Canada’s federal auditor general found that CARM, the C$800 million system the Canada Border Services Agency launched in October 2024 for collecting duties on business imports, still needs at least 38 workarounds done by hand, which cost staff about 92,000 hours a year. Some of those workarounds run through the old systems CARM was built to replace, so the CBSA has had to push back shutting them down. Importers send the agency about 19,000 help requests a month, and by June the backlog had reached 4,000 unresolved cases, with some open for more than 500 days. The CBSA said the workarounds were only ever intended as a stopgap during the switchover and that CARM stays available 99% of the time.
Canada’s C$800 million CARM customs system still relies on 38 manual workarounds two years after launch, auditor general finds
Paul Drecksler is the founder and editor of Shopifreaks, covering the most important stories in e-commerce.
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