In answering your question, I believe what you're referring to is “thickening” of the border, or increased border wait times. I think there are a few areas I can approach to respond to that question.
One is, as I mentioned, about resources. Since April 2017 we have had approximately 130 new recruits come into the region. It's a matter of taking those recruits and making sure they are strategically placed within areas where we have need when we have increased traffic. From a resourcing perspective, that has already been done, and we've seen the difference in making sure we're meeting the border wait times.
The other area is in terms of planning. Operational planning is very important when you're running an operation similar to CBSA. It's important to understand all the environmental and economic factors we have. For instance, any increase in the dollar will generate a significant amount of cross-border movement. As you are well aware from your area, people will definitely cross the border to go shopping if the dollar is better or at par. We have a planning process in which we look at that economic factor.
Other factors we look at are historical trends. We look at it from monthly, weekly, daily, and hourly perspectives. We know exactly from a historical perspective how many vehicles may be coming through in that particular hour at that particular POE, and we resource accordingly. Again, in that planning, we try to have flexibility with our resources by moving them from one location to another.
For instance—I'm giving you some anecdotal examples—when there's a sporting event taking place, for instance in Buffalo, you are going to encounter a surge of travellers coming back in a hurry after a sporting event. It's a matter of ensuring we have the right level of resources at the right time to process those people.
The same thing can apply to commerce. The Ambassador Bridge is our busiest land border port of entry for commerce. We operate 13 commercial primary lanes at the Ambassador Bridge from nine o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night, and all the lanes are open.
Those are ways that we plan to move this forward and plan to deal with the increased volume, but that's only part of the solution. The other part, as was mentioned, is the technological piece. We need to continue to review and look at efficiencies through technological change, such as RFID.