Most border agency criminal investigators lack basic training, audit says

Most criminal investigators tasked with hunting down crimes at Canada's ports and borders in recent years have lacked basic training, says a newly released audit report from the Canada Border Services Agency.

The report, posted on the CBSA website late last week, lands just as border officials, politicians, police and industry representatives meet today in Ottawa to discuss plans to tackle the rising number of car thefts over the past two years. The border agency's ability to catch stolen cars before they're shipped overseas is expected to be one of the main topics of discussion.

According to the Feb. 2 audit report, CBSA reviewed the effectiveness of its criminal investigations program between the fiscal years of 2016-2017 and 2020-2021.

The program is responsible for investigating violations of Canada's border laws by travellers, importers, exporters and others, and for recommending cases to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC).

The audit concludes that most investigators had not completed core training, which "could be negatively impacting the quality of investigations."

The audit says no investigator working under the $35 million criminal investigations program had completed the full set of required courses — and less than half of them had completed the CBSA's introductory course, called "Foundations of Criminal Investigations."

One CBSA employee interviewed as part of the audit said they'd been an investigator for three years and only recently had started receiving basic training.

"It impacts our job," the employee said, according to the audit report.

"The impact of no training is significant," said another CBSA employee quoted in the audit report, "because you're not supposed to enforce legislation without training."

The report says the lack of sufficient training may be undermining planning for complex cases, the preparation of evidence for disclosure, the drafting of Information to Obtain (ITOs) documents and the quality of suspect interviews.

"Stakeholders indicated that on some occasions, complex cases were closed without being referred to PPSC for prosecution due to inadequate case planning by criminal investigators," it says.

"In other instances, PPSC observed evidence gaps in disclosure due to the inadmissibility of statements collected, which could also be due to lack of training in this area."

The report says no one can agree on why the problem exists in the first place.

Auditors report the CBSA Human Resources Branch suggested managers were reluctant to release investigators from their duties in order to complete training, leaving courses with too few participants to go forward. Regional managers, meanwhile, said that training sessions had not been made available to them, says the report.