CBSA Kiosk Outage Disrupts Biometric Traveller Processing at Canadian Airports

A Canada Border Services Agency system outage yesterday disrupted Primary Inspection Kiosk processing at major Canadian airports, forcing border officers to process arriving travelers manually. The agency said the outage began at approximately 1:30 a.m. EDT and affected business and traveller systems, including primary inspection kiosks at 11 Canadian international airports.

The affected airports were Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto Pearson, Billy Bishop, Ottawa, Montreal-Trudeau, Quebec City, Halifax, and Hamilton. With the kiosks unavailable, the CBSA redirected travelers to primary inspection lines for manual processing by officers, who reverted to contingency procedures rather than automated self-service checks.

The Primary Inspection Kiosk network is part of Canada’s automated traveller-processing infrastructure at major airports. CBSA materials say travelers using a kiosk or eGate verify identity and submit declaration information by scanning a travel document and taking a live photo, which can be compared with the photo stored in the passport chip. Some travelers who previously submitted fingerprints for Canadian visa, permit, or permanent-residence applications can also be asked to verify fingerprints at a kiosk or eGate.

The outage therefore shifted identity verification and declaration processing from self-service systems to in-person handling by officers, slowing throughput in arrivals halls. The CBSA said the primary inspection kiosks were brought back by the afternoon, while a related outage affecting commercial systems remained unresolved as of 2:30 p.m. EDT, and it warned that short-term delays could persist as operations returned to normal. CBSA spokesperson Luke Reimer said the agency was still investigating the cause of the outage, and the agency said there was no indication of a cyberattack.

The disruption illustrates the operational dependence of Canadian border processing on the kiosk network, which the CBSA has built out as a default path for identity verification and customs declarations at its busiest airports. The agency has separately been exploring smartphone-based facial recognition and has expanded biometric traveller identification across Canadian airports, processes that also depend on connected border-processing infrastructure.

Canadian airport arrivals run primarily through kiosks and eGates rather than staffed primary booths, so a kiosk outage removes a main processing channel rather than a supplementary one, which is why the CBSA cautioned that residual delays could continue even after the system was restored.

Sources: CP24, CTV News, CBSA

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team