Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to appear as a witness as part of your study on Bill C-12.
As national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, I am happy to be here today to represent Canada's border personnel.
Per its name, Bill C-12 proposes a number of measures intended to strengthen Canada's border and immigration system. On paper, some of these measures are certainly positive. A prime example of this is language in the Customs Act that would see commercial operators needing to provide border officers with access to facilities for both import and export inspections. The export aspect is currently lacking in the act, and this is a commendable addition.
In practice, the reality is that despite already having these powers for import inspections, the Canada Border Services Agency is rarely able to conduct these inspections when it comes to certain modes, such as rail operations, due to a now well-established lack of staffing and a lack of facilities as well.
While the federal government has made it clear that hiring 1,000 additional officers was a priority and one that we very much welcome as an initial step, Bill C-12 therefore highlights once again how crucial adequate staffing is to a secure and well-functioning border.
Adequate staffing also needs to be the cornerstone of well-oiled, secure and fair immigration processes, including refugee claims. While Bill C-12 seeks to speed up the refugee claim process to address lengthy processing times and backlogs, it is worth pointing out that without the sustained understaffing our border system has experienced for many years, these lengthy processing times and backlogs, and therefore the pressure to seek efficiencies, would likely be far less considerable.
This is especially important in light of how CBSA has been managing the border for most of its history. Efficiencies, as implemented by CBSA management, almost always result in a degradation of the security and integrity of our border processes. We've seen it with traveller operations, where people seeking entry to Canada do so now through automated machines with no real interaction with officers.
Outside of Bill C-12, we're already seeing it in some circumstances with refugee claim processing itself, where the agency's simplified intake process, which is known as the one-touch process, means that claimants now spend significantly less time meaningfully interacting with officers, with the result of reduced security for the sake of expediency.
Interactions between officers and anyone who seeks to enter the country, be they travellers or refugee claimants, is a key component of border security. These interactions result in better intelligence and allow officers to recognize patterns and flags that would otherwise be missed, ensuring that any potential problem is detected early on and will not put further stress on the system at a later date.
Crucially, experienced officers have the training necessary to navigate complex processes efficiently without compromising security, yet, too often, CBSA prefers to push out experienced officers, as it is currently in the process of doing with nearly 200 officers who cannot carry a firearm, eroding both its institutional memory and its ability to maintain a direct contact with the people transiting through our borders.
The conclusion here is clear. Ensuring the security and integrity of our border and associated processes starts with an adequate human presence. Without this—the human element—no bill can hope to truly solve border issues in the long term.
I thank you, and I do look forward to your questions.