Government Operations committee  Thanks for that. I think what the consultation could have achieved for us would have been to share with the developers the plan in general around the ArriveCAN app with respect to what the reality would be on the ground, what would happen when the lineups became long or when peo

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. Our services could have been better used by having us actually do the job we're there to do at the border. In terms of enforcing public health measures, the only requirement we saw being fulfilled through the ArriveCAN app, practically, was showing

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry, but you cut out for a second.

Government Operations committee  I don't think it is whatsoever, no. We have so many other, more pressing needs. I mentioned a few of them before. We don't really look at rail or marine. We're examining a small fraction of what we should be on land borders. Some of them are falling apart. I can give you an exa

Government Operations committee  On overall numbers, I could give you 2,000 to 3,000, but on specific numbers, I could give you examples at some ports. For example, at the Toronto Pearson airport, our busiest airport in Canada, we had approximately 600 frontline officers in 2017. We have under 300 now. We're a

Government Operations committee  Across the entire country, we estimate between 2,000 and 3,000. If we're looking at a figure like $54 million, by our rough math we could probably hire about 500 additional officers with that, which would be a really good start right now. One of the other difficulties we have is

Government Operations committee  The morale is really low. For every port that I go to visit as a union president, you would think that one of the first things that would come up is the topic of union issues, labour issues—we currently have no contract—and I can tell you that, for the members I speak with across

Government Operations committee  It was extremely negative. We have a really hard time understanding why all of these questions and this app were implemented the way they were. All those questions were included in the app, when all we were doing at the border was verifying if someone was vaccinated. That could h

Government Operations committee  It's absolutely being used as a cost-cutting measure. No piece of technology will speak to a child to ensure they're travelling with the adult they should be travelling with. They're not going to find the synthetic opioids that they want to keep out of Canada. They're not going t

Government Operations committee  I don't. Again, we were not consulted on any part of this process. At no point were we or anyone working at the front line asked how this should be done, sourced or put together.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. That's something that we do support. Right now, we do need other kinds of technology and other kinds of improvements at our borders. We have borders operating with no X-ray machines. We have marine ports with no boats. The situation in a lot of our ports of entry is

Government Operations committee  That's something that I hope the CBSA will look at. It's something that we encourage and push for. Again, we're talking about IT specifically here, but other than IT, when you look at figures like $54 million, I think that could have done a lot more good than what was done with t

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Mark Weber. I'm the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, which represents personnel working for the Canada Border Services Age

Government Operations committee  I do, yes.

International Trade committee  Thank you. I've not seen that data. I think that would be a good question for the Public Health Agency.