Ottawa Pledges $617M to Hire 1,000 New Border Agents

Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree has announced the government will spend $617.7 million over five years to train and hire 1,000 new Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers.

“These people will do critical work at our borders, ensuring the smooth movement of people and goods, all the while making sure that illegal goods, guns, and drugs are stopped, and those who are trafficking in them are arrested and charged,” Anandasangaree said during an Oct. 17 press conference at a border crossing in Niagara Falls, Ont.

Anandasangaree said the additional funding will support the hiring of specialized operational analysts to help identify individuals and entities suspected of having links to organized crime, human smuggling, immigration fraud, and terrorism. He said the funds will also be used to hire agents to guard “high-risk areas” areas like railways, waterways, airports, and highways.

The funding is separate from the $1.3 billion the federal government announced it would allocate for strengthening border security and the immigration system in December 2024.

Anandasangaree said the federal government will also increase the CBSA’s recruitment stipend from $125 a week to $525 a week, saying that the stipend has been frozen since 2005 and is “long past due for a boost.”

The Public Service Superannuation Act, which governs the Public Service Pension Plan, will also be reformed. Ottawa says the new funding will allow CBSA officers and other frontline first responders like firefighters and paramedics to retire after 25 years of service without taking a hit to their pension, regardless of their age.

The Oct. 17 announcement builds off a promise the Liberal Party made during the spring election campaign, when they pledged to train 1,000 new CBSA officers to “crack down on drugs, including fentanyl and its precursors, illegal guns, and stop gangs from stealing cars and smuggling them out of the country.”

The Opposition Conservatives have been critical of the Liberal government in recent weeks for not yet hiring any new CBSA officers.

Bill C-12

During the press conference, Anandasangaree also addressed the recently introduced border security legislation Bill C-12, which aims to target transnational organized crime, stop the flow of illegal drugs, crack down on money laundering, and “improve the integrity” of the immigration system. That bill draws on elements of the original border security legislation, Bill C-2, which was introduced back in June.

Anandasangaree said last week that the government opted to split its border security bill into two pieces of legislation to allow certain provisions to pass through Parliament more quickly, saying this would provide additional time to evaluate the more “contentious” measures of the original legislation. Opposition parties and civil liberties groups had raised privacy and security concerns around the bill.

Anandasangaree said there are “three elements” absent in Bill C-12 that were in C-2. These include provisions that would expand law enforcement’s access to data, private communications, and mail, make it a criminal offence for “certain entities” to accept cash donations, deposits, or payments of $10,000 or more, and give Canada Post expanded authority to open private mail during inspections.

“My commitment that I’ve made to Canadians, to law enforcement, to those who have expressed concerns around civil liberties, is to be able to build consensus on what lawful access regime will be acceptable to Canadians,” Anandasangaree said, adding that the government would be working on this throughout the fall and winter.