Prime Minister Mark Carney and members of Canada Border Services Agency at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing in Niagara Falls, on Friday.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Prime Minister Mark Carney on Friday announced plans to spend almost $618-million over five years to hire 1,000 new border officers, with a boost to their benefits in the forthcoming budget to aid recruitment.
The $617.7-million of funding will help hire more Canada Border Services Agency personnel to work at the land border, ports, airports and railway stations, as well as in its intelligence division.
“The world is increasingly dangerous and divided, and as Canadians, we must look out for ourselves,” Mr. Carney said in a Friday statement. The funding announcement fulfills a Liberal election promise.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said at a Friday press conference in Niagara Falls that the extra funds to hire CBSA personnel “will support specialized operational analysts who identify individuals and entities suspected of having links to organized crime, human smuggling, immigration, fraud and terrorism.”
“This money will also allow CBSA to support additional positions targeting high-risk areas in rail, marine, postal, courier, predeparture and highways,” he said.
He said the funding for more border officers, was “not a response to the U.S.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has complained that Canada’s border security is lax, insisting after he took office that the Canadian government should do more to prevent illegal migration and smuggling of fentanyl, despite the fact that less than one per cent of the drug in the U.S. comes from Canada.
In last December’s fall economic statement, the previous Liberal government announced a $1.3-billion cash injection over six years to enhance border security. Canada has since leased Black Hawk helicopters to patrol the border and invested in technology to prevent people from illegally crossing the vast frontier.
The federal government also announced plans to increase the weekly stipend by more than fourfold for recruits training as Canada Border Services Agency officers, to $525 a week from $125, to encourage people to apply. The training stipend has not increased since 2005.
Mr. Carney also announced there would be changes in the Nov. 4 budget to improve early retirement benefits for front-line federal workers.
Ottawa plans to amend the Public Service Superannuation Act so that CBSA officers, parliamentary protection officers, search and rescue personnel, federal and territorial firefighters, paramedics, and prison officers can retire after 25 years of service without reductions to their pensions.
Mr. Carney speaks to a border agent at the Rainbow Bridge border crossing, on Friday.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Mark Weber, national president of the Customs and Immigration Union, welcomed the change.
“Border officers work in demanding roles and face similar physical risks as other law enforcement officers,” he said in a Friday statement. “I am happy to see the federal government listening to unions and addressing this long-standing inequality.”
Conservative public safety critic Frank Caputo questioned how many of the new border officers would be “boots on the ground” and how many would be filling the spaces of people leaving the CBSA.
He said “attrition is very high” at the agency. The 2024 Public Service Employee Survey found that staff there were the least likely in the public service to recommend their office as a great place to work.
Mr. Caputo said the government also needed to ensure that the CBSA had the personnel available to find foreign criminals evading deportation. The Globe and Mail reported in July that Canadian border agents are trying to track down almost 600 foreigners with criminal records who are due to be deported but have gone missing.
“It’s my view that the CBSA needs to be in a position where they are not only deporting people but they have personnel to keep track of those individuals,” Mr. Caputo, a former parole officer and Crown prosecutor, said.
CBSA spokesperson Rebecca Purdy said that approximately 80 per cent of the 1,000 new personnel will be “uniformed officers and others will include intelligence officers, investigators, and security screening officers.”
NDP public safety critic Jenny Kwan said the hiring of more CBSA employees is “long overdue.”
“The Customs Immigration Union (CIU), representing our CBSA officers, estimates that we currently lack as many as 3,000 border officers across the country,” she said in an e-mailed statement on Friday. “This means that border crossings are consistently operating with reduced staff who just do not have the time, means or support to effectively search for illegal firearms, contraband, stolen vehicles and work with asylum seekers.”
Mr. Weber, national president of the union, said in a statement that “adding 1,000 officers to the front line must be a priority, and allowing these front-line officers to patrol between ports of entry is the next logical step.”
Migrant rights advocates expressed fear that the extra border officers would also be used to round up undocumented residents, similar to Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns in the U.S.
“People in Canada want Carney to be less like Trump, not follow that playbook,” said Syed Hussan, spokesperson for the Migrant Rights Network. He added that deportations doubled from 7,513 in 2021 to 17,357 in 2024, with “already 12,697 removed by July this year.”
“The government should stop hiring more officers to tear families apart and implement the comprehensive regularization program they promised,” he said.
At the Commons public safety committee meeting earlier this month, Minister Gary Anandasangaree faced questions about whether there were enough training spots for so many recruits. He told the committee there was capacity to do so and that new recruits would all be fully trained.