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Level of Distrust between
Border Officers and Ottawa “The Border Service is at the edge of what is hard to describe as anything but a major crisis”, warns Ron Moran, National President of CEUDA, representing 10,500 members, more than 5,000 of whom are Border Services Officers which include Canada’s uniformed Officers working on the front‑lines, as well as the Investigation, Intelligence, and Trade Customs Officers. “CEUDA’s National Office has been overwhelmed with calls from Officers who feel betrayed by the deceit of their employer.” The Northgate report confirms that the Border Service appears to have clearly and miserably failed in its legal obligation to provide Officers with a safe working environment, and as the evidence clearly demonstrates, CBSA (and its predecessor the CCRA) has gone as far as deliberately misleading the Officers, the public and even Parliamentary Committees by doing such things as burying, altering or altogether ignoring reports that speak to these types of issues. As one of the Union’s lawyers put it, “It is one thing to bury your head in the sand, but it’s quite another to bury evidence just because it doesn’t agree with your point of view.” From CEUDA’s National Office in Ottawa, Moran also stated that, “As it stands, after reading the report on Tuesday, a significant number of Officers wanted to walk off the job right then and there and exercise their right to refuse dangerous work.” Moran adds, “Try and imagine how they’re feeling, Ottawa is unscrupulously playing with their lives.” Containing the growing wave of restlessness is going to become more and more challenging for Ottawa as more Officers become aware of the report. CEUDA was barely capable of keeping members from walking off the job on Tuesday. In fact, Officers in Sarnia and Fort Erie did walk off the job on Tuesday, refusing to do dangerous work as per their right under Part II of the Canada Labour Code. By the time this was brought to CEUDA’s attention, many other Officers were already contemplating similar actions. There is now only one way left to fix this and that is for the Border Service to come clean and end this culture of deceit that has been cultivated for far too long. Moran adds, “I believe the only thing that has prevented a nation-wide walk-out so far is the fact the Officers understand that, with the Northgate report in hand, we are now raising these matters with authorities such as with the Office of the Auditor General and the Minister of Labour. Officers further understand that we will be in an excellent position to sit down with whoever forms the next Government and finally move these issues forward.” CEUDA is already actively and vigorously pursuing all available avenues to convince CBSA and the government to acknowledge the evidence and immediately implement all 31 recommendations from the Northgate report. CEUDA also calls on CBSA and the government to stop bullying and coercing Officers to work under unsafe and dangerous conditions. After all, doing such things as telling Officers they are not to deal with armed and dangerous individuals and then deliberately keeping the list of who is known to be armed and dangerous away from them may well qualify as criminal negligence. Moran concludes, “Truth is on our side and that of our members, and if CBSA and the government want to continue down the path of deceit and of strong-arming our members into compliance... well, understandably, there’s only so much of this life-threatening exploitation people will take...”
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