cur: I found the following post you made on May 20th, 2006. Just curious as to what's changed your opinion since then.




My friend is in CBSA training and he says that it is made extremely clear that the CBSA is mandated to go after
-Terrorism
-Money laundering
-Weapons smuggling
-Drugs
-Missing children

Not residents bringing in extra clothes. The reason why they changed them from CCRA to CBSA (you'll see their new uniforms on the 1st of June) is because they're now enforcers, not tax collectors.

It costs $7 for the CBSA to collect tax/duty/penalties. While people say the agents are lazy, the same people are also saying that they're keen to process paperwork over stupid things like t-shirts.

Agreed with the OP over YVR though. It's pathetic. Although blaming front-liners is easy and requires no effort, I'd blame the airport authority's poor usage of your AIF and the 4 or so AZN flights and 2 from the EU over 2 hours, rather than bashing the agents who "go on lunch breaks right in front of me". You don't know why they are getting out of their station, and I'm sure you didn't see them go to the lunch room to microwave lunch.

Take into account that the BSA probably keeps the numbers of people in the front stations at 80% in order to control the flow of people through the baggage hall. If you pump people through as quickly as possible, you're going to have the whole bag hall full beyond reason and threads coming up on FT whining about how full the hall is.