The Deployment of Armed Border Services Officers in Quebec

Remarks made by
The Honourable Stockwell Day
Minister of Public Safety

St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec
October 3, 2007
As delivered

Thank you, everyone. It's an honour to be here with you today.

As most of you know, I like to spend as much time as I can visiting with our border officers. These are the men and women who are protecting our borders and making sure that low-risk travellers or goods move efficiently across the border, and that high-risk individuals or items do not. I commend them for their work.

I want to remind people about how important borders are and about the work that goes on at borders.

There are more than two million people a year crossing at the St-Bernard-de-Lacolle border alone. From coast to coast to coast, more than 90 million people cross our borders a year. The first people they get to see are our border officers—the men and women who work across this country to protect us.

We've done a number of things in the last year and a half to strengthen our borders. It was several months ago that I announced $430 million to help improve the infrastructure and the technology at our borders. We've also moved ahead with the beginning of hiring 400 more border officers across the country so that we can put an end to what we call the "work alone situations" where border officers were working alone, many times in remote locations.

We're also investing in the ongoing development of Integrated Border Enforcement Teams so that people working at the border—many times it would be RCMP or various officers from different agencies working together with our American counterparts—are as safe as possible.

On Friday, we saw 28 more officers successfully graduate from the program, which enables them to understand the full range of management of firearms. You'll see, if you look carefully, that some of those officers who were successful in the course, in fact, are here today. Others are deployed in different places around Quebec and across the country.

I want to congratulate our border officers from coast to coast to coast who are taking this course—a very intensive program of three weeks of training. There are now 108 border officers across the country and they are deployed, with the first officers beginning at the busier and possibly the higher-risk locations. By the time the whole process is done, there will be about 4,800 personnel to be trained. That process will take a few years. By this time in March there will be something like 250 to 300 officers trained and deployed.

Just before I close my remarks on that to invite questions, I want to remind people about NEXUS. I don't know if you saw when you were driving here that there is a NEXUS lane at this particular border point? If you do not have your NEXUS card, I would encourage you to go online to register. NEXUS is a card that allows you to rapidly cross the border at a land, air or sea crossing.

I have my NEXUS card and my wife has applied for hers. I tell people now not to leave home without it. It is a document that is accepted as a passport if you're travelling to the United States. It's advanced technology—iris recognition.

We always take the opportunity to advise people to apply for the card to make crossing the border as efficient as possible. NEXUS is a document that has been accepted by the United States under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which will be requiring all Canadians, even at land borders to have passports eventually by 2008.

Right now, at the air borders, you have to have a passport if you're going to go into the United States. Even Americans require one to go in the United States. But we've been successful in achieving alternative documents that are acceptable. One of those is the NEXUS card, and that's why there is a NEXUS lane so you can use that lane if there are line-ups.

In closing, let me say thank you for the dedication of the officers here but also to our border officers across Canada who go to work every day with the sense and the knowledge that they are protecting us. They are keeping us safe but that they are also ambassadors for people coming into our country.

We want smart borders that are efficient but also are secure, and I thank each one of you for making that a reality.

Thank you.