Evidence of meeting #136 for Public Safety and National Security in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was fentanyl.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Canada Border Services Agency
To your question on the ports, one issue for the CBSA is that ports are required to provide us space to do our examinations for imports, but they're not required to provide us space for exports. That being said, we haven't run into ports that are resistant to providing us that space, but that's an area with a legislative gap that we would be interested in considering.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Raquel Dancho
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. O'Gorman.
We'll move to the Liberals.
Ms. Vandenbeld, you have five minutes.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd just like to follow up, Mr. McCrorie, on something you said in your previous answer. You said that Canada is not a significant source of fentanyl into the U.S. I actually have some numbers here that show that the amount of fentanyl that's been seized by U.S. authorities at the Canadian border is only 0.2% of the fentanyl entering the United States. I also have a figure here that says that the number of illegal crossings of people going into the United States from Canada is only 0.6% of the total number of people entering the United States.
Could you confirm whether those numbers are accurate?
My understanding is that the number of people crossing from north to south is actually decreasing. Could you confirm that as well?
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
I'm not sure what the source of that data is, so it's hard for me to confirm it or not. We saw a significant increase in the number of southbound movements over the last year. They peaked in June at around 6,000 to 7,000. This is based on data we got from the U.S. CBP.
It peaked in June. It's now down. In November, I think it was around 400 or 500.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Those numbers of 0.2% and 0.6% don't sound completely out of the ballpark for you.
December 12th, 2024 / 4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement, Canada Border Services Agency
They don't. No.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
It would be somewhere around that number. It's a very small number.
How does this compare—perhaps this is for President O'Gorman—with what's coming the other way in terms of people, firearms and fentanyl? What are the numbers going into the United States versus the numbers you're able to get at the border?
President, Canada Border Services Agency
If you're asking about people coming up and crossing illegally northbound, I would defer to my colleague. We process people who duly show up at the port of entry. I'll pass that over to my colleague.
Commr Michael Duheme
Madam Chair, for the northbound people and what we've seen over the years, if I go back to 2022, we finished that year with about 40,000 such people. Mind you, that was before the STCA. It dipped in 2023, down to 15,000, and that's a result of the STCA. Now, this year to date, we have 1,100 people on record who have come up northbound.
Commr Michael Duheme
If you're referring to the southbound people, we don't track those southbound. We're starting to track the southbound people, but we report it to the U.S. CBP, and then we're not always aware or informed of what they do with it. It's difficult for us to have an exact number for the southbound people.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
While I have you, Commissioner, and just to make sure, in budget 2023 we provided funding for a renewed Canadian drugs and substances strategy. Could you talk a bit about the additional resources that the RCMP may have received for that and how you've deployed those resources?
Commr Michael Duheme
Yes. They're predominately injected into our intel and our investigators. I don't have that exact number, but I'd be more than happy to circle back with a breakdown.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Yes, please do that.
President O'Gorman, in looking at some of the changes we've made, I understand that in 2017 we allowed the CBSA officers to look at mail that is 30 grams or less, because previously they weren't able to do that. Can you talk a bit about the impact of that?
President, Canada Border Services Agency
Sure.
The CBSA did need a warrant, actually, to look at parcels that were under 30 grams. As I mentioned earlier, we were seeing pills coming through the postal and courier services. That allowed us to open them. Again, for certain people, that's for personal use, but for other people, that's mixing with other things and creating significantly higher numbers of doses that would go out onto the street. It was very helpful.
Liberal
Liberal
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Just very quickly, Commissioner, we talked a lot about the work you're doing with the American authorities. Could you just very quickly talk about how successful that co-operation is?
Commr Michael Duheme
We have excellent co-operation with Aaron's team, CBSA and the U.S. BP. We've been at it for several years with this—and I mean several, several years. We've been through COVID, where the relationships were excellent. There are joint operations that are run with the U.S. BP.
Aaron and I are planning to visit Washington and the newly appointed people so that we can introduce ourselves and see if we can work better together. There's a lot of good work going on across the country with U.S. BP. There are several international forums that we participate in as well.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Raquel Dancho
Thank you very much.
Ms. Michaud, you have two and a half minutes, please.
