Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) is moving to its Single Window Initiative and will begin decommissioning their legacy system on April 1st. In a March 29th notice, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said they will not “reduce the service hours for manually processing import declarations transmitted” through the legacy service options “at this time.” The announcement follows industry concerns and has prompted CBSA to transition to a phased approach instead of the April 1st decommission of the legacy service options for Other Government Departments (OGD) pre-arrival review system (PARS) and release on minimum documentation (RMD).
Manual processing will be supported through CFIA’s National Import Service Centre (NISC) between the hours of 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. ET, 7 days a week. However, the notice said the agency will focus its efforts on the single window initiative. As a result, the four hour “informal service standard for processing OGD PARS/RMD declarations will no longer exist.”