The Canada Border Services Agency is preparing a scheduled, planned system outage to conduct maintenance during the morning of September 7, 2024 (EDT).
Many systems in the traveller and commercial streams will not be available during the outage. The following systems are expected to remain available during the outage:
The CBSA has contingency plans in place to continue travel and trade processing without compromising the safety and security of Canada. Our frontline operations will adopt mitigation measures to complete any verifications manually, as required. To further minimize disruption the slowdown will happen during non peak hours in most areas. Throughout the duration of the planned outage, CBSA management intends to work collaboratively with you to facilitate arriving passenger flows and border clearances until the planned outage is complete and systems are back online.
The CBSA will make every effort to ensure an adequate number of primary inspection lines are open to address volumes while at the same time maintaining normal operations such as customs and immigration services, secondary examinations, enforcement activities, and commercial processing. The CBSA uses a number of strategies to help minimize border wait times. The Agency’s operational plans include the effective use of all of the resources available based on anticipated traveller and commercial volumes, which includes ensuring an adequate number of primary inspection lanes are open and staffing levels are reflective of service demand.
Commercial importers are encouraged to refer to the contingency procedures, or be prepared to resume transmission once the system is available. The procedures to follow during system outages or interruptions can be found in the commercial procedures during scheduled and unscheduled outages System Outage Contingency plan, which is available on the web site https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/eservices/contingency-urgence/menu-eng.html .
For highway carriers, if you are proceeding to the border during the planned outage, please ensure all drivers are provided with the correct paperwork to present at arrival.
The CBSA will accept paper documentation during an outage and no AMPS penalties will be issued for ACI related infractions resulting from this outage.
The CBSA will communicate to inform the travelling public know about this upcoming outage. This will be done through social media posts, web alerts, and outreach to media outlets.