Canada’s border services agency does not have the infrastructure to search trains for drugs, people and other goods crossing illegally into the country by rail, says the head of the border agents’ union, a security gap that adds to concerns about a general lack of law enforcement. on the border.
Mark Weber, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, says staff and equipment shortages at official entry points mean less than one per cent of containers passing through Canadian ports are being searched for goods. illicit.
That rate is even lower for cross-border rail traffic, he said.
“We don’t do it at all,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview broadcast Sunday night. The west block. “We don’t know what arrives by train.
“It could be products, people (who enter, but) we do not have the infrastructure to carry out those searches. … That’s really something Canada should invest in.”
In 2019, the Ontario Provincial Police They discovered almost 200 kilograms of methamphetamine hidden in the spare tires of new vehicles sent from Mexico to the province by rail. The drugs were first discovered by car dealership employees in four Ontario communities, and police later said cars from the shipment also reached Quebec and New Brunswick.
The Canadian Press reported in 2009 that an internal CBSA report obtained through freedom of information laws found that just two officers were checking about 400,000 railcars and containers crossing into Canada annually, after an inspection program that started in 2000 fell into disrepair.
British Columbia’s premier and lawmakers have called for improved surveillance and resources for the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to register shipping containers at ports, a key entry point for goods and equipment. of fentanyl from China.
TO last year’s report He said Canada’s port security was similar to the lax enforcement and corruption seen in the Marlon Brando movie. On the seafront.
Canada’s border security is under increased scrutiny as US President-elect Donald Trump has called for a crackdown on irregular immigration and drug trafficking in North America.
Trump has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico unless those countries address his concerns, which center on illegal entry into the United States.
But Weber said persistent staff shortages and a growing reliance on new technology, such as self-declaration kiosks at airports, mean Canada is also unable to adequately control what comes into the country. He said people with bad intentions can simply lie in a self-declaration, while a CBSA agent could determine if that person is honest with just a few questions.
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“Any time you eliminate a human interaction with the traveler, you are decreasing your safety,” he said. “So we found out that there’s a lot going on that we’re not really aware of right now. … We don’t talk to almost anyone anymore.”
The union has said it is between 2,000 and 3,000 CBSA employees short of its core mandate, which in addition to enforcing official entry points, also includes intelligence gathering, searching for cross-border shipping vehicles and containers, and the search and expulsion of people who are in the country illegally.
The previous Conservative government cut 1,100 jobs at the CBSA in 2012, and Weber said those jobs have not returned since the Liberals took power in 2015.
He said the situation is similar for domestic authorities, with only “a couple hundred agents” tasked with finding and expelling people across the country.
“Given the volumes that have to be found and removed, it’s really an uphill battle,” he said. “Once again, people are largely relied upon to report for themselves. And again, if someone doesn’t want to leave and doesn’t want to be found, it’s a human being that has to do that job.”
The CBSA told Global News that 2,774 deportation orders have been issued this year through Nov. 18, a figure already higher than in previous full years dating back to 2016. So far this year, the CBSA has made 1,290 forced deportations.
Since 2016, the number of forced deportations per year has been approximately half the number of deportation orders issued.
Last year, Canada expelled a total of 15,179 people, either through law enforcement or voluntarily following a removal order, and so far this year 12,401 have been expelled. Immigration Minister Marc Miller told reporters last month that those numbers were record highs.
Weber said the CBSA regularly collects intelligence information to determine where fentanyl seizures in Canada are coming from and whether organized crime groups such as Mexican cartels are trying to enter the country. But he said knowledge only goes so far.
“When you don’t interact with the majority of travelers passing by, you don’t know what you’re not looking for,” he said.
Is Canada prepared for mass deportations from the United States?
Weber said staffing shortages at CBSA mean the agency “simply does not have the staffing levels to cope” with a possible flood of people fleeing the United States for Canada when Trump makes good on his promise of mass deportations next year.
He noted that many of those potential arrivals will occur between official entrances, parts of the border policed by the RCMP.
Brian Sauvé, president of the National Police Federation union that represents more than 20,000 RCMP members, told Stephenson that the force is “uniquely positioned” to send additional resources from across the country to the border.
He said newly graduated cadets can be recruited to supplement existing border security teams on a rotational basis, a strategy implemented after the 2014 Parliament shooting to increase security in Ottawa.
The RCMP Academy is seeing record levels of applicants and is on track to be near capacity next year after achieving similar levels this year, Sauvé added, meaning there will be plenty of cadets to utilize if needed.
The NPF has asked Ottawa for $300 million over four years to hire 1,000 more RCMP officers and bolster overall resources.
“Longer-term solutions, greater investments in the RCMP for personnel directly assigned to those federal policing functions, will definitely be able to keep the border more secure,” Sauvé said.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told MPs last week that Canada will commit more personnel and equipment to border security before Trump’s inauguration on January 20. He said both the RCMP and CBSA have been consulted.
Sauvé said members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “are definitely making arrests regularly when they come north” from the United States, “but they are also noticing a flow southward.”
“It’s obviously a concern because there are guns that come from the states, guns that are used in crimes in Canada,” he said.
The United States is the largest source of illegal firearms in Canada, According to Justice Canada, but data on gun tracing is limited.
An RCMP spokesperson told Global News last week that the force “has no evidence or intelligence to suggest that an increase in asylum seekers crossing the border from the United States into Canada has occurred” and its border posture has not changed.
“The more we can enforce that border, the more we can make Canada a safer country, I think it’s good for Canadians,” Sauvé said.
—With files from Canadian Press and Global’s David Akin
