Public Safety Committee on Nov. 20th, 2025

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

All right.

I would like to give verbal notice of a motion:

That the committee undertake a study, pursuant to S.O. 108(2), on the systemic discrimination and toxic workplace culture within the Canada Border Services Agency;

That the study include a minimum of five meetings;

That the committee invite the Minister of Public Safety, the president of the Canada Border Services Agency, the president and additional representatives of the Customs and Immigration Union, former and current CBSA employees with lived experience, experts in workplace culture and harassment, and any other witnesses the committee deems appropriate to appear before it; and

That the committee report its findings and recommendations to the House.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, MP Kirkland.

Let me turn now to MP Ehsassi for five minutes.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses. This has been very helpful.

Last week, on Bill C-12, we heard from the OPP. They urged us to take the issue of right to access very seriously, but as you know, there are differences of opinion insofar as the opposition is concerned, which dismays me to no end.

I was wondering, Mr. Sauvé, as you did touch on this, if you could elaborate further on why it's critically important that right to access be enshrined.

[Brian Sauvé]

I don't think you really need to hear more from me. I know that the NSICOP committee, the committee of all parliamentarians, made some recommendations that Canada needs to catch up to its Five Eyes allies and to modernize its right to lawful access for law enforcement. That would be a more educated forum making a recommendation than just some guy who's a cop in charge of a union.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Sure, I appreciate that full well, but the purpose of these deliberations and having experts such as you appear before committee is just to make sure that we're hearing the right things from all the experts, so that we can push the envelope, if you will. If you could help us and assist us, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Brian Sauvé]

I think the balance can easily be struck—you just had the Privacy Commissioner of Canada here in the previous panel—if we're talking about balancing lawful access for law enforcement to conduct investigations into what are challenging investigations. As I mentioned earlier, cryptocurrency is an evolving trend for money laundering, and there's organized crime and international crime and the evolution of artificial intelligence.

For example, the FBI did a little presentation for law enforcement a while ago about the rise in deepfakes in cyber-technology and the ability to essentially have child porn out there that is fake. The challenge is, how do you know it's fake?

A police service like Red Deer's, for example, could get a report of child pornography. They look at the images, but a regular member of the RCMP or a police service would not be able to tell that they're fake. They would need to use the resources of our integrated child exploitation unit to actually analyze those and determine that they're not fake. That takes resources away from real crimes where there are real victims. The idea of lawful access is to delve deeper into those stories to be able to determine ahead of time the “whether or not” and to expedite the ability to conduct those investigations.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Sauvé.

Mr. Weber, given your position with the CBSA, I want to go to you on one of the issues that have been of great interest to members of this committee, which is the use of trained dogs.

Given that we are concerned about our officials having access to the right tools, technologies and so on, could you share an update with us about CBSA officers and the use of K-9 dogs for fentanyl and things of that nature? Perhaps you could let us know how we compare to other Five Eyes countries with respect to the use of this very significant tool.

[Mark Weber]

I'm not aware of what the other Five Eyes countries have in place. I know our use of detector dogs has increased and there was money allocated to increased detector dog teams. That has been positive, absolutely, along with the hiring of 1,000 additional officers. There's been some good work around that.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

You're aware of the fact that the training has already started. As I understand it, we're at the forefront of using trained dogs. To the best of your knowledge, that is already well under way.

[Mark Weber]

That is correct.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

I think that concludes my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, MP Ehsassi.

Mrs. DeBellefeuille, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Weber, you said that Bill C‑12 would from now on authorize you to inspect not only cars from imports, but also cars destined for export. In your opening remarks, you told us that you already had the opportunity to inspect cars when they were imported, but that you did so very little, because of a lack of staff.

Do you know how the agency will manage to carry out, as prescribed by Bill C‑12, the inspection of cars coming from imports and those destined for export with current resources? It will take some time for the agency to be able to hire those 250 officers a year. In the meantime, we'll still have to do this work, while the agency is already having trouble doing its job at the moment.

[Mark Weber]

You're absolutely right. I wish I had a crystal ball and knew where the resources were going to be allocated, but the devil is in the details. We need the people in place to be able to do that.

In some cases, it's a matter of building and having facilities. For example, with exports, one of the big issues is stolen cars out of the port of Montreal, which is one of the main hubs for that. Facility-wise, when you get to the granular level of how it works, the reality is that once we find six cars, we have to stop because there's nowhere else to park them. We don't have the facilities to go beyond that.

We need more space, and we need more people. I think each mode and each port of entry has to be looked at in detail to make sure that things are in place and we can actually do the work.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

What do you think about the fact that railway companies' marshalling yards should now be organized in such a way as to provide certain equipment for inspections? I've always said that it would take time before railway companies like Canadian National or Canadian Pacific built facilities in their marshalling yards where inspections could be carried out.

Do you believe that the provisions set out in Bill C‑12 are realistic or rather wishful thinking?

[Mark Weber]

Bill C-12 gives the ability to force that for exports. We already have the ability to force them to build it for import inspections. I'm hoping that what we're hearing about “Canada Strong” and the push to make our borders what they can be is honest, and that the nuts and bolts are going to be put in place so that we can actually do it.

Bill C-12 puts a good framework in place. We need to put the resources in the right place to make it happen now.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Mr. Chair, there are a lot of remarks—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I apologize, Mrs. DeBellefeuille, but you have exactly eight seconds left.

[Claude DeBellefeuille, Bloc, Beauharnois—Salaberry—Soulanges—Huntingdon, QC]

Actually, I just want to say that a lot of what we just heard could be included in the study I proposed to the committee on border security. I may move a motion so that we can consider that testimony in that study as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you for being so proactive and creative.

I now give the floor to Mr. Au for five minutes.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

Thank you for the presentation.

I have a question for Mr. Weber. It's alarming to me that, at times, we have more students than fully trained officers working at the major airports, which you mentioned.

How long has this been going on?

[Mark Weber]

The number of students has been going up steadily since about 2013-14. We're at about two and a half times the number now than we were then, so it's slowly crept up. The way the students work has changed as well. Rather than working with an officer to learn the job, now it's essentially three weeks of training and then, “Here's your stamp and that's your booth; off you go.”

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

You're talking about it going on for 10 years, if not more.

[Mark Weber]

It's been a long time. It's slowly gotten more and more to their working independently, yes.

[Chak Au, Conservative, Richmond Centre—Marpole, BC]

In your assessment, what has been the negative impact on our border security with this kind of situation?