Good morning, Mr. Chair, and members of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Thank you for inviting me to participate in the meeting today.
My name is Scott Harris. I'm the vice‑president of the intelligence and enforcement branch. I'm pleased to be here, on behalf of the president, to answer your questions about the significant steps that the Canada Border Services Agency, or CBSA, is taking to prevent illegal weapons from entering Canada.
I am joined today by Fred Gaspar, vice-president of commercial and trade.
The CBSA ensures compliance with existing laws, regulations and orders, including the Customs Act, the Firearms Act and the Criminal Code, and any and all of the laws that prohibit, control, and regulate the importation of goods into Canada.
In these efforts, the CBSA works closely with other law enforcement agencies, such as the RCMP; the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; U.S. Homeland Security; and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
My organization also stays current on global trends and patterns to ensure border service officers know about new concealment methods. Officers use a variety of detection tools, techniques, and the latest scientific technology to prevent contraband from entering Canada.
In 2018, the government provided the CBSA with $51.5 million over five years with $7.5 million in ongoing funding to enhance its capacity to take action on guns and gang violence. This funding has allowed the agency to increase its operational capacity to screen passengers, and examine commercial shipments for all contraband, including illegal firearms.
The CBSA firearms strategy focuses on identifying criminal networks and trafficking routes in order to prevent illicit firearms from crossing the border, and to disrupt the smuggling done by criminal networks. It's heavily focused on partnerships, involving law enforcement partners, both domestically and abroad, to keep our communities safe.
In 2021, the CBSA national firearms desk was established. This desk brings together CBSA partners working to combat firearms smuggling in order to maintain a real-time, national border-focused threat picture of illicit firearms in Canada and their movements across our borders.
Our efforts have been paying off. In 2021, over 1,000 firearms and firearm parts were confiscated in 409 seizures. Included in this count were 233 seizures in Ontario, 88 in B.C., and 21 in Quebec.
The work done in Quebec is an example of the CBSA's important collaboration with its federal and provincial partners. The CBSA's Quebec region also works closely with various law enforcement partners across the province to further investigations into illegal cross‑border firearms movements. In February 2021, the arrest by the RCMP of a resident of L'Ancienne‑Lorette, Quebec, along with the seizure of homemade bombs, firearms, silencers, magazines, volumes of ammunition and prohibited weapons, resulted from an initial CBSA intercept and seizure of a prohibited silencer being illegally imported into Canada.
Our officers exercise their professional judgment in a highly complex environment, and are well supported in their training in order to apply these measures. I'm very proud of the work CBSA staff have done, and will continue to do to protect Canadians from the scourge of illegal firearms, and their detrimental effects on our communities.
I'll be happy to answer questions from committee members about this significant issue, regarding the operational and implementation aspects of our activities.