Public Safety Committee on Nov. 25th, 2025

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Just to look at your comments on the need for, or lack thereof, you say, for a dwelling-house carve-out here, as the amendment before us right now puts it, if someone is running a home dropshipping business where they are readying products for export from their garage, where would that fit or not fit into this legislation in this proposed amendment?

[Graeme Hamilton]

In that particular sense, the person would also have to be the transporter of those goods, which they wouldn't be. They would be putting them into a courier system or a mail system. We would use existing provisions within the Customs Act in order to access those goods in a separate location, mostly a mail-sorting facility or some other type of courier facility.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

There would still be cases where someone who perhaps lives in a cross-border community might have a business where they're ferrying goods back and forth, and they could be the warehouser and the transporter. Is that correct?

[Graeme Hamilton]

If they were to have their goods in their car and were to bring them to the border, we would have the authorities to examine them. If they were physically at the border, it wouldn't necessarily be this provision. We would be using provisions under section 99 as opposed to section 97.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

There are a lot of communities in Canada that.... There's that old line—and I don't know if it's statistically valid, but it's often cited—that 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles or 100 kilometres of the U.S. border. I don't live in a traditional border community, although my riding does go along the shore of Lake Erie, so it does technically border the United States that way. I live about an hour from Port Huron, Michigan.

Again, Canadians have often, notwithstanding the current circumstances, gone back and forth across the border. There are a number of cases where Canadians have tried to score a deal of some sort, so they order a product, ship it to a UPS store across the border and bring it back.

Are there issues with this that, in your view, Bill C-12 is trying to capture—this long-standing cross-border trade, some of which is more formalized and some of which is more informal? It's just Canadians and Americans who have gone back many decades not even really viewing there being a true border there.

[Graeme Hamilton]

Yeah, those types of goods that are coming into the country are being casually imported by a traveller and would be subject to examination under other authorities, not under section 99. Section 99 would come into play, for example, if it were a trucking company bringing those goods across or a rail company transporting those goods for export. It would not come into play for a casual importation by a traveller seeking to access a mail facility in the States and to import those goods casually into Canada after having ordered them online.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I'm just trying to get a sense here. I realize that you've addressed this to some extent, but is it your view that new powers are needed on this? I'm specifically talking about section 97 here. Are new powers needed, or are greater direction and clarity needed on existing powers?

[Graeme Hamilton]

There was not clarity in the existing Customs Act that would oblige transporters and warehouse operators to give access to the CBSA to do examinations on exported goods, similar to what's in the Customs Act for imported goods. It's seeking to close a legislative gap that was identified by the CBSA as we were examining the powers and authorities that we were using with respect to stolen vehicles.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Do you have any sense of how many entities—that is, companies or, to a lesser extent, individuals—fall into this gap? How many operators are we dealing with here, roughly?

[Graeme Hamilton]

I'm sorry, sir. I don't have the answer offhand. I do know that there are hundreds of licensed warehouses across the country, but I don't have a specific number on that. In terms of transporters, I wouldn't want to hazard a guess.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Would fulfilling this require, in your view, more resources? Are we talking about a greater workload that the CBSA has to take on to do this? Are you expecting, for example, a greater volume of these searches, of these premises inspections, if this bill passes and if the amendment to it passes and would be law?

[Graeme Hamilton]

I wouldn't want to speak to the use of operational resources. What I can say is that I know there are 8,500 frontline officers who are assigned to do risk-based examinations of imported and exported goods. These new authorities would open the aperture in terms of the potential goods that they could look at using that risk basis. They would continue to work within the resources that they have.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Do you believe that there is a new gap created in this? I go to the amendment that we're discussing right now, which talks about dwelling-houses. It specifically says that there should be an “ex parte application by the Minister”. In response to that, “a judge” would be able to “issue a warrant authorizing an officer to enter a dwelling-house”.

Now, I realize your view that “dwelling-house” was not.... I understand why that was not contemplated in the initial legislation here, but do you believe that there is a gap in this, in not including warrant language and the requirement for a warrant under these authorities with respect to warehouse and transport operators?

Should we be looking at warrants there? That's basically the question.

[Graeme Hamilton]

I wouldn't want to provide a legal assessment on that. If this were something that we looked at, I think we could operationalize this from a CBSA perspective, but I wouldn't want to speak to the legal requirements and assessments associated with it.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Okay. Thank you very much.

Just to put this into the broader context, the reason I focus on this is that, as we have been discussing this bill and as Canadians have been weighing in on this, there have been a lot of concerns that I've fielded, certainly from people in my riding, and from across the country, about mission creep. That is not at all an indictment of the CBSA. They perform incredibly important work for our country and our communities. For border communities in particular, CBSA officers live and work amongst them, and they are very important members of the community.

The question is about the law itself and the direction given to these officers. There is a profound mistrust by Canadians for a great many of the authorities that we have seen put forward in Bill C-2, which was the precursor to Bill C-12. It's interesting that Bill C-12 is in some ways ripped from the pages of Bill C-2. The hope that a lot of members of Parliament and a lot of Canadians had was that the government would learn their lesson with this and would realize the error of their ways—which I concede is a lot to ask after the last 10 years—and in doing so would have addressed some of these concerns, some of these due process concerns and the scope issues.

Our witnesses here have made some very important comments that are very valid about why the government perhaps did not think of contemplating “dwelling-houses” in the original text of clause 4 of Bill C-12, and why that was not the case, but the amendment here reveals that there are gaps still. It's not quite clear to me—and I've tried to get a clear answer from the government on this in the past—whether they are trying to simply codify and clarify operational realities—areas where there are some gaps—or whether they are trying to expand the authority they have. I think that in and of itself is a bit of a concerning problem here.

Again, why has it taken so many hours of this committee's time to deal with what are really just two paragraphs of the bill? People can decide for themselves, but I think there are still a number of outstanding questions that need to be dealt with.

I know that Mr. Au, my colleague from British Columbia, had tried to get into some of the specifics of which locations we are dealing with. Mr. Hamilton, are you able to offer any context on the licensing for warehouses—realizing it's contained in another statute—and whether that itself creates an issue with the CBSA? Are you going to have warehouses that don't fit the legal definition but are still being used for export?

[Graeme Hamilton]

I think the licensing framework that exists for warehouses that is contained in section 24 of the Customs Act, and then elaborated on in the warehousing regulations, provides sufficient clarity to industry around which locations are considered warehouses, but also the requirements that fall to those warehouses as well. I think there's a fairly robust system around the designation of warehousing and the licensing of warehousing.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

I'm glad you brought up section 24 of the Customs Act because, as I understand it, that section also deals with duty-free shops, correct?

[Graeme Hamilton]

There is a section of the Customs Act that deals with duty-free shops. Whether it's section 24, I can't say for sure off the top of my head.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

As I understand it, I believe it's right after section 24. It's under the same category, but not the same section number.

Do goods that are being retailed but are destined to cross the border factor into your work on and consideration of these issues?

[Graeme Hamilton]

On this particular issue for section 97, no, sir, they wouldn't. There is a separate set of regulations that deals with duty-free shops, however.

[Andrew Lawton, Conservative, Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, ON]

Okay. I believe we may be getting to those at another point.

That's all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. I believe my colleague Mr. Jackson has some questions as well, if he is next on the list.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you.

MP Jackson, please go ahead.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thank you, Chair. It's a pleasure to be here at committee this afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity.

It's nice to meet the witnesses. I'm sorry I missed your testimony this morning, so please forgive me if I repeat some questions. That's certainly not my intention.

My constituency is Brandon—Souris in the southwest corner of Manitoba.

[Graeme Hamilton]

I'm a Brandon boy.

[Grant Jackson, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

You're a Brandon boy, very good. I'm from Souris, and I grew up in Brandon, and I went to Brandon University. It's a pleasure to have a fellow Westman resident here. That's wonderful.

You're very familiar with our neck of the woods then. I have nine border crossings in our constituency alone. A lot of people are really curious as to how this bill is going to impact the operations of those border crossings.

I was just down in Cartwright, Manitou and Waskada not long ago. They're already experiencing changes to the hours of operation of those border crossings. Whether or not that's due to resourcing issues, I'm not sure. Perhaps you can provide some clarity.

I am hearing concern that increased responsibility and increased tax, while good things, might impact the operations of those borders due to resourcing issues.

I wonder if you could provide a little commentary on what impact you may foresee this bill might have when it comes into force on our nine border crossings in our neck of the woods.