Just a day after Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale gave a thumbs-up to border security “enforcing the law,” the president of the union representing border officers said the border is like “Swiss cheese” and that the federal government is misrepresenting the numbers of illegals getting through.
Jean-Pierre Fortin, president of the Canadian Customs and Immigration Union, said his members are passing on figures that are inconsistent with the ones the immigration officials are releasing — “they’re higher.”
“The frontline officers are actually the ones giving me the numbers and they’re slightly different. They’re higher right now,” Fortin told CTV News Sunday.
He is advocating the creation of a 300-person team that would be designated to patrol the areas between official border crossings — where most of the illegals are getting in.
Fortin also wants the federal government to bring back 1,053 jobs that have been phased out over the last five years because he says the border guards are understaffed.
“We’re not even allowed to chase them,” Fortin said.”The RCMP doesn’t have the resources and what we’re asking the government at this point in time, we want to make sure that we should be closing that gap. We should have border guards actually patrolling these [areas].”
The RCMP has been in charge of enforcing the border between ports of entry since 1932.
A spokesman for the public safety minister emailed CTV News that “CBSA operational policy restricts enforcement between ports of entry and directs officers to refer to their local RCMP detachment in cases of suspected violations.”
Scott Bardsley repeated Goodale’s claim from Saturday, suggesting that “the RCMP and CBSA are enforcing the law. They’re enforcing it well and to the letter. At the moment, they are sufficiently staffed to handle the volume. Should more resources be required, they will let us know.”
On Saturday, Goodale made a stop in Emerson, Manitoba, an isolated prairie town that has become a flashpoint for “asylum seekers” since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a now infamous Tweet inviting the refugees of the world to come to Canada.
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