Suppose you're a border official in a developing country, and you have a problem with noodles. You don't know if they're made of wheat, or a mixture of wheat and rice, or egg and wheat. How do you find out? These things matter — for duty purposes, and for investigating fraud. So what do you do? You call in the Canadians.

Paul Loo is a scientist and the CBSA's Director of Analytical and Forensic Services. He uses the noodles—a real case—as an example of the international work done by the CBSA's Science and Engineering Directorate. The CBSA lab works with many countries and international bodies to share information and practices. Border Voice sat down to chat with Paul about this international work in border science.

On the importance of international work:  "International partnerships help us stay on top of the science and engineering that supports border management," Paul says. "The criminals are so fast, and so international, that you need to work with other countries on what is really happening on the ground."

On the different types of international cooperation:  "There are two types of international work: multilateral and bilateral," Paul explains. "Multilateral cooperation is generally for public consumption: for example, we publish a paper on new trends in narcotics, in designer drugs, and we give it to the WCO (World Customs Organization) and we say: publish this on your web site. Here's the work we [Canada] have done. The bilateral projects are mainly in capacity building for developing countries, but also for the exchange of knowledge with other developed countries."

On what Canada has to offer:  "Canada has a strong background in trade, which is what many of our bilateral partners are looking for…but we've also integrated the CBSA safety/security side of things into a lot of these bilateral projects, because as Canadians we are on the cutting edge of border management, in terms of integrating a lot of different scientific and engineering services and support at the border."

On how we work:  "With any capacity-building project, we ask the country: what are you most concerned about? What are your commodities of interest? What are you seeing, but unable to analyze? What are you doing at a cursory level where you need to have more depth?"

On our intent:  "The idea is not to go and boast, or to try to impose our way on others. We just say: This is working for us; you may be able to take something from it, you may wish to adapt it to your needs and circumstances…but even if you can't, it is working for us. People look to Canada for its strong international reputation, and we are good at what we do when it comes to border management."

On the importance of science: "It's all about the facts, and evidence-based principles — and those things are fundamental. Even if a country does not have expensive lab equipment or technology, they can have access to basic scientific principles and methods….and that's why these capacity-building projects are so good for us too, for the lab, for our scientists — because the application of sound scientific principles leads to effective decisions."

Some examples
This is a small sampling of some of the capacity-building projects the CBSA lab has worked on, under the auspices of the Canadian International Development Agency.

El Salvador: "Every country has its own needs, its own issues. In El Salvador the needs were much more fundamental: they really did not have much in the way of a lab. Their chemists were okay, but they just had very basic capabilities. In the end, we retrofitted their laboratory with a complete sample management system and versatile equipment, and we gave them the ability to provide scientific reports to their clients. With El Salvador, it was almost all trade-related."

Thailand: "They have quite a few issues with tobacco and alcohol. We showed them the different blends, the different types of manufacturing processes, the different types of tobacco. Like a lot of the work we do, it was to help them combat fraud, and to help them make sure they were applying duty correctly."

India: "We worked with Environment Canada on this project. India had issues with waste metals and waste organics being shipped into their country for recycling, and they needed the ability and the methods to be able to detect and determine what these products were, to avoid the dangerous stuff: the heavy metals such as lead and cadmium, and the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). They had never done this kind of work before, so we worked up a method for them."

Ukraine: "Some of the projects I manage, but this is one that I worked on personally. They want to protect their homegrown beet-sugar industry. So if they don't know how to analyze sugar, they can't assess the type and source of the sugar, and they can't collect duties. Similar issues exist with textiles, foods and inorganic materials, where we agreed to provide both instrumentation and training. We also helped them create stronger links between their frontline officers and their labs. Because of the help we've provided — including training in suspected contraband and forensic document examination — their customs lab was recently recognized as one of the only forensic labs in that country."

Ukrainian scientists take part in technical seminars given by CBSA Science & Engineering personnel.