FUMBLE – THE BORDER AGENCY BLAMES THE CUSTOMER

This week's perspective from Joe Chidley: The Toronto media were all over the story on March 16 when a reported backlog of 1,000 arriving air passengers lined up at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, waiting to be processed by Immigration. Some of the passengers said they waited a whopping three hours to get through the line, without adequate bathroom facilities and no place to sit down. Some passengers claimed that there were fewer than 10 Customs booths opened at Pearson’s Terminal One. But the Canada Border Services Agency was having none of it. Instead of taking its medicine and simply vowing to do better next time, a spokesperson for the CBSA dismissed the complaints and told the Toronto Star that “the longest wait time was 90 minutes” – hundreds of passengers just had their facts wrong. And the claim that there were less than 10 booths opened? “Those numbers are way off,” responded the CBSA. This is not an approach we here at Veritas would generally advise. (Can we say it any more nicely?) When you’re in a crisis and people are complaining, it doesn’t really matter what the details are: people are mad as hell and telling them they can’t count or tell time is hardly going to make them feel – or your organization look – any better. To put it bluntly, the CBSA’s response was insensitive and out-of-touch with the public mood. And it’s the kind of thing reporters love to jump on. Granted, the CBSA acknowledged that even a 90-minute wait was unacceptable, and it worked hard to fix the problem the next day. But once it had questioned the veracity of the people waiting in line, it was far too late. The Star ran its piece on the long lineups and the CBSA’s nitpicking on the front page, with a photo of hundreds of waiting passengers and the headline: “How many of these people are lying?” Ouch.