The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) and its members are voicing their frustration with a supply chain stretched to its limit by the ongoing, systemic outages and delays caused by the outdated IT infrastructure of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).
Following weeks of recurring outages, the CTA is making it clear that while the industry is not losing hope that CBSA remains committed to fixing the problem, CTA members are losing faith the current border technology utilized by CBSA is beyond repair.
“Our members are incredibly resilient, but for fleets it’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify this current reality,” said Lak Shoan, CTA director of Policy & Public Affairs. “The workarounds recently introduced by the CBSA along with IT updates show they are committed to keeping trucks moving, but the frustration for drivers and carriers continues to mount because they fear these failures are our new normal until this system is replaced,.”
The Afternoon Breakdown
The impacts have been felt most acutely this week at major border crossings in Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. While the systems often show signs of stability in the morning, they consistently buckle under the weight of daily commercial volumes by the afternoon.
To keep the border moving, trucking companies must be “pre-cleared” – sending digital data about their cargo to the CBSA hours before arrival. Under normal conditions, this clearance and critical messages from the CBSA may take minutes. This week, it is taking four to eight hours, or longer.
Although contingency protocols and paper processes can be used by fleets for entry into Canada, paper processing is a time consuming and onerous for both carriers and border officers.
“This means numerous drivers are being forced to sit idle in the U.S. for an entire work shift just waiting for the word ‘go’,” added Shoan. “That is time taken away from their families and disruption to their rest cycles. It is a difficult way to manage a complex supply chain.”
Fueling Inflation: The Multi-Million Dollar “Outage Tax”
These digital gridlocks are direct drivers of inflation. Every hour a truck sits idle represents wasted money that finds its way into the price of goods. Based on an estimated 11,000 commercial trucks entering Canada daily through Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba, the aggregate cost of these delays is staggering:
- At a 4-hour delay ($300 per truck): The daily cost to the supply chain is approximately $3.3 million.
- At an 8-hour delay ($600 per truck): The daily cost doubles to approximately $6.6 million.
Over a single week of these systemic failures, the “outage tax” on Canadians’ groceries, medical supplies, and manufacturing parts can exceed $30 million to $45 million.
A Call for Cabinet to Act on the Minister’s Plan
The CTA remains in constant contact with the CBSA who are working tirelessly to mitigate the issues. However, the Alliance is pointing directly to the Cabinet and the Government of Canada for a permanent solution.
“The Minister of Public Safety has a modernization action plan on the table, and that is where our focus remains,” said Shoan. “But we need Cabinet to step up and provide the Minister with the investment funds required to fix this properly, instead of continuously ‘patching’ a broken system.”