The Canada Border Services Agency and the World Customs Organization

International Cooperation in Action

June 30, 2006 - Castries, Saint Lucia

left to right: Mr. Rick Patterson (CBSA), Mr. Claude Maturine (SLC&E), Ms. Anne Kline (CBSA), Mr. Daniel Perrier (CBSA), Mr. Bernard Black (SLC&E)

During the last two weeks of June 2006, Saint Lucia Customs and Excise (SLC&E) hosted a team of three officials from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). This visit marked the beginning of a cooperative project between the two countries, under the auspices of Canada's Customs Capacity Building Project in the Americas, an initiative funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

This project was aptly timed, as SLC&E had already begun an internal review of its own program administration, with an eye to ongoing reforms and modernization, and warmly welcomed the participation of the Canadian delegation in this exercise.

Using the World Customs Organization (WCO) Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade (SAFE) as its basis for review, the CBSA team worked with officials from SLC&E to examine the island's current operational and strategic management practices.

The goal of this initial visit was to inventory the work of the SLC&E administration and to begin to identify areas where efficiencies might be realized. In just ten days of working together, the two countries were able to accomplish a great deal, through interviews with staff, meetings with stakeholders and on-site visits, resulting in a detailed catalogue of the administration's current strengths and weaknesses. The WCO Diagnostic Framework methodology was instrumental in achieving these results.

In order to continue to move this collaborative project forward, a strategic planning session is scheduled for the fall of 2006, at which time representatives from the two administrations will continue to work together to clearly identify and articulate SLC&E's organizational and change priorities, and to begin to map out a plan for implementation, including the identification of specific areas where the CBSA will best be able to assist SLC&E in their efforts to strengthen their capacity and to continue to evolve as a more modern and efficient Customs administration.