The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has begun a scheduled maintenance outage covering its Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), eManifest and Canadian Export Reporting System (CERS) portals from 00:01 ET on Saturday, July 25 through 23:59 ET on Sunday, July 26. Although the shutdown was pre-announced, logistics firms are warning importers and exporters that residual backlogs could extend into the early hours of July 28. During the outage, carriers cannot transmit Advance Commercial Information (ACI) or Pre-Arrival Review System (PARS) documents electronically. Drivers arriving at land ports must present paper packages; marine and air cargo releases are being processed manually. CBSA has activated its System Outage Contingency Plan, but customs brokers report hold-times of up to 40 minutes at high-volume crossings such as Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge. Global-mobility teams moving household goods or time-sensitive equipment should verify that brokers have printed duplicate commercial invoices and bar-coded lead sheets. Shipments without proper contingency paperwork risk warehouse storage fees or missed delivery appointments—costs that rarely appear in relocation budgets. Employers sponsoring foreign workers under the Global Skills Strategy should also note that flag-poling (same-day work-permit issuance at the border) is suspended when CBSA’s internal systems are offline. HR managers are advised to defer any non-urgent permit renewals until mid-week. CBSA schedules maintenance windows roughly every two weeks, but the July 25-26 slot is one of the busiest of the summer, coinciding with post-Canada-Day tourism peaks and pre-August-long-weekend inventory restocking. While passenger Primary Inspection Kiosks remain operational, travellers enrolled in the FAST commercial-driver program may experience lane closures where officers are redirected to manual processing. Companies can mitigate future disruptions by subscribing to CBSA commercial-client bulletins and by integrating Application Programming Interface (API) alerts that flag unsent EDI messages before drivers depart. The next planned outage is August 8-9; shippers are already adjusting production schedules to avoid overtime demurrage.
Source: Canada Border Services Agency
