The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) and Private Motor Truck Council (PMTC) blasted the federal government after yet another electronic-data-interchange (EDI) failure at Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) checkpoints on 30 April caused multi-hour delays at key Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba crossings. The industry bodies urged Cabinet to fund a permanent technology overhaul, warning that recurring outages inflate supply-chain costs and jeopardise cross-border just-in-time deliveries. Drivers reported that normal processing in the morning degraded to near-standstill conditions by mid-afternoon as commercial volumes peaked. Although CBSA activated contingency procedures—allowing paper manifests and manual data entry—the workaround slashed lane throughput and created kilometre-long queues. CTA President Stephen Laskowski said fleets lose "tens of thousands of dollars per hour" when trucks sit idling at the border, costs that ultimately flow to consumers. Carriers also face fines and chargebacks from U.S. receivers when delivery windows are missed. CBSA’s decade-old EDI backbone has suffered at least four serious outages in the past fortnight, according to customs brokers’ bulletins. The agency says it is accelerating migration to its CARM (CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management) cloud platform, but full deployment is not expected until late 2027. Multinational shippers are now advising logistics teams to build 24-hour buffers into cross-border routings and to preload customs data into backup portals where possible. HR managers moving personnel equipment between Canadian and U.S. sites should likewise budget extra transit time until reliability improves.
Source: Truck News
