Federal auditors posing as ordinary visitors were able to walk through secure Canada Border Services Agency facilities without identification, access confidential documents and view travellers’ passport information, according to an internal audit.Blacklock's Reporter says the findings mark the second time in two years that an internal investigation has identified significant security problems at the CBSA.“The audit team performed a number of walkthroughs in various locations to test access controls and employee behaviour,” said the agency’s Audit Of Physical Security.Auditors targeted CBSA buildings where sensitive or valuable information and assets were handled or stored. The report did not identify the locations.Investigators found they could enter supposedly secure areas without access cards or visible CBSA identification.“During these walkthroughs, audit team members were able to access all secure and non-secure floors unannounced at various times of day without access cards or visible Agency identification,” the report said.Auditors gained access after employees allowed them inside or through “piggybacking,” where an unauthorized person follows someone with legitimate access through a secured entrance.Their presence was questioned on just one of six secure floors and two of nine non-secure floors visited during the audit.The investigation also uncovered problems involving confidential information.CBSA rules require employees handling protected information to secure unattended computers, but auditors found two instances in which employees walked away from unlocked computer screens.Investigators also discovered sensitive documents left unattended at printers, including financial records and personal information belonging to travellers.“The audit also noted sensitive documents left at printers including financial documents and documentation containing personal traveler data including names, passage dates, passport numbers and dates of birth,” the report said..Auditors were also able to examine paper documents containing protected information stored in cabinets that had been left open. Nobody challenged them while they accessed the records.The audit focused specifically on areas intended to be secure and inaccessible to members of the public.“The Agency employs approximately 16,000 people in hundreds of facilities across Canada and manages billions of dollars’ worth of information and assets,” auditors wrote. “Failure to adequately protect and ensure physical security can result in serious consequences.”The findings follow a separate 2025 Audit Of Duty Firearms that found problems with the agency’s management of approximately 12,600 firearms assigned for use by border officers.That audit found only one of 15 sites examined had used the required Manager’s Daily Firearm Inspection Checklist to conduct an annual inspection.Auditors also reported that about one-fifth of randomly inspected land border crossings did not have functioning security cameras.The latest audit found surveillance problems remained at nine of 18 land crossings examined in 2026.At one location, auditors found there was no closed-circuit television camera covering a primary inspection lane that processes millions of commercial vehicles each year.Three other locations lacked camera coverage in areas including bond rooms where seized goods are stored.Five additional locations had cameras with poor image resolution, with some footage effectively unusable.“The remaining five locations had CCTV cameras with poor resolution and in some cases images that were not visible,” auditors wrote.
