Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm quite frankly disappointed that we didn't get to hear more from Mr. Weber. He represents thousands of workers who every single day put their lives on the line. He can't sit through this setting here, and at the same time we've just missed incredibly important testimony.
The CBSA union, right now, is short 2,000 to 3,000 workers alone, and I really think we've missed an important opportunity. Most recently, they were left out of the summit with regard to auto theft at the Montreal port—not even invited. Mr. Weber has really excellent testimony about the pattern of what's taken place.
Over the years since I've been a member of Parliament, we had CBSA in the Windsor region borrowing bulletproof vests. It's gotten to the point right now in Montreal that they just took equipment out of Windsor to scan for stolen automobiles because they haven't fixed the ones in Montreal that are broken. We're not going to hear other testimony that I'm sure Mr. Weber would have had. He's also identified that with the ArriveCAN app, we could have used the money for hiring staff.
During COVID, training did not go on, so we're short 800 workers from that alone and we were already short. There's been a habitual problem with Conservative and Liberal governments not even settling the negotiations on contracts with the men and women at the border. That's been ongoing for decades. They finish a contract and have to go back into negotiations because it takes years to get done. Unfortunately, we're not going to hear that testimony today. Perhaps we will in the future. It's so political.
I remember going to Vancouver when I was trying to protect the detector dog program that the Conservatives were cutting at that time. Yes, they cut the detector dog program. I was supposed to tour the Vancouver port, and all of a sudden there was a phone call somewhere, some place, and I was not allowed to go into the Vancouver port by the port authority. They rescinded my invitation once it was learned that I was going there. The union took me all around the perimeter and so forth anyway, and we learned about the loss of the detector dogs. It would take three hours to clear a freighter, and now it can take three weeks. We've had subsequent—