Public Accounts committee  Absolutely, our canine teams are vital to what we do. We're short of those as well, just like we're short of officers. Definitely, the money could have been put towards that, yes.

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely, the money needs to go toward border service officers. We can do absolutely the full gamut of what's needed at the border, including keeping our communities safe. The technologies we have, such as ArriveCAN, simply do not do that.

Public Accounts committee  I hope they are. It's certainly not for a lack of my repeating it over and over. I think there is a definite disconnect. I spoke to this earlier too. The upper levels of CBSA management rarely if ever have come from the front line. I'm often having to show or explain to people

Public Accounts committee  In terms of not having enough of us there, I would say there is a definite failure, yes.

Public Accounts committee  At the time that we were using it early on in the pandemic, no. Given what has come out, obviously I hear from members about the whole procurement process and the decision-making around that, but at the time, no.

Public Accounts committee  Our members have watched a lot of the testimony. They watched me give testimony here. We all really want to know what happened. It is concerning. One of the big things the union would like to see.... I appeared at another committee for Bill C-20, which is about the public compla

Public Accounts committee  Obviously, as you said, it's officers, technology that assists and doesn't replace officers, and training facilities. Currently, as I said earlier, we have one in Rigaud, Quebec, that can graduate a maximum of about 592 officers a year, which doesn't even cover attrition. With on

Public Accounts committee  I'm not aware of what the costs are. We have, essentially, a second satellite training facility in Chilliwack, which I think is usable. We've heard of places that are available in the Windsor area that could work. Different plans are floated, but they never seem to come to fruit

Public Accounts committee  In collecting information that other agencies wanted, yes, there was usefulness to that. What we questioned at the border was that we didn't know anything about what was being done with that information. Finding out what address someone is staying at seems somewhat pointless if n

Public Accounts committee  No. I think what we really needed at the border at the time was for people to show they were vaccinated, which most people had on their phone. They were able to show it to us. You had the option of printing it out if you didn't have a phone through which you could do that, and th

Public Accounts committee  Was I aware of the vote? I was.

Public Accounts committee  We did. Our members contacted us daily throughout the pandemic about their concerns around ArriveCAN. Extreme frustration, I think, would best describe the experience of our officers trying to get it to work while not really having the authority as peace officers under the Quaran

Public Accounts committee  Those numbers sound about correct, yes.

Public Accounts committee  I would say the lack of staff has made everything you've mentioned more acute, absolutely.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of hiring more staff, I'm not aware. She's the president of the CBSA. The budget being what it is, I believe there's a limit to how many officers can be graduated given the money available. In terms of advancing some other issues around the toxicity in workplaces, there