The Honourable Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs, announced a federal investment of $28 million over three years to strengthen the Canada Border Services Agency's (CBSA) capacity to conduct investigative and enforcement work at our borders and to further support CBSA in working closely with law enforcement, other orders of government and jurisdictions to intercept stolen vehicles and identify criminal activity within the supply chain.
With this new funding, the CBSA will have more capacity to detect and search containers for stolen vehicles, as well as further enhance collaboration and information sharing with partners across Canada and internationally to identify and arrest those who are perpetrating these crimes. The CBSA will also test available detection technologies that could support the work of border services officers who examine and interdict shipping containers to be exported from Canada with stolen vehicles.
This investment will:
- Increase the CBSA's export examination capacity. The Agency's role in the interdiction of stolen vehicles is the last line of defence before stolen vehicles are exported from Canada. Over the past three years, roughly 70 percent of legally exported vehicles from Canada are laden on board ships at the Port of Montreal, where the number of suspected stolen vehicle interdictions doubled from 1,769 between 2018-2020 to 3,145 between 2021-2023, as a result of CBSA efforts. Additional border services officers will be deployed to increase exportation examination capacity.
- Enhance the capacity of the CBSA's intelligence program, which plays a significant role in collecting and disseminating actionable intelligence across the country. By investing in this area, the Agency will enhance its ability to receive and act on information from local police across Canada, and produce intelligence that will result in the identification and examination of containers of interest for suspected stolen vehicles.
- Enhance the CBSA's capacity in the Greater Toronto Area to examine rail shipments containing suspected stolen vehicles prior to their movement to a port of export such as Montreal. The movement of stolen vehicles to marine ports for illegal export is a complex and multi-staged process. Typically, after a vehicle is stolen, it may or may not be concealed and altered, placed for observation, receive fraudulent documentation, be transported to a port, and finally, containerized and exported. The CBSA will use border services officers to increase the Agency's ability and responsiveness to examine and detain suspected stolen vehicles in the GTA rail yards, and transfer stations under customs control.
- Provide additional technical resources and capital funding to the CBSA to support the exploration and testing of detection technology solutions, including advanced analytical tools such as artificial intelligence. Given the volume of commercial shipments to and from Canada each year, it is not practical to manually inspect each shipment, especially since the vast majority contain legitimate and properly declared goods and we must not slow these down. More detection technology would offer the CBSA potential to detect and mitigate risks while realizing efficiencies.
- Explore how new and existing data could be used to support border activities. This will increase CBSA's capacity to use historical and current export data, and develop predictive analytics, data mining capacity, monitoring of patterns, trends and inform business intelligence that can influence decision making and risk management.
- Build the CBSA's policy and program capacity required to guide, support and coordinate investments to interdict suspected stolen vehicles in Canada. This will allow the CBSA to: monitor performance and report on the effectiveness of all of the activities, in order to allocate operational resources as required; examine and assess the need for legislative and regulatory changes, that could enhance the interdiction of stolen vehicles over the duration of this initiative, and ongoing.
The CBSA facilitates two-way trade of hundreds of billions of dollars each year, including the movement of millions of sea containers. Its resources are strategically allocated to respond to the latest threats and service needs at our ports of entry. This includes resources dedicated to the examination of out-bound containers in both ports and railyards.
