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  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  Yes, I've seen it.

Public Accounts committee  Regarding specifically what happened around ArriveCAN, we've not been asked or consulted. We didn't have anything to do with procurement. We weren't involved in any of that or had any knowledge of that. Regarding the CBSA code of conduct, our knowledge of how it works is that it

Public Accounts committee  Yes, we have had discussions around the professional standards policy, how they conduct investigations, the code of conduct itself and the discipline grid the CBSA uses. We have had those consultations with management, and we're not really seeing any change in how those things ar

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  Change takes time. The union does everything it can to represent members. I think we're successful at representing members in large part. We bring those issues forward to the employer. I do have hope the new CBSA president, Ms. O'Gorman, is seeing a lot of the things that need t

Public Accounts committee  No, I'm not familiar with that.

Public Accounts committee  I think the investment has to be in people. We haven't seen those numbers go up. Since 2015, CBSA has added about 2,000 managers to their ranks, which is specifically what we don't need. We're already inundated with managers at CBSA. We have workplaces where we have as many—or in

Public Accounts committee  Yes, there will be seven managers and five officers. I visit workplaces regularly where the numbers are about even. It has become so top-heavy and dysfunctional in some cases. I can tell you a personal experience. I've worked as an officer in the secondary area at Pearson airpor