"The Canada Border Services Agency is preparing a scheduled, planned system outage to conduct maintenance during the morning of March 15, 2025 (EDT). Many systems in the commercial stream – and some in the travellers stream – will not be available during the outage."
The CSCB has asked the CBSA to provide more information on the systems impacted (release / accounting / export) and the start and end time of the outage. We will share when we have more information.
The CBSA has contingency plans in place to continue trade and traveller 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 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 commercial processing, customs and immigration services, secondary examinations and enforcement activities.
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 commercial and traveller volumes, which includes ensuring 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.
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 be communicating regular updates on social media: @CanBorder, as well as a web alert on the planned outage for systems maintenance