cut?

[Jean-Pierre Fortin, First National Vice-President, Customs and Immigration Union]

That certainly is fair. The problem we're also seeing is...and we did provide in our brief other places they could have looked at and they did not. By cutting immediately the services and the protection of the border, it's not a wise choice, according to us. There were tons of places.

My colleague here was just highlighting the fact that supervisors in very small operations...they didn't have a look at those. They're looking at cutting, number one, officers who are providing front-line services to the population and protecting this country. That doesn't make any sense to us.

On top of that, if you will allow me, it doesn't make any sense also in regard to...they've been providing weapons to our officers to defend themselves and to protect this country. They've also been increasing the level, so that the people who were working alone are now working with two officers. On the other hand, they're cutting offices. That doesn't make any sense to us, because they were actually giving us the sentiment that they were actively strengthening the border by being more efficient. Right now, on the other hand, they're opening up the border. It doesn't make any sense.