For the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), it’s a daunting task. They have more than 10,000 removal warrants still outstanding, some of which are older than 12 months. Aaron McCrorie, the vice-president of CBSA, highlighted the agency’s ongoing efforts to track down individuals with outstanding warrants while processing a continuous influx of people entering Canada.
In fact, in the last year, more than 70 million people crossed through Canadian ports. This influx has already hugely increased the number of removal orders. The agency boasted in its announcement that it deported more than 22,000 people from the country during this time frame. These efforts have coincided with an increase in the number of outstanding warrants. In the past two fiscal years, CBSA cleared about 9,500 warrants, but even then added 7,000 new ones to their inventory.
McCrorie, who is currently serving as a Royal Society of Canada Pierre Elliott Trudeau Fellow, described the intricacies of dealing with these cases. It’s always a dynamic as new people come into our inventories,” he said. He noted the difficulties the agency has in maintaining the warrant list, keeping it supposedly updated.
This could change very soon, following the federal government’s exciting new announcement. They will hire 1,000 new officers for CBSA over three years to increase its capacity. This initiative aims to ensure that personnel with the right skill sets and backgrounds are recruited and effectively trained to handle the demands of border security and immigration enforcement.
Unfortunately, the CBSA only has a small team of 550 dedicated inland investigators. Beyond their use in law enforcement, they are an essential tool for locating those with active warrants. Coordination with local law enforcement is crucial for tracking down the bad guys. That’s because police know they can safely arrest people who have warrants after pulling them over in a traffic stop. In those instances, they refer the suspects to us. We get some of our best tips from the public, which allows us to carry out investigations inland and locate these individuals.
The grounds for being inadmissible to Canada are broad. Importantly, only 2.2 percent of all persons found inadmissible are inadmissible for criminality. Only a very small percentage of people ever get removal orders—we’d hope that everyone would follow the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This piece of legislation controls access to Canada.
CBSA is working to meeting these big challenges. They continue to lead the way on balancing national security with improved processes that are more efficient and effective. The agency’s ongoing efforts to manage removal orders reflect its commitment to upholding Canada’s immigration policies and safeguarding its borders.
