Public Accounts committee  Thank you—anytime.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today as the national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, which represents personnel working for the CBSA, including frontline border services officers. For many of our members, or anyone famil

Public Safety committee  My understanding is that some of the money that's been earmarked is going toward collaborative groups, working with other police agencies. As to how that works specifically at the port of Montreal, my understanding is that for the most part there is great collaboration between th

Public Safety committee  I don't have exact numbers available. We could get those for you. Things are definitely getting busier. Anecdotally, I hear that from officers. As the numbers go down, obviously, the lineups get longer. We all saw what went on during the pandemic and what happened with ArriveCAN

Public Safety committee  Yes. I think the quote is accurate. I think it's still apt today. Those cuts happened back in 2013-14, but our numbers have not really gone up since. We've not seen the college or the CBSA have the capacity to get our numbers back to what they need to be. Really, every time we

Public Safety committee  As far as I know, no jobs have been cut. Our numbers have not gone up, but none have been cut.

Public Safety committee  Any funding is welcome. Technologies are useful. Technologies are only useful if you have the officers there to use the technology. At the port of Montreal specifically, the issue right now is space. I'm hoping there will be some money allotted to looking at new facilities and gr

Public Safety committee  From my knowledge of the college right now as it's built—I visit there quite often and meet with all the new recruits—I don't really see where you would be expanding at that location. I'm not sure where a new location would go. Certainly, we need more capacity to be able to gradu

Public Safety committee  They “don't have a clue” might be a bit harsh, in some cases.

Public Safety committee  When we're talking about making policy, no, the upper levels of CBSA management don't come from the front line. It's generally lower-level or mid-level managers who come from the front line.

Public Safety committee  It would help with everything. One of the big concerns the union has is.... Earlier I mentioned and others mentioned ArriveCAN. One of the focuses of ArriveCAN, initially developed to gather public health information, is that it's being used as a new kind of border technology,

Public Safety committee  Yes, we are short. We're short of people to operate them and we're short of people to maintain them. I could give you an example. At the port of Montreal, the large X-ray machine, the HCVM that's being used now, was borrowed from Windsor because the Montreal one is not working,

Public Safety committee  Yes. To put it simply, if it's at the border and if it involves the Customs Act or the immigration act, it's the CBSA that deals with it. When we're talking about car theft, I appreciate what was said about intermodal work, co-operation and agencies working together. We heard ab

Public Safety committee  I think the people who work the front line need to be consulted. I think the CBSA should look at promoting from within so that you get people who have actually worked at a border previously into positions where they can make decisions on how the border runs. That's currently not

Public Safety committee  It's an ongoing problem with a lot of our training. One of the difficulties we find, as well, is that, because we are so short-staffed on the front line, it is a challenge to have people released from the front line to do training. That gives you an idea of how short we are. We j