Justice committee  In relation to duty collection, we do have a responsibility to collect duties and taxes to make business even across the board for everyone, but I'd be remiss if I said we are not concerned about organized crime and criminal activity. Our major mandate is the security of this country.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes, absolutely. Port of entry gun seizures are up right across the board. A lot of our challenge is between ports, which is the jurisdiction of the RCMP. We put people into the IBET units to curb some of this issue; however, the guns continue to flood in. The main thing here is that it's about intelligence sharing, about getting information from the convictions and seizures made inland back to us so that we can track the weapons back and use our international partners to possibly identify where the guns are coming from.

Justice committee  It's both.

Justice committee  No, there isn't, really, unless my counterpart from the RCMP knows anything different.

Justice committee  One of our biggest struggles as an agency is transferring intelligence from a police force to an agency, and vice versa. We are integrated into some of the integrated units across the country--IBETs, CIID, CCIU, and CEIU--and we're trying to make strides toward that. However, we do have a problem with section 107 of the Customs Act, which prevents us from sharing in a timely fashion from time to time.

Justice committee  Thank you. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you very much for inviting the CBSA to participate in the hearings today. The prairie region of the Canada Border Services Agency is responsible for securing prairie, Northwest Territories, and Canadian borders at our ports of entry, which consist of 37 border crossings, 5 airports, and 2 marine ports.