Evidence of meeting #4 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 smuggling.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement Branch, Canada Border Services Agency
That's right.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
That's great news.
You would say that this additional injection of taxpayer dollars is going to be well spent and contribute to combatting gun violence at our border—in essence, the gun smuggling and the gang activity coming across the border.
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement Branch, Canada Border Services Agency
Yes, it targets a number of different activities that we'll be undertaking, some of which obviously have been ongoing since 2018, including to the point of adding technology, of introducing new technologies and exploring new technologies that can enhance our capacities, and of enhancing drug detector capacity and training capacity, as well as expanding and enhancing our intelligence and investigative capacity.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Okay.
Do you believe that the imminent federal so-called gun buyback program is going to stop gun smuggling or contribute to stopping the smuggling of guns coming from the U.S. into Canada? Do you think the Canadian buyback program will help that in any way?
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement Branch, Canada Border Services Agency
From a CBSA perspective, I think the challenge of combatting firearms is multi-faceted and is going to require a whole-of-government response. It's going to take many facets to do that. CBSA is very focused on ensuring that we use the resources we've been given and the investments we've been given to the greatest effect. That's our current focus. It's to move forward with using our mandate appropriately.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Right, and do you feel that any provincial handgun ban in Canada would stop handguns from being smuggled from the U.S. into Canada? Do you think that would be effective?
Vice-President, Intelligence and Enforcement Branch, Canada Border Services Agency
I can't speak to provincial regulations or legislation to this effect. As I say, we work closely with our provincial partners and our territorial partners and will continue to do so to leverage our mandate to support their efforts to combat firearms smuggling.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Right. I think my point is really that it sounds like there are some investments being made, but there are billions and billions of proposed dollars that will be spent on a so-called buyback program, as well as a proposed potential provincial handgun ban, and I'm not getting a clear sense from you that that's going to have a clear impact on one of the primary causes of gun smuggling from the U.S. border into Canada.
I did want to go to Mr. Weber. I would like to—
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Mr. Chair, can we pause the time? There's something—
Liberal
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
It's Mr. Chiang, I think.
Mr. Chiang, if you can mute yourself, that would be great.
Mr. Webber, your entire opening remarks were about strapped resources for hard-working border agents who are having to patrol, as you said, the largest undefended border in the world with one of the countries that has some of the most firearms per capita in the world. Obviously, we're seeing that huge impact on gun violence in Canada coming from gun smuggling from the United States.
Could you give us a couple of ideas of what your officers would be able to do with an additional $1 billion, $2 billion, or $3 billion? What would that mean to your officers for patrolling our border and stopping gun smuggling?
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
Thank you.
I heard the comments about increased technology and putting some of the money towards intelligence, which makes sense, but all of that doesn't achieve anything unless there's someone there to actually do the search, to open and look into the rail car. That's really what we're lacking.
We seem to be gathering data, and when you look at a mode like rail, we have absolutely no ability to look into anything, so I think building that infrastructure and having the people to actually find the guns are where some of that money needs to go.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Right. You had mentioned that your capacity to look at the millions of tonnes of cargo that come on rail into Canada from the U.S. every year is one one-millionth of what's needed. Is that correct? Is that the capacity you have?
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
Essentially, as you mentioned, you have zero capacity to check rail. Is that correct?
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
That's correct, yes.
Conservative
Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
How many more border agents would you say we would need to significantly increase monitoring of illegal activity related to drug and gun smuggling?
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
To include in that patrolling between borders...?
National President, Customs and Immigration Union
I think you could safely be looking at an extra 1,000 or 1,500.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jim Carr
Thank you.
Next I will call upon Mr. McKinnon to begin his five-minute line of questioning.
Mr. McKinnon, we go over to you.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Chair.
There's been considerable emphasis today on border issues, but according to the numbers we heard earlier, domestic sources of firearms are three times greater than those coming across the border. It seems to me that that would be a place we should be taking a hard look at.
Now, admittedly, those numbers are based on what appears to be a small dataset, and I would certainly underscore the remarks earlier, I believe by Ms. Dancho, on the importance of increasing tracing so we can get better data.
I guess my question is for both Mr. Sauvé and the RCMP regarding what more we can do to reduce the domestic sourcing of these firearms for criminal or violent activities.
Let's start with the RCMP, please.
D/Commr Michael Duheme
If I may, I'll go back, Mr. McKinnon, to an earlier comment by the president, Mr. Brian Sauvé. It starts with education and outreach. You could take down a criminal organization tomorrow, and there will be another one just waiting to fill that spot.
I think it has to be done in tandem. One way is that we really have to focus on the educational piece, that awareness piece, that outreach piece, to have an impact while the law enforcement is working on the other piece with organized crime.
We've seen it many times: You take one organization down, and there's another one in line to take that job, to take that position, and it's just a domino effect.
For me, one of the key initiatives would be those outreach prevention measures and getting those out to the younger people, the people who are thinking about joining these organizations.