The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) is calling out Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) for prematurely stating a systems outage earlier this week had been resolved.
CTA said in a release today the movement of international commerce continues to be strangled at the Canadian border, leaving some drivers stranded for days.
“This is an ongoing crisis of investment neglect of our IT trade infrastructure,” said CTA president and CEO, Stephen Laskowski. “Our members across the country are outraged, their customers outraged, and their drivers are threatening to leave the industry. If you want an example why Canada is last in economic growth among the G7 countries, this would be one.”
Most recently, drivers are reporting four- to five-hour delays at the Emerson, Man., and Pacific Highway, B.C., crossings, with lengthier delays still affecting other entry points.
In fact, CTA says the Queenston-Lewiston and Peace Bridge crossings in Ontario issued an advisory this morning discouraging use of their ports of entry.
“The Niagara Falls Bridge Commission (NFBC) advises all Canada-bound commercial carriers to avoid the Lewiston-Queenston International Bridge crossing until further notice, due to ongoing processing delays related to a Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) systems outage that occurred earlier this week,” the Lewiston-Queenston crossing said. “While CBSA has implemented a processing systems fix, the resulting delays continue, and all adjacent queuing areas within the Western New York region are at, or beyond, capacity.”
The CTA reports U.S. state police are shutting down access to some Canadian border crossings due to highway backups, while bridge authorities are feeding some stranded drivers.
“The Government of Canada needs to make a commitment to resolve this issue on behalf of the CBSA and ensure what’s occurred this week and has continued to recur over the last several years, will not be repeated,” says CTA’s director of policy and industry awareness programs, Lak Shoan.
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