CTA to carriers: Join the online border-crossing campaign

OTTAWA-Computer glitches in the system designed to speed up border crossings have actually had the opposite affect, and the problem is threatening the financial well-being  of carriers, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) has charged. What’s more, the CTA is urging truckers to speak up, and they can do so with the click of a mouse.

Since January 1, 2017, there have been about 30 outages of the Canadian Border Service Agency’s (CBSA) EDI/portal systems.  According to a statement from the CTA, the root of the problem is that the CBSA is using “antiquated” computers. Despite CBSA’s best efforts to mitigate these incidents, the system crashes keep happening with no easily-attainable solution in sight, CTA says.

Meanwhile, trucking companies, their drivers, as well as customers are being significantly impacted by these outages.

“The EDI/Portal outages are a significant threat to the financial health of our members and their customers,” said CTA President Stephen Laskowski.

Meantime, the CTA has created a messaging campaign that will allows carriers to send a form email each time the system goes down, reminding the ministers from Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, International Trade, Finance and the Treasury Board how system outages are hurting the industry and weakening cross-border commerce.

The email urges the ministries responsible for the border to increase support to CBSA and fix these recurrent problems. 

Adds Laskowksi: “The membership needs to remind these ministers their efforts in ensuring efficient trade, including upcoming negotiations with Washington on the future of NAFTA, will be greatly undermined if we don’t first deal with our internal border problems in our own backyard.”

The CTA letter campaign also reminds the ministers that CBSA staffing shortages at various commercial ports – a historic (and growing) problem – needs to be dealt with along with EDI/Portal Outages.

CTA is currently requesting that officials respond to the Alliance with short and long-term plans to fix these systems outages.

The CTA is also asking members to participate in the campaign. Starting today – and to be repeated each time CBSA’s system shuts down – please click here to send an automatic email to the ministries responsible for CBSA and border policies. (Click here for French).

Carriers can also fill out CTA’s System Outages survey, which will provide CBSA information on operational challenges and extra costs carriers face when system issues occur. To take the survey click on this link: http://survey.ontruck.org/t/ALNnrZYuXA

 


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