Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again on border issues, as I have many times.
I first want to thank a constituent of mine, Richard Ruston, from the People First movement, who gave me this nice lapel pin for those working on behalf of and advocating for persons with intellectual disabilities.
To move to the subject matter at hand, I rose in the chamber in September to talk about the issues at the Canada Border Services Agency and a memorandum that was issued to CBSA border officials to stand down when they find drugs outbound to the U.S. at the border.
It is a very serious issue because as we have seen over a period of time, there have been budget cuts to border services. In fact, there have been 325 positions identified for cuts where the government has asked the union for 325 volunteers to abandon their posts and retire or leave. What is going to happen is that there will not be the people or the capacity to actually replace those jobs. Those jobs are now gone, so there will be fewer people serving at the border, the men and women who do an able job in the circumstances. Most recently we had a tragic shooting of an officer, who was actually from the London area. We are saddened to see that situation. It is a very serious job.
The government has removed the detector dog program, which was very effective in catching criminals who were trying to bring in drugs, guns and other types of contraband.
This memorandum is a slap in the face of our officers. It comes about because of cuts to the number of agents and intel, which is not properly gathered any more. The government now wants to allow this to just go to the United States.
The problem with this strategy is that a couple of major issues are involved, which the government needs to account for. Often, these drugs go into the United States and become cash, other hard drugs, or guns or other contraband that criminals then attempt to return to Canada. Therefore, our prevention strategy of working to find drugs exiting the country has actually lowered crime in Canada because it prevents criminal organizations and others from getting resources they use for other criminal activity.
I have talked to a number of my American counterparts, be they elected officials or business or social interests, who are very concerned about Canadian officials removing this preventive strategy. They are very concerned about their people being exposed to additional Canadian manufactured drugs, or drugs that have come into Canada and then gone elsewhere into the United States, affecting their livelihood and wellbeing. It creates addiction problems, social problems, workplace problems and increases in organized crime as well.
It is a black eye for our country to abandon our number one trading partner by no longer attempting to find that type of contraband and preventing it from going over the border. We can do better.