On the heels of the significant and highly disruptive Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) IT system outage last week, recent media reports have indicated that Minister of Public Safety, the Honourable Gary Anandsangaree, has ordered the agency to produce a report within 30 days detailing the incident and corrective steps to prevent future occurrences.
Although these initial reports indicate that an investigation into the recent kiosk outages at Canadian airports will be part of this report, it is also expected to include investigations into root causes and preventative measures to prevent the IT system outages that have impacted commercial operations at the CBSA as well.
Over the last several years, the Alliance and many trade chain partners have continued to highlight the critical need to invest in, secure and bolster the legacy systems at the agency, so the damaging supply chain disruptions that businesses on both sides of the border and truck drivers faced last week can be mitigated to the greatest extent possible.
“With the continued unpredictability around the Canada-U.S. trade war, and the unknown posed by upcoming CUSMA negotiations, ensuring stability from a trade and cross-border supply chain perspective remains imperative. We hope this report will finally identify and address the long-standing concerns from the trade community, as this type of disruption simply cannot happen again,” says CTA’s Director of Policy and Industry Awareness Programs, Lak Shoan.