Departmental Plan (2024 to 2025):
Introduction

From the Minister

On behalf of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), I am pleased to present to Parliament our Departmental Results Report for the 2022 to 2023 fiscal year.

The CBSA has a mandate to provide integrated border services that support national security and public safety priorities, while facilitating the free flow of legitimate trade and travel. The Agency is committed to protecting the safety and security of Canadians, as well as the stability and prosperity of our economy.

Under its Traveller Modernization initiative, the CBSA will expand the availability of digital technology and self-service tools to expedite the movement of travellers through the border. The Agency is also ensuring effective operations to manage large volumes of commercial traffic, with a focus on the continual rise in e-commerce volumes. Additionally, to strengthen law enforcement accountability, transparency and public trust, the Government is advancing its pledge to establish an independent review body for the CBSA via Bill C-20, which is currently before Parliament.

Throughout the past fiscal year, the team at CBSA directly supported public safety through actions like interdicting firearms and illicit drugs; combatting human trafficking through enhanced intelligence capabilities; and ensuring efficient security screening in the immigration context. The Agency also continued to improve Canada’s immigration detention system in line with its National Immigration Detention Framework; supported the Government’s humanitarian commitments such as resettling Afghan refugees in Canada and facilitating extended temporary status for Ukrainian nationals; and continued Reconciliation efforts with Indigenous Peoples.

From an organizational perspective, the CBSA continued taking steps to improve its management practices, with a particular focus on people and procurement management.

I am honoured to serve as the Minister responsible for the CBSA. I look forward to working with the Agency as it continues to deliver on the Government’s priorities and strives to meet the expectations of Canadians.

Departmental Plan at a glance

A departmental plan describes a department’s priorities, plans and associated costs for the upcoming three fiscal years.

  Vision, mission, raison d’être and operating context

Key priorities

The CBSA aims to deliver all of its planned activities on a timely basis, while responding quickly and efficiently to unplanned events. Over the next fiscal year, the Agency will advance a wide array of activities across its core responsibilities of border management and border enforcement, as well as its internal services, with a particular focus on the following priorities:

• Effective border operations: Continue efforts to ensure facilitative and efficient border services for admissible persons and goods, focusing on identifying and interdicting high-priority contraband, human smuggling, and inadmissible persons, particularly firearms, opioids, and serious inadmissibility cases.
• Effective management of the Agency: Improve internal systems, controls and processes to ensure more effective management of the Agency’s resources and people, including budgets and human resources, with a particular focus on procurement.
• CARM implementation: Deliver Release 2 of the CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management (CARM) project in May 2024 to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of revenue collection at the border.
• Anti-racism, equity, diversity and inclusion: Continue efforts to improve diversity and inclusion, change behaviours and mindsets, and address potential barriers faced by employees and clients, in order to allow for their equal participation in the workplace and in our programs and services.
• Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples: Continue efforts to ensure that Indigenous culture, interests and issues are reflected in CBSA operations, while also addressing barriers facing Indigenous employees as articulated in the Many Voices, One Mind report.
• Traveller Modernization: Continue the planning and delivery of Traveller Modernization, working toward the border of the future.
• Immigration modernization and asylum sustainability: Advance immigration facilitation and enforcement reforms geared toward faster, fairer and more transparent processing, while protecting national security, supporting Canada’s immigration levels plan, addressing irregular migration, and enhancing the sustainability of the in-Canada asylum system.
• Detention reform: Continue the implementation of the National Immigration Detention Framework through an updated approach to address current challenges, while ensuring that detention is used as a last resort, for the shortest duration possible, and after all alternatives to detention are considered; maintaining the humane treatment of detainees; and ensuring safety and consistency on a national basis.

Refocusing Government Spending

In Budget 2023, the government committed to reducing spending by $14.1 billion over the next five years, starting in 2023 to 2024, and by $4.1 billion annually after that.

As part of meeting this commitment, the CBSA is planning the following spending reductions:

• 2024 to 2025: $66,106,000
• 2025 to 2026: $87,144,000
• 2026 to 2027 and after: $115,941,000

To achieve these reductions, the CBSA is undertaking an agency-wide exercise to support the intent of the refocusing government spending initiative, with a focus on reducing contracting and travel, while avoiding impacts to service.

The figures in this departmental plan reflect these reductions.

Highlights

A Departmental Results Framework consists of an organization’s core responsibilities, the results it plans to achieve, and the performance indicators that measure progress toward those results.

Border management

Departmental results:

• The CBSA’s intelligence, threat and risk assessment activities contribute to the identification, mitigation and neutralization of risks and threats to the safety, security and prosperity of Canadians and Canada
• Admissible travellers are processed in an efficient manner
• Travellers and their goods are compliant with applicable legislation
• Admissible commercial goods and conveyances are processed in an efficient manner
• Traders are compliant with applicable legislation and requirements
• Importers comply with revenue requirements
• Canadian producers are protected from unfairly dumped and subsidized imports
• Trusted Traveller and Trader programs increase processing efficiency of low-risk, pre-approved travellers and traders
• Travellers and the business community have access to timely redress mechanisms

Planned activities for 2024 to 2025:

• Combat the cross-border movement of firearms and illicit drugs, including synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, through joint efforts with law enforcement partners such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Five Eyes allies, along with enhanced tools for detection and examination, and training programs for officers and detector dogs.
• Deliver Release 2 of the CARM project to transform the collection of duties and taxes for imported goods.
• Enhance immigration security screening processes to identify inadmissible persons seeking entry into Canada, including efforts under the Security Screening Automation project.
• Enhance intelligence and enforcement capabilities, with a focus on human trafficking and fraudulent immigration consultants, for the purposes of identifying vulnerable persons and leads for criminal investigations.
• Advance a multi-year suite of Traveller Modernization initiatives, with a view to expanding the availability of digital technology and self-service tools to expedite the movement of travellers through the border.
• Pursue opportunities for preclearance operations in both the traveller and commercial streams to facilitate the cross-border flow of legitimate people and goods as early as possible in the travel and trade continuum.
• Address the continual rise in e-commerce volumes through the Agency’s E Commerce Customs Strategy, including automated processing in the courier low value stream.
• Expand interview capacity at NEXUS enrollment centres, while also advancing the necessary program requirements to deploy additional NEXUS eGates across the country, in order to facilitate the border experience for trusted travellers.
• Continue modernizing frontline recruitment and retention efforts through an updated strategy that focuses on strategic recruitment in support of Agency priorities and workforce renewal.
• Continue the Gordie Howe International Bridge Project and the Land Border Crossing Project with the goal of modernizing Canada’s border infrastructure.
• Continue efforts in support of the Government’s commitment to Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, including through engagement with the Jay Treaty Border Alliance.

More information about the CBSA’s core responsibility of border management can be found in the full departmental plan.

Border enforcement

Departmental results:

• Immigration investigations identify persons inadmissible to Canada
• Persons are placed on alternatives to detention whenever possible, or placed in the most appropriate detention facility according to their risk profile
• The Minister’s positions are appropriately represented in immigration and refugee decision-making processes
• Inadmissible foreign nationals are prioritized and removed expeditiously from Canada
• People and businesses that are referred to Crown counsel for prosecution are convicted

Planned activities for 2024 to 2025:

• Focus inland investigative resources on high-risk cases, with the highest priorities being criminality, organized criminality, human and international rights violations, and national security, while advancing joint efforts with federal partners to improve operational coordination on irregular migration.
• Continue efforts to improve Canada’s immigration detention system in line with the National Immigration Detention Framework, with a focus on ensuring that detention is used as a measure of last resort and that alternatives to detention are always considered.
• Continue efforts to enhance removal operations for inadmissible persons, which include using a national triage model, prioritizing high-priority removals, increasing travel document applications, and operating the Removals Help Line to encourage more voluntary removals.
• Uphold commitments under the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking through efforts to assess existing legislative and regulatory frameworks, with a view to ensuring that sufficient protections are in place for victims.
• Continue supporting immigration measures for those affected by the unjustifiable and illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine, while also working with federal partners to enforce sanctions in response to the Russian invasion and commission of human rights violations.

More information about the CBSA’s core responsibility of border enforcement can be found in the full departmental plan.