Commercial trucks faced major delays at the Canada-US border on Tuesday morning, as the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) struggled with a system outage that affected operations at key ports of entry.
The delay increased congestion, particularly in Southern Ontario, disrupting the flow of goods across the busiest land border in the world.
This led to confusions among people if the Canada – US border is closed amid the US government shutdown. However, it is not closed but there is a delay in the movement of trucks.
CBSA’s statement
CBSA confirmed the system outage, which affected commercial processing operations, especially at major border crossings like the Peace Bridge and Queenston-Lewiston Bridge in Niagara Falls.
By 1:45 pm, the agency reported partial resolution, but warned that delays could persist as normal processing resumed.
“Commercial drivers may continue to experience delays as we work to restore full operations,” a CBSA spokesperson told CityNews. “We apologise for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.”
CBSA officers were deployed to assist at primary inspection lanes to help process truck traffic and manage congestion.
This temporary measure was part of efforts to reduce the impact of the IT failure, which came as a surprise to many in the trucking community.
What will be the impact of these delays?
CBSA oversees the daily movement of approximately 400,000 people and billions of dollars in goods across the Canada-US land border.
In 2024 alone, almost 4.5 million commercial trucks were processed entering Canada, which amounts to about 12,328 trucks per day.
With the current disruptions, the flow of goods was severely impacted, leading to concerns from the trucking industry about the broader economic implications.
‘Outdated systems’ and neglect
Representatives from the CTA did not hold back in their criticism of CBSA , calling out the agency for “neglecting” its IT systems, which have been prone to outages in recent weeks.
CTA, a national federation representing over 4,500 carriers, owner-operators, and industry suppliers, has pointed to the continued frequent system failures as a major pain point for carriers, especially in a slowing freight economy.
“The outages continue to increase significantly in frequency and duration and are highly disruptive to carriers and their customers during this sluggish freight economy,” said Stephen Laskowski, CTA’s CEO and President. “We simply cannot afford any delay costs.”
Laskowski went on to stress that these technical failures are not new but part of an ongoing issue, with past outages already causing disruptions in the flow of trade between the two countries.
“Today, the entire northern border has come to a standstill because Ottawa has failed to address outdated systems used to process shipments,” Laskowski added.