Background

During Canada’s state visit to Washington in March 2016, Canada and the United States reaffirmed an earlier commitment to establish the entry/exit initiative, which would allow one country’s entry records to serve as the other country’s exit record for information sharing purposes in order to improve border management. Canada also committed to establish an air exit system, along the same lines as the one already in place in the U.S., which would enable air carriers to provide basic information from passenger manifests to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) prior to outbound flights. Bill C-21 was introduced in the House of Commons in June 2016, proposing to enable the collection of basic biographic information about people leaving Canada, while respecting individual privacy rights. Among other goals, the legislation was crafted to improve Canada’s ability to deal with human trafficking, Amber Alerts and illegal travel by terrorists, as well as to better facilitate the administration of immigration programs. Further, it aimed to help prevent the smuggling of controlled and prohibited goods from out of Canada, and to protect taxpayers by making it easier to identify fraud and abuse of social benefit programs with residency requirements.