International Trade committee  Thank you very much for the question. Our staffing shortages are severe. They exist across the country in every mode, at ports of entry and outside of ports of entry as well. One of the bigger problems we have currently is that we only use the one training centre for our recrui

International Trade committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, 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 Ser

International Trade committee  We were not consulted at all on anything that was planned or rolled out. Again, you would think that they would ask the people who work on the border every day how best to do things at the border, but that simply wasn't the case.

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  I think you put the officers in place to process the travellers as they come through one at a time and use those resources, rather than having them help complete an app that, clearly, people are having a very difficult time completing.

International Trade committee  Rigaud College has an 18-week program. Then there's one year of essentially apprenticeship before you become a full officer.

International Trade committee  That's correct, yes.

International Trade committee  That is absolutely the case. As I said, our officers go through all of this training specifically on how to enforce the law, interdiction indicators and all of those kinds of things, and it's essentially not being used. When I use the term “IT consultants”, that's pretty close to

International Trade committee  I absolutely do. Those times are absolutely inaccurate.

International Trade committee  Yes, and about quarter of the time, that app is not being completed or even started when people arrive at the border. You can imagine the numbers.

International Trade committee  We support technological innovations as long as the officers are still in place to do the work. What we're seeing now is that the numbers of officers are being greatly reduced as the technology gets increased. Technology, like a PIK machine, really doesn't work if you have no off

International Trade committee  Yes. Absolutely I can. We're talking specifically about southern Ontario, but I hear it across the country, everywhere I go. Our job is to keep Canadians safe. Our job is to enforce laws at the border and to facilitate travel. The enforcement aspect of our job is almost gone at t

International Trade committee  That's absolutely the fear. That's essentially what we've seen happen at our airports. As the PIK machines have taken over, we've seen the number of staff working the front line at the airports go down and down and down over the years, to the point where we don't have the people

International Trade committee  Yes. Thank you. If the only requirement is to show proof of vaccination, you simply put the officers back on the front line and get them to ask people to show proof of vaccination. You don't need the application to do that. Again, on the idea that this app is easy to complete

International Trade committee  The issue is that it's quite often not filled out in advance, which means cars parked, people at the airport lined up filling out the app, and us, rather than processing travellers, taking the time to help people fill out the app. You can show me your proof of vaccination on a p