Public Safety Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[Samuel Cooper]

In terms of the situation, look at what they found at the Falkland lab. They found methamphetamine, fentanyl, cocaine and marijuana. This is a polydrug crisis in Vancouver.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you.

We have time for one last intervention. Then we'll turn to the second round of witnesses.

Go ahead, MP Ehsassi.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the two witnesses.

As you know, there's very little time left, so I'll keep this very brief.

I have to comment, Mr. Cooper, that I found it somewhat confusing that you were blaming the charter for some of the impediments that, according to you, have occurred in the co-operation between U.S. and Canadian officials. As you know, the charter is now over 40 years old, but you were suggesting that it has only been occurring in the last 10 years.

That having been said, you were interrupted because of challenges with interpreters. I believe you were about to cite two court decisions that, in your opinion, have had an impact on co-operation between U.S. and Canadian officials. I was wondering if you could share the names of those two court cases and perhaps share with us what your misgivings are.

[Samuel Cooper]

With humility, I'm not a lawyer, but I've spoken to many lawyers, and especially many current and former Canadian police, about this opinion. It's not my opinion but my shared opinion that due to Stinchcombe, a law that essentially demands the RCMP release almost all evidence to the defence side, and Jordan, which at the same time applies a strict time pressure to very complex cases involving international networks and translation, any amount of information has to be funnelled through a time barrier with a tremendous volume. We can read of cases that have been dropped involving Mexican cartels. I can point to Cobra, in Alberta, and Brisa, in Ontario, and we can find in open-sourced reporting that Stinchcombe and Jordan are cited in the dropping of those cases.

[Ali Ehsassi, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Nohara, given this is the concluding question, I'm wondering if there's anything else you want to share with the committee in the time that remains that you were unable to share when we asked questions.

[Tim Nohara]

Thank you for that.

I would simply say that there's a tremendous opportunity in front of us right now—because we've already done the major work with our U.S. partners in border security—to immediately bring capability to the border in the course of a week, especially in the St. Lawrence River area and in some other key hot spot areas. There's equally an opportunity, in the cross-border climate we're facing with the United States, to better serve that binational relationship, as we have in the past, by expansion across the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway system, which I believe first-hand will be very well received and may even have positive tariff benefits and other benefits for Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, MP Ehsassi.

Dear witnesses, we are very grateful for the time, for your availability and for your efforts prior to coming to this session. Thank you so much for having been helpful and having answered the questions and comments of members of Parliament. We wish you a good day.

For the others, we'll suspend for other witnesses to come in.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Good morning, everyone.

We will now begin the second part of our meeting.

We would like to welcome two important witnesses who are with us today: Mr. Mark Weber, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, and Ms. Laura Dawson, executive director of the Future Borders Coalition.

Mr. Weber and Ms. Dawson, you each have five minutes to make your presentation.

We will start with you, Mr. Weber.

Wait, I’m being told that the interpretation is not working. We will take a break to check this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Mr. Weber, you have the floor.

[Mark Weber, National President, Customs and Immigration Union]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear as a witness as part of your study on the management of the Canada-U.S. border.

The Customs and Immigration Union, which represents CBSA personnel such as frontline border officers, has long highlighted critical insufficiencies affecting Canada's border services, the majority of which can be linked to issues of mismanagement. As national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, I am glad to be here once again to assist you in your important study.

Due to the events unfolding south of us, this past year has brought our shared border with the United States into sharp focus. I would like to start by commending the current government for its willingness to tackle border issues head-on. We were particularly pleased to see the Liberal leadership commit to hiring an additional 1,000 border officers, which, while short of the 2,000 to 3,000 we estimate our border ultimately needs, will nevertheless be a strong start towards reinforcing our border infrastructure. I personally very much look forward to the fulfillment of this commitment.

That said, the day-to-day reality at the CBSA remains bleak. Training facilities are lacking to truly ramp up the hiring of fully trained border officers. The number of students working in frontline roles at airports has more than doubled in the last 15 years. The CBSA persists in staffing workplaces with managers, while frontline officers still have to contend with toxic local management. The agency continues to score at the very bottom of the federal public service employee satisfaction survey, and upper management remains wholly disconnected from daily frontline operations. The disconnect from upper management is perhaps what is most frustrating for our members.

The CBSA appears content to be in the back seat when it comes to frontline border law enforcement operations. This was most apparent with the launch of the federal government's border security plan at the beginning of this year, which could have been an opportunity for the government to revisit and expand the role of frontline border officers by allowing them to assist the RCMP in patrolling between ports of entry. Rather, the feeling among border officers was that they were essentially told to sit tight while everybody else—not only RCMP officers but also provincial police forces without the proper legislative authority to enforce federal legislation—was called in to help.

Indeed, it has become very apparent that there is a complete lack of trust on the part of the front line towards the CBSA's upper echelons. The general feeling is that those in a position to direct the agency do not have the best interests of the front line at heart. This sentiment is only reinforced by the CBSA's recent decision to perform a blanket review of accommodation agreements across the country, which appears to be designed to push out seasoned officers, who, while they cannot carry firearms, bring valuable law enforcement experience. The message from our employer is clear: We do not care about you and will show you the door should you be injured.

At the end of the day, it seems like the Canada Border Services Agency has chosen to focus entirely too much on the “services” part of its name, at the expense of what should be its primary mission: ensuring the security of our border and protecting Canadian communities. Too often does this agency choose to invest in automated technology designed to replace, not help, the officers who play an instrumental role in interdicting dangerous goods and criminals.

I've said it before and will say it again: No one will ever self-declare that they are bringing in illicit goods or that they are breaking the law. Human interaction is always paramount. What's worse is that when this technology designed to “facilitate” fails—as it did just a few days ago at airports and land borders across the country—it causes delays that could be avoided with adequate staffing, hampering the very service aspect that the agency seeks to pursue.

Ultimately, a strong, properly managed border requires bold decisions. By promising to hire 1,000 additional officers, the government has signalled that it is ready to make such decisions, but more is needed. Canada must invest in the people who protect our front line. We need to allow our frontline border officers to fulfill their legal mandate. We need to invest in CBSA training infrastructure to ensure that we can continue to meet future challenges head-on, both at and away from the front line, and we need a border services agency that is equipped to properly manage itself so that it can better manage our border.

I thank you and look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you, Mr. Weber.

Ms. Dawson, you have the floor.

[Laura Dawson, Executive Director, Future Borders Coalition]

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My organization, the Future Borders Coalition, was established in 2018 as the Beyond Preclearance Coalition. We are a non-profit organization jointly registered in Canada and the United States—I'm a Canadian living in the United States—and we're funded entirely by member contributions.

Our membership draws heavily from Canada, including from airports, ports, motor coach and maritime shipping operators, customs brokers, bridges and tunnels, freight forwarders, the travel industry, digital service providers and businesses whose livelihoods depend on cross-border trade and travel, from forest products to financial services. We were established to provide a ready source of expertise and stakeholder input on government border, trade and travel proposals. We maintain close working relationships with Canadian and American entities, including the Canada Border Services Agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security, Public Safety Canada, Global Affairs Canada, the State Department and others.

Put simply, we are a venue for problem solving and for those whose livelihoods depend on the safe and efficient functioning of our shared border. We've contributed positively to such issues as COVID-19 border management, NEXUS enrolment and revisions to the safe third country agreement.

Our current activities include collaboration to resolve tariff disputes; the modernization and expansion of border pre-clearance sites in air, land and marine modes; preparation for the CUSMA review; preparation for World Cup 2026; and support for new mechanisms of border security and co-operation. Yesterday, we hosted a meeting in Ottawa with more than 100 business, government and think tank representatives—your former witness Sam Cooper was a key speaker—to discuss the proliferation of cartels and organized crime across the Canada-U.S. border.

These are very complex issues, but let me summarize them in broad strokes. Organized crime does not operate in silos. It is orchestrated by far-reaching networks using world-class technology. These groups are indifferent to what they're trafficking: guns, drugs, cigarettes or human beings. The key element is that their cross-border commodity is cash and generating profit.

Unfortunately, we're attempting to address these threats piecemeal. One initiative focuses on guns. Another initiative focuses on fentanyl. One is a provincial initiative. One is a cross-border initiative and another is federal.

Many of our laws and regulations protect bad actors while tying the hands of the law enforcement and border officials we charge with protecting us. Many of our border security weaknesses stem not from a lack of intelligence, but from a lack of ability to share that intelligence with one another.

For these reasons, we strongly support the passage of Bill C-2. It unties the hands of law enforcement and enables more robust information sharing between officials, across borders and with state, provincial, local and first nations policing communities.

However, we also note that many of the costs of Bill C-2 will be off-loaded to airports, ports, railways, bridges and tunnels. These entities are not equipped to take on new financial obligations, especially in a time of economic downturn, so we would see these commitments unevenly applied and based not on risk, but on who could afford to implement them. We recommend looking at the U.S. model, which relies on centralized funding and allows priority elements to be rolled out systematically.

Our other recommendations focus on technology. We want to provide our border and security officials with the technology they need to do their jobs effectively. This does not mean replacing human beings, but rather giving human beings the decision support tools they need so that by the time a shipment or person arrives at the border, an official has all the advance information they need to make a good determination of risk. Is this green light? Is this red light? Is this yellow light? The bad guys have this technology. We should equip the good guys as well.

Some of the tools we recommend—and we've written a report on this that I will provide a link to—include AI and ML applications for pattern detection and social network analysis, blockchain for detecting document fraud, and non-intrusive imaging technology for scanning high-risk cargo quickly and at scale.

Security is good for business. Border security and border efficiency are not mutually exclusive. Secure and efficient borders are good for all of us. This is evident by the excellent results we've had for more than 50 years of aviation pre-clearance. However, it is essential that these costs are not off-loaded to businesses and public entities that are already stretched thin in the face of an economic downturn.

We're at a watershed moment in Canada-U.S. relations. We can either disengage with the U.S. over points of disagreement or we can seize this as an opportunity for constructive engagement. We can launch new initiatives that are equal to the threats we face and leave behind procedures that no longer serve us.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

That is very timely. Thank you so much.

This enables us to turn to questions and comments from members of Parliament.

We'll turn to MP Kirkland and then MP Ramsay, for six minutes each.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you so much. I appreciate you both being here, Ms. Dawson and Mr. Weber.

Mr. Weber, I'll start with you. Considering you started your testimony by commending the current government for the promise of 1,000 border agents, which you said was a strong start, what would your vision be for how soon that obligation should be fulfilled?

[Mark Weber]

Right now, I do not believe it can really be fulfilled. We have one training centre that can train under 600 new officers per year, which is about what our attrition is per year. There's no way you will get 1,000 additional officers from that.

My understanding is there's a $20-million proposal at CBSA to expand the training facility in Chilliwack, and it is also my understanding that is on hold. It has not been approved. I've heard talks of expansions at Rigaud. I know there are ideas about spots that are available in Windsor as well, but so far we're stuck with that one training centre. I don't know how we're going to get our numbers up right now.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

You're not sure how we're going to get the numbers up, and neither are we. In previous testimony, we've heard that the plan as to how that's going to happen hasn't even started yet. There's been a lot of talk.

Given that, is it fair to say the process of creating a plan to hire those 1,000 agents is a bit of a “pie in the sky” promise?

[Mark Weber]

“Pie in the sky” is an expression that could be used. It might be a bit more long than short term in terms of achievability. I think perhaps the CBSA is not looking at hiring 1,000 additional full border services officers but hiring lesser positions and downloading duties onto newly created FB-1 positions that they are deeming administrative, and we are very concerned about them actually doing the work of a border services officer.

The CBSA is now undergoing a review of accommodated officers who cannot be armed, and they're essentially telling them, “You are going to self-demote or we're going to show you the door.” These are, in many instances, people who have injured themselves on the job. That's how our employer is treating them right now. It's deplorable, but it just looks like a cost-saving measure.

We're really concerned when we hear “1,000”. We want to make sure that's 1,000 actual border services officers.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you. I appreciate that. That is definitely a concern I have as well.

You said previously—I believe it was in a Global News interview—that we search less than 1% of what comes into Canada. You mentioned that last year. Is that still true today? Has anything changed in the last year?

[Mark Weber]

No, nothing has changed. We are not dinosaurs. We realize that technology can be helpful. What we're seeing at the CBSA is that technology is replacing us. We really don't search much. We don't speak to almost anyone at all anymore coming through airports. We see similar plans for land borders. It's extremely concerning. We're depending on someone to self-declare to a machine, in large part.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I'd like to go back to the question about the 1,000 border agents. These resources, as you've mentioned already, are better on the front line. That's where we need them. Is that correct?

[Mark Weber]

That is absolutely the one place where we need them, yes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I have a quick question for Ms. Dawson, and then I may come back to Mr. Weber, depending on my time.

You said the integrity of our border is the foundation of our economic relationship with the United States. Do you believe that the government, under both the previous prime minister and the current one, has upheld that integrity?

[Laura Dawson]

I believe we respond to crisis. There are limited resources and many things to do with those resources, so we haven't faced the kind of border crisis and the kind of relationship crisis we are facing now. I find I'm encouraged by the actions of the current government. I would like to see them meet their commitments and also ensure continuing engagement and interoperability with the United States, because this is a shared challenge.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you.

I have a bit more time, so Mr. Weber, I'll come back to you. I believe you mentioned in that same interview that we don't do rail at all. Is that still the case?

[Mark Weber]

Yes.