Public Safety Committee on Feb. 26th, 2024

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to the witnesses for joining us. I was particularly looking forward to speaking with Mr. Weber. As he mentioned, the Customs and Immigration Union could not be invited to the national summit that was held a few weeks ago, which is unfortunate. It is worthwhile to hear the views of Ms. O'Gorman and the organization, but I would also like to hear from the workers and find out what is happening on the ground. As you mentioned, these are front‑line workers.

Do you feel that finding solutions and putting resources in place to counter the scourge of car theft across the country is really a priority for CBSA? It's a pretty straightforward question.

Perhaps you could also clarify something that was circulating in the media. It was reported that, as of October 2023, there were only five officers at the Port of Montreal to inspect containers. That seems like very few considering the number of containers that leave the Port of Montreal every year.

Do you think that, in the current context, this is a priority for CBSA? Perhaps things have changed since the summit and since the situation has been receiving more media attention.

[Mark Weber]

The CBSA has a very difficult job on its hands in balancing priorities. When you look at what is being imported into Canada and what we, obviously, want to keep out, the CBSA has staffing constraints. Those numbers you just provided of five full-time officers is still five full-time officers. We have three officers on assignment, as well, who have been there for some time, so we're talking eight in total.

When I talk about staffing levels, we're short between 2,000 and 3,000 across the country. We have ports operating with half the number of officers they had 10 years ago. We don't see those numbers going up. We only have one college. We cannot graduate or train even up to 600 new officers per year, which isn't even covering attrition. We're having a really hard time. When I say we're desperately understaffed, we are desperately understaffed.

At the port of Montreal, specifically, other than staffing, the big issue is space. The facility in which we do the examinations has six parking spots. Once we find six stolen vehicles, we sometimes have to wait days for someone to come and take the vehicles away before we can inspect any more. With the officers working, we're looking at examining a maximum of about four containers a day, which could potentially hold eight cars.

We're really limited in terms of the space that's being allotted to exports. You have to understand that this facility is also where imports are examined. It's not only about not having enough people. Even if we wanted to expand it and add additional officers at the port of Montreal, specifically, there's really nowhere for them to do more examinations than they're currently doing.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

That's interesting, because when we hear about the amounts that have been—or will be—invested by the government, it's as if we are expecting that, magically, there will be more border services officers and that the entire problem will be solved. However, what you are saying is that, in fact, there is a lack of equipment, space and training. This information is based on an audit report that the agency itself recently published. I'll come back to that later.

I don't necessarily want to play politics, but I found it peculiar to hear my Conservative colleagues say that they felt there was an easy solution. They're proposing to buy 24 scanning devices that would inspect 154 containers per hour, or one million containers per year. In actual fact, the number of containers that leave the Port of Montreal each year is between 500,000 and 800,000 at most.

Were these figures pulled out of a hat? Is it realistic to think that 24 scanning devices will solve the problem? The Conservative Party mentioned 75 new officers, 30 of them at the Port of Montreal, and the fact that anything coming out of the port could be scanned, which would solve the problem. How realistic is that?

You also have to consider that cars that have not necessarily been stolen and that are intended for export could end up in containers. How can we sort all this out and propose serious solutions?

[Mark Weber]

Given what's in place now, it would not be realistic to be able to do that volume of examinations. That being said, any investment in infrastructure—if there was space to go along with it, if there were additional officers and we were able to actually use the equipment—absolutely, is helpful. We understand how important stolen vehicles and exports are.

As I said earlier, the CBSA tends to focus mostly on imports. We can understand why, given some of what's coming into the country that we want to keep out. Again, the staff just simply isn't there. You can throw money at the problem and add equipment. Overall, we're essentially trying to fill 100 holes with 50 pegs all the time. Until we get our staffing levels up to what they need to be, it's really going to be an uphill climb. At the port of Montreal specifically, we also need the space to do the work, so that's an additional challenge there.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you.

The report I mentioned earlier was published by the CBC, but it was picked up by Journal de Québec. Here's one of the things the article says:

None of the CBSA investigators responsible for security at ports and borders had completed the required training for their jobs as of 2021.

An investigator testified that he had been on the job for three years but was only starting to take basic training. That seems to be the case for a number of investigators or CBSA officers. The agency said it wanted to rectify the situation. The main problem is finding people and training them within a reasonable period of time so that they can do their jobs.

Do you have anything to add to that? You mentioned that this is a problem. It is all well and good to make investments, but that will not solve everything.

[Mark Weber]

It's an ongoing problem with a lot of our training. One of the difficulties we find, as well, is that, because we are so short-staffed on the front line, it is a challenge to have people released from the front line to do training. That gives you an idea of how short we are. We just don't have the ability to catch up and get the training done in time to bring out enough officers every year to actually do the job. It's something we really need to work at.

Again, we talk...and I've done a few of these subcommittees where we talk about money being given to the CBSA. It can't just be all put into a bucket. It has to be very specifically, in the union's opinion, about hiring officers and getting officers to work on the front line. It's not going to be done through equipment or technology. We're desperate for more people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Weber.

Thank you, Ms. Michaud.

Mr. Garrison, you have six minutes, please.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure to be back at the public safety committee. I spent many years here. I was here when the cuts were made to the CBSA, and I can't resist saying, “I told you so.” When the Conservative government cut 1,100 jobs, we talked about the necessary impacts that we would see from that reduction in staffing. I'm sorry, but I can't resist saying that.

The other thing I, as a recovering criminal justice instructor, can never resist is when people talk about deterrence. We know that enforcement is the front line of deterrence. The car theft problem we have is not because a bunch of kids got up in the morning and decided to joyride. There's an organized effort here to make money out of car theft, and one of the ways that works is if the cars can be exported. While I get that police are the front line on car theft, if we can do something about the easy export, we'll reduce that market. Therefore, we can reduce the number of car thefts that are going on in this country.

My questions really are for Mr. Weber, and I thank him for being here today. I think there's no substitute for the people who actually do the work talking to us about how to improve that work. When you talk about the training, it's kind of a cart-and-horse situation here, as you've said to us. You said that we can't release frontline people to do the training, but that we don't do enough training to get more staff. In the union's opinion, where do we start with that?

[Mark Weber]

I think we need to start by getting money invested into looking at opening a second college. Right now, we only have the one. Again, we cannot pump out even 600 new officers every year, which isn't even covering attrition, so with what you have in place, you're simply not catching up.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I'm sorry. Do you think a second facility is needed, or is an expansion needed?

[Mark Weber]

I would think we need a second facility. The maximum with the one facility now is under 600 per year, which simply isn't allowing us to catch up.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

You'd place that somewhere else in the country.

[Mark Weber]

I would think so. There have been some options in different locations floated, but I do think we definitely need a second location.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Then, once you have that up and running, what about this problem of who's going to staff those colleges? I'm asking that as a former college instructor myself.

[Mark Weber]

There is no shortage of applicants. It's simply a matter of space and opportunity for them to become CBSA officers. The program is 18 weeks long. We have a one-year, on-the-job apprenticeship that goes along with that.

It's a long process to get fully trained to be able to fully do the job. That being said, you have to make the investment right now so that, going forward, you're able to do the job.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

If we made that kind of investment to restore levels to what they were—something like 10 years ago—not only would that help with the car theft export problem, but I'm assuming that would also help with things like the import of fentanyl and other dangerous substances through the ports.

[Mark Weber]

It would help with everything.

One of the big concerns the union has is.... Earlier I mentioned and others mentioned ArriveCAN. One of the focuses of ArriveCAN, initially developed to gather public health information, is that it's being used as a new kind of border technology, where we see the CBSA proposing and working on systems whereby people are able to self-declare, where you have fewer officers at the border and where you even have eGates, where people can travel into the country without seeing an officer.

When we talk about fentanyl and when we talk about guns and gangs and all the things coming into Canada that you don't want to see coming in, no one is ever going to self-declare that they have these things. Technology can be very helpful to an officer, but you need the officer there. We cannot ever get to a place where people can simply self-declare and come into the country.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I think that's an important point you make: It's the fact that people judge that they might get caught that causes them not to do these things, not that they thumbed through the Criminal Code to see what the penalty is.

When you talk about equipment, I totally accept your position that you can spend all you want on equipment, but if you don't have people to run it, it doesn't work. I was quite shocked at some of the things I saw with the lack of scanners and lack of equipment. Can you say more about what we're dealing with there?

[Mark Weber]

Yes, we are short. We're short of people to operate them and we're short of people to maintain them. I could give you an example.

At the port of Montreal, the large X-ray machine, the HCVM that's being used now, was borrowed from Windsor because the Montreal one is not working, so now you have a large port of entry like Windsor that doesn't have one. We have other parts of the country that have the same kind of situation sporadically, where it's very hard for us to keep the equipment running or where officers often will just be taken off X-ray duties because there aren't officers available to work the front line and process travellers.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

At the time that cuts were made, almost a decade ago, there was the argument that the police would pick up the slack. I think we've heard from both the police and you that there are different responsibilities here. It isn't just somebody picking up the slack for somebody else.

Can you say a little about the different jurisdictional roles of the police and the CBSA here?

[Mark Weber]

Yes. To put it simply, if it's at the border and if it involves the Customs Act or the immigration act, it's the CBSA that deals with it.

When we're talking about car theft, I appreciate what was said about intermodal work, co-operation and agencies working together. We heard about the recent seizure—I believe it was 36 cars—in Montreal by the different police agencies and the CBSA. More of that work has to be done, but that's a good example. When we see the manpower that was put into those 36 car seizures, if the CBSA had that there all the time, we could be doing that. We simply don't have the manpower to do it.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I think those are my questions for this round.

[The Chair, Liberal, Heath MacDonald]

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

We're going to move on to the second round and Mr. Motz for five minutes, please.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Weber and deputies, for being here today.

I'll ask the chiefs about this. You talked about numbers, both of you, in different jurisdictions, for the number of thefts you've had. Do you know or have you a sense of the difference between the number of those autos that are stolen and exported versus the number that are revinned or chop-shopped for parts?

[D/Chief Robert Johnson]

We do keep those statistics. I don't have them with me, but we do have that.