Public Safety Committee on Oct. 21st, 2025

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

For example, then, in the Port of Montreal, every single container that goes through for export can go through this scanner at 10 kilometres per hour, on average, with the driver never having to get out of the truck, with people at the other end knowing the history of the truck, the name of the driver, the maintenance schedule of the truck, where it's been, what its track record is and whether there have been any issues of, for example, any crime related to that company. This technology, then, could solve our car theft problem in a day.

[Thomas Boyle]

Car theft, drug smuggling, human trafficking...all sorts of issues can be addressed. Throw in facial matching for the driver, and you really have a complete data package to review.

[Fred Davies, Conservative, Niagara South, ON]

Thank you.

I'm just going to switch gears a bit for both of you. Maybe I'll start with Mr. Bieger.

Since we've gotten into some trade issues with the United States, have you noticed significant declines, and do you keep a metric analysis of the number of visitors that were coming across the bridge perhaps over the summer? Do you have any data that shows a decline in American visitors to Canada?

[Kenneth Bieger]

Right now, as far as auto traffic goes, we're down about 16% from last year on auto traffic. It was probably 18% or 20% earlier on in the year, but now we're at about 16% from last year, which was down about 10% from prepandemic levels.

Our commercial trucks are actually up a little this year. We attribute that to the fact that with the tariffs, a lot of companies tried to get loads across the bridge to avoid any further unknowns, let's say, with tariffs.

[Thomas Boyle]

I'll echo what Mr. Bieger had to say.

Similarly, at the Peace Bridge, our year-to-year decline in auto traffic has been about 14%, again, in large part due to rhetoric from Washington as well as the response of boycotts from Canadians.

From the U.S. side, we've not seen a huge jump in Americans going to Canada. However, in the commercial environment, I'm envious of Mr. Bieger and the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission. We're actually down about 4%, but most of the goods that cross the Peace Bridge are covered under CUSMA, the trade agreement, and therefore are unaffected by the tariffs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you very much.

Now it's your turn, Mr. Ramsay.

You have five minutes.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

Mr. Bieger and Mr. Boyle, I'd like to know what's the first thing that needs to be done over the next year, or next two years, to improve operations at your port facilities.

[Thomas Boyle]

I'll defer to Mr. Bieger.

[Kenneth Bieger]

Again, I've seen improvement over the years as far as communication between CBP and CBSA goes. There's a lot of talk about the improved communication.

I would make sure, from the committee's view, that this is really being utilized to the fullest extent. The problem at the border is the same problem, and rather than it being tackled—the technology and some of the ideas—in two separate silos, make sure the groups are working together completely in terms of what they're saying, what advancements they're making and what technology they see coming down the road and those types of things.

I would make sure that's happening. That would probably be the first thing I would do, because that's more of global thing.

I know that Mr. Boyle has talked about this with his project, which, again, is an excellent project, but anything we can do—it's just common sense—to get these officers on the primary inspection lane the information before they hit the booths is going to be a win. That's the way of the future: any technology that would help in pushing some of this through, any of the regulations, and anything we could do to move things faster on some of these pilot programs.

[Jacques Ramsay, Liberal, La Prairie—Atateken, QC]

I'd like you to finish your answer. Are you talking about sharing the same software or the same data, or are you talking about lines of communication?

[Kenneth Bieger]

I guess I would start with the lines of communication and making sure any shared.... I'm not sure if you get to the level of the software. I'm not privy to what information is passed back and forth right now, to be honest with you. From a port side, we've seen that there has been better communication, but it's about making sure that it's not just lip service, that they are discussing specifics and that there don't need to be any secrets as to what technology somebody is working on or who gets there first.

This is about a joint effort to come up with a solution. The way I look at it from our port is this: Why don't we use the same technology on both sides? Truly, between the two groups—and there are some smart people on both sides—they should come up with the best answer rather than two separate technologies or ways of doing things at both borders.

[Thomas Boyle]

In echoing a lot of what Mr. Bieger had to say, certainly data sharing exists currently between CBSA and U.S. Customs. The project I introduced to you in my testimony would be a great example of the U.S. being able to help facilitate export inspections by CBSA. Therefore, it's having some sort of memorandum of understanding or memorandum of agreement that when there is information through this export scanning facility, the Canadian government is also aware of what has passed through the scan.

One thing that I might want to also focus on—again, getting back to that recurring thought in my testimony—is that Canada needs to invest in its technology. Mr. Bieger mentioned earlier the IT outage that occurred about a month ago at airports and land border crossings. This type of failure is not unprecedented. It happened in 2018 for a single day. This one lasted for three days and created havoc at the border, as well as in the communities on the U.S. side of the border. Investing in the upgrading of software, servers and other IT equipment is tantamount to making sure the border is going to be managed effectively.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

Thank you very much, Mr. Boyle and Mr. Bieger.

Thank you so much for taking the time and making the effort to be present virtually or physically. Your input has been much appreciated and will be helpful in drawing the recommendations that we will then be submitting to the government.

Have a great day.

For the rest of us we'll suspend for five minutes so that we can greet the other guests.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

We're now ready to begin the second part of our meeting.

We're fortunate to welcome Christian Leuprecht, professor at the Royal Military College of Canada. He is already familiar with the guidelines. We're lucky to have him with us for nearly an hour, so we'll be able to have some good discussions.

Mr. Leuprecht, you have five minutes for your opening remarks.

[Christian Leuprecht, Professor, Royal Military College of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have written on managing safe and secure borders for almost two decades and have recently published two books on the subject the committee is studying. I'm also part of the world’s largest research network on borders. As part of this, I collaborate extensively on Canada-U.S. border issues with key colleagues in the United States. I also direct related research programs on transnational financial and economic crime and maintain relations with key federal, provincial, local, private sector and civil society stakeholders and entities tasked with national security and border management.

Borders are among the most politically contentious issues of the 21st century. Citizens expect their governments to maintain control over their borders—notably, who and what enters the country. Canada is among the very few western countries that have no exit controls on either cargo or people. No wonder we have an outsized problem with car theft when we don’t do outbound inspections on containers at the port of Montreal. When Canadian marijuana shows up in the hundreds of pounds in Germany and Canadian meth shows up in New Zealand, Canada is creating serious problems for our allies.

The European experience suggests that a significant portion of citizens who feel their government is losing control over the country’s borders is prepared to endorse populist and illiberal measures that are difficult to reconcile with the Constitution and the rule of law. A new CBC poll out today reinforces a “crumbling” consensus on immigration in Canada. This perception is not new. The safe third country agreement was driven in large part by U.S. concerns about Canada being weak on immigration. The state's ability or inability to manage borders effectively is at the crux of safeguarding democratic institutions' political and economic sovereignty in the 21st century.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I apologize for interrupting you, Mr. Leuprecht.

Is the interpretation working properly?

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

The interpreter is working at the speed of light.

[Christian Leuprecht]

Would you like me to slow down?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

If you could speak a little slower, it would be good, because your speech is quite dense.

[Christian Leuprecht]

Understood.

Canada is in the unique position of sharing a border with the largest economy in the world. Keeping the border with the United States open is economically existential for Canada but not for the United States.

Canada also shares a land border with the largest weapons and drug market in the world. These asymmetries generate criminogenic effects that necessarily precipitate negative spillover effects. In 2024, 88% of the crime guns seized by the Toronto Police Service were traced to the United States.

First, our framework for managing borders is not well positioned for the challenges of the 21st century. The international refugee system, for instance, was designed for a time when travel was difficult and expensive. Travel information was hard to come by, and principal threats to citizens were presumed to emanate from state actors. Today, travel is cheap and easy. Information is ubiquitous, and threat vectors emanate primarily from multi-faceted, well-financed non-state actors in naturogenic phenomena such as climate change.

Put differently, the ontology of our approach to managing borders is based on territory, while the threat vectors we are trying to contain and disrupt are characterized by transnational mobility of people, money, drugs, illicit trade, terrorism and the like.

CUSMA illustrates Canada's “de-connected” territoriality. With sealed trucks from Mexico destined for Canada, Mexico is now effectively part of Canada's land border.

Second, the nature of borders is changing. Borders are being pushed outwards, for instance in the form of pre-clearance, such as enhanced travel authorizations, pre-screening of inbound cargo and people; and pushed inward—think of deportations.

Moreover, much of money laundering, fraud and radicalization happens in cyberspace, which has no borders. People think of the border as a line, but the threat vectors are near impossible to manage effectively at the line. They need to be managed well before they ever reach that border. That requires extensive co-operation, coordination—such as shiprider, which the U.S. is now on record as wanting to extend to the land and air domains—and collaboration.

Third, for over 85 years, Canada and the United States have had a shared border strategy to have one another's backs. After the attacks of 9/11, then prime minister Jean Chrétien's approach to keeping the border open consisted of reassuring the United States that Canada had America's back. Canada adjusted its national security laws and posture within weeks and months. Chrétien understood intuitively that to keep the border open, it had to be well managed.

Both the Biden and the Trump administrations, Congress and the U.S. northern border caucus have repeatedly made it clear that rightly or wrongly, Canada is no longer living up to its end of the bargain. They are specifically concerned that Canada has become a high-value, low-risk back door to the United States, whose proliferating legislative and structural weaknesses are being exploited by powerful and dedicated state and non-state actors to undermine the social fabric, economic prosperity—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

You have 30 more seconds, Mr. Leuprecht.

[Christian Leuprecht]

—and territorial integrity of the United States.

I'll leave it at that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jean-Yves Duclos]

I'm sorry that we had to interrupt you abruptly, but there will obviously be time to come back to some of the points you would have liked to raise.

We'll now turn to MP Kirkland for six minutes.

[Rhonda Kirkland, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Professor.

I appreciate your speedy first testimony. I understand that's a lot of information to get in, in a very short time.

You said so many interesting things, and I've also previously paid attention to some of your interviews, so I have a few questions regarding those interviews as well as your testimony here today. You said at one of them that Canada had four years to secure the border. There was failure to act, and it seemed to be that it was for political reasons. Why do you think we failed to act, and what were those political reasons?

Would you say that our failure to strengthen our borders against organized crime and illegal migration has damaged our credibility with the United States at this time?

[Christian Leuprecht]

My colleague Kim Nossal published a book in 2023 called Canada Alone in which he cautions that, with the trajectory Canada is on, it is quickly losing the trust and confidence of its closest allies and partners and that it's detrimental to Canadian economic and political sovereignty if Canada stays the path. His point was simple: the challenges from the second Trump administration could have been anticipated. In the book, he actually lays out everything that the Trump administration has been doing in its first few months. He lays out that, in Canada, we opted to take the interlude of four years to pretend that the first Trump administration was an aberration rather than the new normal, the structural new normal, in the relationship and that we failed to prepare effectively for that structural new normal.

Now, I empathize with politicians. Politicians respond to public demand. When there is no obvious public demand to respond, they are unlikely to act, and there wasn't much of a public demand other than a few geeks like me talking about it. However, we need to understand that not acting on the border has real harms for real people. We have a large, active human-smuggling industry. We have a large illicit trade industry that is bringing vast amounts of illicit tobacco, for instance, into this country that is ultimately being sold in ways that undermine public health and undermine Canada's tax revenue. I gave you some examples with regard to the proliferation of drugs.

We know that one of the two global financial institutions in this country has been subject to criminal conspiracy charges to which it pleaded guilty in the United States, and the United States has imposed market capitalization restrictions on that bank. As a result, it significantly impedes Canada's ability to compete in global financial markets, when one of its two global financial institutions has these caps imposed.

You can imagine, if you look at the frustration of the then Biden administration attorney general in announcing the indictment against that bank.... We have a Canadian bank that is actively being accused of and that subsequently pleads guilty to effectively conspiring in fentanyl trafficking to undermine the U.S. social fabric, and you are wondering why we might have a trust, confidence and reputation problem with the United States and, as I pointed out, increasingly with our closest allies.