Public Accounts committee  It's upper management up to the CBSA president.

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. We've seen heavy-handed discipline. We've seen investigations where there need not have been any. There could have been a simple conversation with an employee. CBSA, as I said earlier, in general manages through fact findings and through investigation. That has gotten

Public Accounts committee  The primary strain was dealing with the ArriveCAN app: collecting information that really wasn't for the purposes of Customs and working with an app that went down frequently, was not very user friendly and was not usable by many people who were crossing at the border.

Public Accounts committee  In terms of the information that we needed for our purposes for our customs officers, really all we needed was to be able to verify that the person was vaccinated, which everyone was able to do by simply showing us their vaccination on their phone or a printed-out copy. All of th

Public Accounts committee  No. Again, the majority of our officers' time during COVID was helping people complete the app, making sure they completed the app. One bigger issue we had was that we're not considered peace officers under the Quarantine Act, either, which is something I'm hoping is looked into

Public Accounts committee  Do you mean specifically under the Quarantine Act or in general?

Public Accounts committee  We are peace officers; we're just not considered peace officers specifically under the Quarantine Act. If someone presents to us and is visibly ill, which is one of the things we're supposed to look at as officers at the border, we don't have any legal authority to detain them. A

Public Accounts committee  Do you mean paper-based specifically for gathering COVID-related information, or do you mean in general for customs purposes?

Public Accounts committee  In general, there are uses for that and there are uses for an automated system. One of the uses we can see being worthwhile with an app like ArriveCAN is that if people could do their declaration on the ArriveCAN app, that would be there for the officer to look at when the travel

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Again, technologies are useful as long there is that interaction with the officer and there's an officer there. Yes, we're open to any technologies that can help. Right now, what ArriveCAN is being used for and the way it's being used are not useful in terms of our border

Public Accounts committee  It could. Again, to reduce wait times, you need people at border crossings and airports. That's the main thing you could do. There's nothing that's as efficient or as secure as a properly staffed border. We see this at airports with the introduction of PIK machines, which hav

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. Our estimates are that they could have hired approximately 600 officers with that. Six hundred is above the number that we're able to graduate each year to become officers. Given that we're short between 2,000 and 3,000 nationwide, 600 officers would have been a big h

Public Accounts committee  Given that it was made mandatory, our officers spent almost all of their time helping people complete the app. We had ports with no Wi-Fi and had people coming into the office, having to print it out and do it. We had travellers who refused to do it and who didn't know how to do

Public Accounts committee  I think funding always has to go, first and foremost, to officers, especially with the deficit that we have in frontline staff. Again, we're not dinosaurs: We know that technology has its uses, but it has to be there to assist officers. If the idea is that technology replaces off

Public Accounts committee  To answer the question at large, on the app and its development long-term, we believe the goal of the app is to replace officers. Specifically, the result of it is that it makes our borders less secure. It eliminates interactions that our officers have with travellers. We've see