A nationwide outage of the primary inspection kiosks and NEXUS that stalled customs clearances for travellers for hours Sunday was caused by a system malfunction, Canada Border Services Agency says.

“CBSA systems remained secure. Our systems were not hacked, and this outage was not the result of a virus. No personal information was compromised,” Jacqueline Callin, a spokesperson for the agency, told the Star in an email Wednesday.

“The system outage affected all airports to some degree at the same time. We can confirm that this is the first time such an outage has occurred.”

According to Callin, the agency experienced “multiple system outages” at both airports and land ports of entry across Canada at around 10 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday, causing border wait times in excess of 90 minutes. It wasn’t until 5:42 p.m. that the problems were resolved. The backlogs were finally cleared just before 9 p.m.

“Throughout the outage, CBSA management and airport or bridge authorities worked collaboratively to facilitate arriving passenger flows and border clearances,” said Callin. “When a system outage occurs, border service officers resort to the manual processing of travellers. When unexpected issues arise, the CBSA works diligently to process travellers in as timely a manner as possible, without compromising the safety and security of Canada.”

The agency didn’t know how many travellers were affected by the outage, but said at least nine international airports from coast to coast reported experiencing the problem: Toronto Pearson, Hamilton, Ottawa, Calgary, Halifax Stanfield, Pierre Elliott Trudeau in Montreal, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Vancouver.

Callin said the agency is completing its incident analysis, and where applicable, will implement corrective measures as soon as possible to avoid another outage from happening again.

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