The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) said that last week’s prolonged Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) IT infrastructure outage illustrates that attention and investment are required to improve and stabilize antiquated systems that electronically process trade moving into our country.
On July 23, CBSA issued a commercial client bulletin at 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time saying that eManifest portal users may be experiencing difficulties where the trade data is in “Updating” status. The agency informed clients on July 26 that the issue causing delays in processing EDI (electronic data interchange) and eManifest portal messages had been resolved.
“The prolonged system outage … slowed the movement of trade down to a trickle at the Canadian border, severely impacting just-in-time shipments, service standards for customers, hours of service for truck drivers, and numerous other costs for carriers and the supply chain during a time where these extra costs cannot simply be borne by the trade community,” Stephen Laskowski, CTA president said in a news release.
Beverley Hudd, of Fairway Transport based in Ancaster, Ont., told trucknews.com that the issue did not delay the company’s trucks at U.S.-Canada border crossings.
“Our vehicles cross regularly, and we make sure our drivers have their ACI (advanced commercial information) documentation and transaction number printed out with them,” she said.
CTA’s Laskowski added in the release, “With trade coming to a standstill, this gives Canada’s trade partners and customers in the U.S. another reason to relocate and reassess whether dealing with cross-border shipments remains feasible. The fall federal budget must deal with this matter once and for all.”
Lak Shoan, CTA’s director of policy and industry awareness programs added, “Regardless of the reasons related to this system issue, carriers and the supply chain have dealt with frequent and severe outages for at least five years.
“The hardworking border officers at the CBSA continue to do their best to facilitate trade through paper processes, but the Government of Canada must invest in immediate system upgrades, and recognize this relief is critical to cross-border trade and the truck drivers who must endure the ramifications of these extended delays at the border.”
