A nationwide technical failure that crippled airport kiosks across Canada has been resolved after causing significant delays and passenger frustration throughout major transportation hubs on Thursday. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) confirmed late yesterday that all Primary Inspection Kiosk (PIK) systems are now operational following what officials described as “an unexpected system-wide technical issue.”
The outage, which began around 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time, forced immigration officers at airports including Toronto Pearson, Vancouver International, and Montréal-Trudeau to process thousands of international travelers manually—a time-consuming procedure that created bottlenecks throughout terminals and left many passengers stranded for hours.
“We were standing in line for nearly three hours,” said Laurent Beauchamp, who arrived at Toronto Pearson on a flight from Paris. “There was no information, no water provided, and people were getting increasingly frustrated. Some missed their connecting flights.”
The CBSA acknowledged in a statement that the disruption significantly impacted travelers entering Canada and apologized for the inconvenience. According to agency spokesperson Marie Cloutier, technicians worked “around the clock” to identify and address the root cause of the system failure.
“Our preliminary investigation suggests this was not a cybersecurity incident but rather a server infrastructure problem,” Cloutier explained. “We’ve implemented additional redundancy measures to prevent similar occurrences in the future.”
This represents the third major outage affecting Canada’s border systems since the implementation of the enhanced digital processing framework in 2023. Transport critic MP James Harlow has called for a parliamentary review of the technology’s reliability.
“We cannot continue having these critical systems fail without proper accountability,” Harlow told reporters. “International visitors and returning Canadians deserve better than to be stranded for hours because of preventable technical failures.”
The Air Transport Association of Canada estimates that approximately 65,000 passengers were affected by the disruption, with economic impacts potentially reaching millions when accounting for missed connections, accommodation needs, and business disruptions.
Several airlines, including Air Canada and WestJet, issued travel advisories and waived rebooking fees for affected passengers. However, many travelers expressed frustration with what they described as inadequate communication during the crisis.
“The lack of real-time updates was the most frustrating part,” said Sunita Patel, who was returning from a business trip to Singapore via Vancouver. “In 2025, with all our technological capabilities, how can there not be better contingency planning?”
The CBSA has promised a comprehensive review of its communication protocols during system outages, acknowledging that passenger information could have been handled more effectively.
As Canada approaches its busiest travel season with the winter holidays, this incident raises important questions about the resilience of our border technology infrastructure. With increasing reliance on automated systems, can we develop more robust backup procedures that minimize disruption when technology inevitably fails?
