Okay.
The second stop on your tour will be at the Pacific Highway District. This district is located in the Lower Mainland of southwest British Columbia across the 49th parallel from the state of Washington, and it's on the direct path between the two major cities of Seattle and Vancouver. The district, which includes five border crossings, stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the central Fraser Valley, and is a key North American portal for travellers and goods entering Canada through the Cascade gateway region. With an average of more than 11 million travellers and over one million commercial releases per year, the district is the primary corridor for western Canada land border trade and travel.
This vital trade corridor alone is estimated to facilitate over $68 million every day in cross-border trade. In all modes, the CBSA's risk assessment, targeting, and examination phases play an important role in the overall commercial facilitation and enforcement process.
While the Customs Act authorizes the CBSA to conduct examinations of commercial shipments, our staff consider commerce and trade requirements and the need to comply with regulations while ensuring safety and security of Canadians.
The CBSA's marine and highway commercial examination programs are necessary to support national security and public safety priorities. Examinations control the movement of goods suspected of national security threats, contraband smuggling, other government department controls, commercial compliance, and revenue collection. Nationally, that equated to over $30 billion in duties and taxes in fiscal year 2017-18, which was approximately 11% of Government of Canada revenue for that same period.
The CBSA is cognizant of the economic impact that examinations may have on importers and exporters. We strive to maintain that delicate balance between ensuring security while all the time facilitating the free flow of goods.
A variety of tools are employed to identify any potential contraband and dangerous goods. That includes X-ray imaging, gamma ray imaging, radiation detection, laboratory services, cameras, scopes, and measuring devices. For example, the use of non-intrusive examination tools such as radiation portals, which 100% of all containers pass through, expedites the examination and release processes of shipments selected for examination.
The CBSA is continually looking at modernizing border management, including the examination process. We've been working very closely with the port of Vancouver and industry to ensure trade chain transparency and supply chain security.
As a result, two new marine container examination facilities are being built closer in proximity to the marine terminals: one in Tsawwassen and one at the Burrard Inlet.
The CBSA's overarching objectives with these investments are to reduce costs, increase examination capacity in Vancouver, and reduce overall processing times for clients.
The new Tsawwassen container examination facility, referred to as TCEF, is double the size of the current outdated facility in Burnaby, with significantly greater capacity for the acceptance and examination of containers. It will conduct examinations of the most high-risk containers arriving mainly from the Deltaport terminal and the Fraser Surrey docks. The TCEF will also house state-of-the-art technology to conduct full off-load examinations of high-risk marine containers.
While you were in the southern Ontario region on Tuesday, you would have heard about the CBSA's secure corridor pilot to expedite commercial processing. Here in the Pacific region we too are modernizing commercial processing by piloting a first for the CBSA, the design and construction of a fixed large-scale imaging system at the Pacific Highway commercial crossing.