A new $25-million facility at the port of Halifax is designed to help Canada Border Services Agency officers in their ongoing efforts to crack down on crime and target all forms of illegal activity.
“It means we can combat things like fentanyl coming into our country, as well as being exported out of our country, plus stolen vehicles and addressing a whole range of contraband,” said CBSA Vice President Jennifer Lutfallah.
The Africville Seasides Marine Container Examination Facility features multiple examination stations that will closely monitor shipping containers.
Over the last 15 months in Halifax, 189 stolen vehicles and more than $200 million worth of narcotics and other types of illegal drugs were seized.
“We are talking about thousands of kilograms, and we are not talking about street level arrests where it is a gram or two, and we have seized 4,000 kg of cocaine at a purity of 95 per cent and up,” said CBSA regional director Dominic Mallette.
One of the trucks at the 2,700-square-metre facility contains a scanner to examine suspicious cargo.
“It then takes an X-ray of everything that’s in the container,” said border service officer Kevin Melvin.
The new building is located at the site location of the historic Africville community and is named after a hockey team that existed in the early 1900s.
It also features mobile, modern high-tech security equipment that can be used at Halifax’s two container terminals.
The facility’s launch comes at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump has been critical of illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Canada and has used that to justify tariffs.
“We owe it to Canadians to make sure our borders are safe, more so than we owe it to the president of the United States,” said N.S. Liberal Member of Parliament Darren Fisher. “But we do have to be good neighbours as well.”
The Africville Seasides Marine Container Examination Facility replaces the previous examination warehouse that was in Dartmouth, N.S., which required shipping containers to be transported several kilometres for inspection.
