OTTAWA — The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) reported today that, a month into the ACI eManifest program, carriers are still running into difficulties and delays with the Canada Customs and Border Agency (CBSA) on the new, and highly publicized, program.

The Alliance’s senior VP, Stephen Laskowski, characterized the problems as “above and beyond what could reasonably be attributed to learning curve issues.” And the problems are costing carriers money.

Laskowski said the CTA has been receiving reports daily from carriers across Canada who say they have been held up for hours, and even days in certain cases, due to confusion over ACI policies at the port level.

“It is clear from feedback and complaints from CTA members that there is a significant lack of consistency among border service officers in the level of knowledge and application of ACI policies,” Laskowski wrote in a letter to the CBSA.

To add to the confusion, other carriers are reporting that some border service officers are telling truck drivers that ACI isn’t being implemented until May 2013.

(To be clear, the November 1 deadline was the “informed compliance deadline.” The May 2013 deadline is when they’ll turn your trucks around and penalize you.)

The Alliance said that it has been actively involved in CBSA’s ACI eManifest for highway carrier initiative by providing input on design, policies and implementation of ACI, and that it took steps to implement communication programs and learning opportunities for carriers that adopted the program early.

Feedback was provided from those early adopters to CBSA, the Alliance noted, but still, “problems persist.”

“Carriers have made significant technological and training investments to accommodate ACI,” said Deanna Pagnan, CTA’s director of Policy & Government Relations. “The experiences of many carriers is causing them to question the value of those investments and of the ACI initiative as a whole. If these problems experienced at the port level are not corrected in a very timely manner, CBSA will lose the support of carriers and many may revert back to paper processes until May 2013 to save time, money and operational headaches.”

The Alliance said that it would like to continue working with CBSA and find solutions to the problems.