Southwest Saskatchewan residents are having their voices heard regarding potential border crossing changes to hours of operation.
Cypress Hills Grasslands MP, Jeremy Patzer, has been reading petitions in the House of Commons on behalf of his constituents after a whistleblower sounded the alarm on the possible reduction of hours or even closure of border crossings in his riding.
Since first meeting with the whistleblower back in August, Patzer has been working to uncover more information, and bringing this problem to light in Ottawa.
"I had a petition that was signed by quite a few people in the southwest," said Patzer. "I presented that in the House of Commons and I actually just yesterday got back the results from the inquiry of the Ministry in regards to what the border is working on as well too, so I've got some more information on that."
With roughly 200 signatories on the petition, Patzer says they almost had more. The issue the petitions seem to be encountering is rural resident writing down their box number for their address. In order for their signature to count, they must write down their physical land location.
The information that Patzer was able to uncover with his inquiry into the Canada Border Services Agency revealed multiple key issues. The crossings are being analyzed for changes to hours of service, as well as the number of cars per hour that pass through.
"Which to me is that becomes problematic when we look at some of these smaller border crossings that we have," said Patzer. "It's not necessarily how many cars go by per hour that matters. I think we look at the volume of big trucks that go through."
Patzer highlighted the cattle haulers and feed transports that utilize the border crossings. He beleives that to be a better metric of value, rather than just that of civilian transports.
"For example, the best crossing to get to Denver is actually south of Val Marie at the Monchy border crossing," highlighted Patzer. "That's the most direct line to Denver, which is a hub for western Canada for shipping."
Perhaps the biggest bombshell that Patzer uncovered was that there has been zero consultation with the public on any of the possible changes.
"To me, if there's going to be any changes to any government services, especially the border, then there better be some public consultation," said Patzer.
While this report Patzer received revealed much of which was unknown before, he beleives they are still holding back more information.
"I think there's a lot of detail that wasn't included in this response. We're going to be looking to send a few more inquiries to the government to try to get a few more answers."
The whistleblower who first looped in Patzer also sent similar warnings to other regions with border crossings. NDP, Liberal, and Bloc MPs were all notified.
While the report stated that no considerations have been made regarding the closure of portals, Patzer thinks that's getting away from the truth on a technicality.
"When they say there's 'no intention', that's definitely not a clear or affirmative on the yes or no," said Patzer. "It just means that at this present time, there's no intention. That doesn't mean that tomorrow (they won't change and begin to consider it)."
For now, Patzer is going to continue to monitor the situation. In his riding, there are five border crossings at risk, being West Poplar, Monchy, Climax, Treelon, and Willow Creek.
"This is just the beginning of this," said Patzer. "We're going to have to stay vigilant on this and make sure that we keep working to see that people in our rural communities are served to the best ability by our government services."