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CIFFA issued a statement today to the Minister of Public Safety and responsible for CBSA, Gary Anandasangaree
- Barry Murphy
- Oct 3
- 3 min read
CIFFA issued a statement today to the Minister of Public Safety and responsible for CBSA, Gary Anandasangaree, regarding ongoing systems outages affecting Canada’s border crossings and the clearance of goods, resulting in severe delays and added costs. Below is a copy of the text of the letter.
________________________________________________________
The Hon. Gary Anandasangaree
Minister of Public Safety
Dear Minister Anandasangaree,
We thank you in advance for your attention to an alarming situation that continues to unfold at our border crossings, severely impacting Canada’s reputation as a trading nation. CIFFA Corp’s. membership includes freight forwarders who manage about 80% of Canada’s non-commodity trade, employing every mode of transport for both domestic and import/export shipments, but also the drayage providers who move freight to and from ships and rail yards, freight brokers who facilitate cross-border truck movements, the warehouses where the goods are stored and even the customs brokers who ensure the rapid passage of goods through the complexities of customs and security.
As Canada’s leading supply chain organization, we hear firsthand when operational impacts affect our members, who are the “customers” of the supply chain. This is precisely what occurred this week with critical system outages impacting trade at our border crossings. The repercussions of the latest system outage are impacting thousands of truck drivers waiting to cross into Canada, warehouses at capacity awaiting shipment release, and shipments being held resulting in storage charges being assessed to the import community. It is for this unacceptable reason that we must convey to you in your capacity as the Minister responsible for CBSA. Our concerns focus on system reliability and consistency, as well as transparency.
CIFFA’s first concern is the lack of transparency we are seeing on this file. Dating back to September 28th, CBSA began issuing sporadic communications on a vast system outage that appeared to be nationwide at all land and air ports of entry, however the commercial aspect of this outage was vastly understated, to the point that CBSA barely acknowledged it publicly. On September 29th, CBSA issued the following statement: “Update: the outage has been resolved. Travelers may continue to experience delays in the short term as we resume normal processing operations. We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience experienced.”
On October 2nd a communication was issued again by the Agency stating “We have identified the root cause of the issue, it has not yet been fully resolved”. Minister, as we see today, nothing was resolved and more than ever before our faith in the reliability of the systems in place has been shattered.
Beyond transparency, CIFFA also has significant concerns towards the ongoing system reliability and consistency issues we are seeing. Unfortunately, these constant outages are now an inherent flaw of CBSA’s customs systems, not just a bug. CIFFA’s members have been tracking outages since the implementation of CARM last October. From October 5, 2024, to September 28, 2025, we experienced 49 outages (now 50 including the spate of outages the past few days), and only three of these outages were scheduled maintenance. Taken in total, we are averaging approximately one outage per week, with this recent one being the worst. Under no circumstances should this be appropriate, yet here we are.
Given your important role as Minister of Public Safety and responsible for CBSA, we would hope you can understand that our members are beyond frustrated with the number of system failures, the lack of transparency to what the issues are and the rising costs of delays and storage charges, which are another part of this situation that has to be understood.
These delays are adding serious cost increases to our supply chain system which are being forced onto the ultimate consumers: and it must stop.We would also add that these continued outages, this time impacting our busiest trade corridors with our biggest trading partner, paint a terrible picture of Canada being unreliable as a trading nation and places significant stress on our trade relationship with the US, who are obviously watching this scenario unfold at their own shared crossings with us.
The status quo is simply no longer tenable for the trade community who have endured so much pain and added costs to doing business since October 5th, 2024.
Our questions to you and CBSA leadership is clear: What is causing the high frequency of outages, why are they continuing to happen, and why are the communications we are seeing so lacking in transparency and forthrightness on the circumstances of what’s occurring on the ground at our border crossings?
We hope to hear back from you and your team as soon as possible on this matter.
Sincerely,
Bruce Rodgers Executive Director, CIFFA
Julia Kuzeljevich Director, Policy and Regulatory Affairs, CIFFA
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