CBSA resolves new airport kiosk outage, chief says issues ‘not acceptable’
The Canada Border Services Agency said Friday it had resolved the third outage in less than a month affecting some airport traveller inspection kiosks, after the head of the agency called the repeated equipment failures “not acceptable.”
The CBSA said the outage affecting inspection kiosks at Toronto Pearson International Airport, Calgary International Airport and Edmonton International Airport was resolved around 3 p.m. eastern time, six hours after it was first reported.
An agency spokesperson told Global News that kiosks were also impacted at Toronto’s Billy Bishop International Airport and Ottawa International Airport, but those systems were brought back online earlier Friday.
“This failure was caused by an unexpected technical issue during maintenance work,” the spokesperson said in an email. “It was not the result of any cyberattack.
“We thank travellers for their cooperation and apologize for any inconvenience experienced.”
Earlier Friday, CBSA president Erin O’Gorman said the agency works with its partners “relentlessly” to prevent outages and has contingency plans in place.
“It’s not acceptable that they go down, and we are working with our partners to make sure they don’t go down — and when they do, that we are ready to put them back up again,” she told reporters at a border security announcement in Niagara Falls, Ont.
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Friday’s outage came after a similar failure on Oct. 2 that affected Toronto Pearson as well as Montreal Trudeau International Airport, Ottawa International Airport and Calgary International Airport for about three hours.
That outage came days after kiosks went offline due to what CBSA called “unforeseen technical problems during routine systems maintenance” on Sept. 28.
The agency has said the recent outages also affected commercial processing at some land border crossings.
Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said Friday he has tasked O’Gorman to report back to him within 30 days on “some of the challenges that we have been facing recently,” but added that agency staff are tasked to ensure outages are resolved quickly.
“I can assure Canadians that our systems work, our systems work effectively,” the minister said.
“Of course, there may be at times some outages and as soon as we find out, we make every effort to fix it in an expedited timeline.”
During the outages, international arrivals at affected airports have been rerouted to in-person customs inspection booths, leading to delays for travellers.
“Safety and security standards are upheld at all times, with border services officers working to verify travellers’ identities, receive their declarations, and conduct any additional screening warranted by each traveller’s individual circumstances,” the agency told Global News.
“The CBSA works closely with airport management to expedite traveller processing, minimize delays and complete verifications as required.”
Manual processing was also enacted for commercial traffic at land border crossings, leading to delays for vehicles that persisted for days after the outages were resolved.
The CBSA said at the time that it was working with Shared Services Canada, the Crown agency that provides IT services across government, to reduce the risk of future outages.
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