Kiosk outages delaying travellers at some Canadian airports are “not acceptable,” according to the head of Canada’s border agency.
Toronto Pearson Airport reported Friday that an outage at its inspection kiosks had held up passengers in two terminals, the latest issue to hit aging IT infrastructure at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
“We do have legacy systems. We do have contingency plans. But it’s not acceptable that they go down,” said CBSA President Erin O’Gorman.
Late last month, a system outage prevented border officers from reviewing potential security flags related to truck drivers entering the country from the United States, according to the officers’ union.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandsangaree said he has asked O’Gorman to report back to him within 90 days on recent technology challenges.
“I can assure Canadians that our systems work,” Anandsangaree said. “”Of course, there may be at times some outages, and as soon as we find out, we make every effort to fix it within an expedited timeline.”
Government to hire 1,000 border workers
The comments came Friday during a news conference at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing in Niagara Falls, Ont., where Anandasangaree was announcing the federal government’s move to fulfil a campaign promise to hire 1,000 new personnel.
Anandasangaree said the government will also increase the weekly stipend for new recruits and make it easier for existing officers to retire without taking a pension hit.
The Public Safety department is setting aside $617.7 million over five years to pay for the measures. That spending is separate from an existing $1.3-billion border crackdown from last winter.
Gary Anandasangaree, minister of Public Safety, has announced $617.7 million in border security funding. The funding, to be included in the Nov. 4 budget, will facilitate the hiring of 1,000 new Canada Border Services Agency officers, and provide enhanced benefits and stipends for recruits.
“These people will do critical work at our borders, ensuring the smooth movement of people and goods, all the while ensuring that illegal goods, guns and drugs are stopped, and those who are trafficking in them are arrested and charged,” Anandasangaree told reporters at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing in Niagara Falls, Ont.
The plan to hire 1,000 new border personnel — not all of whom will be officers — was one of several public safety measures the Carney campaign announced ahead of the April election. The Conservatives had pledged to hire 2,000 new border officers had they been elected.
Of the 1,000 new personnel, 80 per cent will be armed officers and 20 per cent will be composed of intelligence officers, investigators and security screening officers.
Conservative Public Safety critic Frank Caputo said the new hires were promised months ago.
“Remember elbow’s up, we’re gonna keep you as safe as possible, this border’s gonna be more secure than ever? All of that was a facade,” Caputo said in a post on X.
One of the other measures, retirement reform for a range of front-line government workers including border officers, was already announced by the Trudeau government last June. That reform will allow front-line workers to retire after 25 years of service without taking a hit to their pension, regardless of age.
Public Safety will also increase the weekly stipend for new border recruits from $125 to $525.
Training plan questioned
Opposition MPs have pushed the government for answers on how the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) expects to train the influx of new officers.
At a Sept. 23 meeting of the federal standing committee on public safety and national security, CBSA’s vice-president of intelligence and enforcement, Aaron McCrorie, said the agency will look at increasing “throughput” at its primary officer training college in Rigaud, Que.
“We recognize that, with attrition, we have to increase our throughput through the college, and we’re working through that plan now,” McCrorie said.
At a committee meeting last week, O’Gorman said the Rigaud college has the capacity to train about 250 agents in the first two years, and 300 in the final year.
“I am not worried about the source of agents,” O’Gorman said. “We have the capacity at the college. In fact, our attrition numbers this year are slightly lower, so our capacity right now is higher than we calculated for.”
Fentanyl at the U.S. border
The plan for hiring more officers comes as U.S. President Donald Trump continues to focus attention on the U.S.–Canada border.
Trump has routinely justified the imposition of tariffs on Canadian goods by citing fentanyl “pouring” into the United States from Canada, though only a tiny fraction of the drug entering the U.S. does so across its northern border.
CBSA said it has seized 2.48 kilograms of export fentanyl so far this year.
Anandasangaree said even “an ounce” of fentanyl is too much, but he stressed Trump’s claims are untrue.
“We knew from the outset that was incorrect, that was patently incorrect. It was never supported by evidence,” he said. “In fact, we know that we have a common distributor of fentanyl which is coming from several Asian countries.”
While Anandasangaree declined to link Trump’s posture on the border with the new hires, Liberal MP Wayne Long drew a clear line between the two.
“I mean, obviously the U.S. has raised concerns with respect to drug trafficking and fentanyl,” he said.
“And this is part of our response to address their concerns, to make sure that we can move forward together.”
