2026 Spring Forwarder Magazine

10 THE FORWARDER | SPRING 2026 CIFFA’s national committees meet several times a year to discuss relevant issues or developments that may affect member companies. Following is a look at what committee members discussed and decided at their most-recent meetings. Airfreight Committee – Chair Bill Gottlieb • CIFFA’s advocacy team has been meeting with Transport Canada officials in Ottawa. The team is keeping senior department staff advised of issues. They met recently to discuss the maritime situation in the Middle East and how it is impacting CIFFA’s members. CIFFA regularly seeks updates on Transport Canada’s collaboration with CBSA to enable single filing for eManifest and PACT. The departments remain in discussions about the data elements they each require. • The IATA/CIFFA working group on DG training criteria for Canada has not met for some time. CIFFA has pushed for approval of off-site DG documentation checks, and awaits a response from the airlines. CIFFA will talk with Transport Canada’s DG team to seek its direction on this issue and try to finalize the discussion with IATA. • The IATA/CIFFA working group for the review of financial criteria in Canada has completed its assignment. The airlines and forwarders did not agree on the need for a change to the existing financial criteria. As a result, the status quo will remain. Customs Committee – Chair Nelson Cabral • Canada has a good team for the CUSMA review negotiations: Mark Wiseman, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., and Janice Charette, Canada’s top negotiator. A March 19 article, “Here are Canada’s biggest points of leverage in tariff and trade talks with the U.S.” published by Radio Canada International, looks at Canada’s strengths going into the review. The U.S. business community is strongly in support of CUSMA; it’s unlikely that the Trump administration will entirely ignore that. • The Q3 tariff rate quota (TRQ) for steel expired on March 25. Ahead of that date, importers were searching for bonded warehouse space to store imports in categories near or at 100% utilization for the quarter to avoid paying the surtax. Finding bonded warehouses with space available proved to be very difficult. • The CBSA has announced workforce reduction of 674 employees over the next three years , mostly from its Ottawa headquarters. On the other hand, it plans to recruit 1,000 more border service officers (BSOs). • The CBSA seems to have assigned more people to work on verifications and enforcement. Some of those employees may have been moved into that work as CARM now requires fewer resources. As a result, committee members report that more claims are now being rejected. Customs Regulatory Committee – Chair Kim Campbell • The BCCC Systems Outages Group has been reinstated. It is reviewing only the period when the system was shut down for about a week in the fall, not ongoing outages and delays. CBSA has said it may establish a separate working group to discuss ongoing issues. CIFFA will push for that to be done. The agency has drafted an update of its systems outage contingency plan. On this, CIFFA will emphasize the need for BSOs to be well informed on new procedures. CBSA is now providing more detail in its messages about delays, including what systems are affected. • CIFFA continues to raise awareness with government of the long wait for non-resident importers (NRIs) to attain business numbers (BNs) . Many Canadian customs brokers are advising NRIs not to ship until they have a BN, have registered in the CARM Portal and have posted security to participate in the RPP program. • Since implementation of CARM, adjustments and refunds have become a significant problem. • The Customs Regulatory Committee contributed information to CIFFA’s submission to the Treasury Board Horizontal Red Tape Review on Customs refunds and remissions. • In response to the Sustainability Committee’s offer to support other CIFFA committees in their specific ESG initiatives, members of the Customs Regulatory Committee suggested several potential areas for focus: procurement, the WCO Green Customs initiative and the direct impacts of members’ own operations. Drayage Committee – Chair Chris Ford • The committee had separate meetings in March with teams from CN and CPKC – Customer Service to discuss operations at the railways’ terminals in the Greater Toronto Area and Alberta. The regular meetings provide opportunities to share concerns, perspectives and suggestions. • In their March committee meeting, members talked about the impact of rapidly rising fuel rates on their business, with some differences of opinion about whether those costs should be absorbed or passed on to customers through fuel surcharges. Where they provide service seems to be the key factor for dray operators as they make that choice. • Driver Inc. companies – trucking companies that have avoided paying payroll tax and contributing to benefits and worker protections by engaging drivers on personal services contracts – are now required to issue T4A statements to those drivers. This is intended to reduce the competitive advantage Driver Inc. companies have enjoyed over companies that meet all of their employment-related responsibilities. Audits by the Canada Revenue Agency, leading to both significant fines and a debt for back taxes for companies that are found to operate utilizing the Driver Inc. model, are also expected to result in widespread elimination of these practices. Freight Brokers Committee – Co-Chairs Tim Drake, Gary Nicholson • The chair of CIFFA’s Sustainability Committee joined the Freight Brokers Committee March meeting to provide an overview of CIFFA’s sustainability initiatives and memberships , and seek input for possible future projects. • At the same time that the government is taking action against Driver Inc., pushing some drivers to leave the industry, U.S. enforcement of English proficiency and focus on immigration status are also keeping some Canadian drivers from crossing the border. Together, these factors are reducing capacity for cross-border work . Further, the federal government is reducing CIFFA Committee Meetings – March 2026