Canada’s border agency says commercial trucks may continue to face delays at the Canada-U.S. border in southern Ontario, despite the partial resolution of a system outage that began on the morning of Sept. 30.
“The outage has been partially resolved, allowing most shipment processing to proceed,” CBSA spokesperson Guillaume Bérubé told The Epoch Times at approximately 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 30. “Commercial drivers may continue to experience delays as we resume normal processing operations.”
Bérubé said the agency is working with IT partners to resolve the outage “as soon as possible.” The outage has caused delays in commercial processing at ports of entry in the Southern Ontario region.
As a result of the outage, the primary inspection lanes at Peace Bridge and Queenston-Lewiston bridge were staffed with CBSA officers to process traffic and shipments, the agency said, adding it also worked with partners at the Peace Bridge Authority and the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission to assist with traffic control.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) commented on the CBSA system issues, saying outages have “significantly” increased in frequency and duration lately, and are “highly disruptive” to commercial carriers and their customers.
“Although the outages over the last few weeks have been very significant, this matter has been an ongoing issue for many years,” CTA CEO Stephen Laskowski said in a Sept. 30 statement. “Trade between the United States and Canada is regularly brought to a halt because Ottawa has failed to address outdated systems used to process shipments.”
The CTA argues the IT systems can no longer deal with the growing demands of the eCommerce and trade data they are required to process.
The CTA called on the federal government in its 2025 pre-budget recommendations to invest in the CBSA’s IT infrastructure to reduce cross-border delays, among other recommendations the alliance says are “critical” to supporting Canada’s trucking industry.
The CBSA experienced another system outage at several major airports on Sept. 28, which led to the temporary shut down of electronic inspection kiosks at some airports, including in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec City. Officers were required to process passengers manually as a result of the outage.
The agency said the outage was caused by an “unexpected technical issue during routine maintenance” and was resolved as of 2 a.m. on Sept. 29. Some passengers were held on planes for more than an hour after landing at Pearson International Airport since customs were at full capacity due to the outage.
The electronic inspection kiosks are used to verify traveller identity and receive customs declarations to speed up processing times during international travel to and from Canada. The CBSA said travellers were redirected to primary inspection lines for manual processing during the outage.
A three-and-a-half hour disruption to the electronic inspection kiosks across Canada last year also led to delays for numerous passengers coming in and out of Canada.
Paul Rowan Brian contributed to this report.
