Wood Packaging Compliance Analysis

Every year, hundreds of billions of merchandise is imported to Canada. All of this merchandise was shipped in some combination of types of packaging material. Certain types of packaging material can pose a significant threat to Canada’s plant economic resource base by acting as a transportation pathway for plant pests, diseases, or invasive species. In order to mitigate this risk, the CFIA has developed regulations and implemented a number of control measures.

In this situation, compliance verification is conducted by the CBSA on behalf of the CFIA, and the selection of the shipments to inspect is based on guidance from the CFIA. Given the amount of merchandise that is imported into Canada, the CBSA cannot verify the compliance of every package entering Canada. In order to minimize risk, the CFIA provides guidance to CBSA about which types of shipments to target for verification. The current process to provide this guidance is paper-based and results in ambiguity around verification priorities, inefficient use of verification resources, and inconsistencies in application.

In an effort to enhance the effectiveness of CBSA resources, our team at CFIA has developed a predictive model that can accurately identify high-risk wood packages with regards to compliance verification.