Canada's border guard union says people are sneaking across a remote crossing between B.C. and Alaska., after the Canadian Border Services Agency tried to close the border overnight to save money.

The two communities Hyder, Alaska, and Stewart, B.C. have lived side-by-side for about 100 years, sharing everything from emergency services to bars.

Stewart, which is across from Alaska's Misty Fiords National Park, calls itself North America's most northern ice-free port. It has a population of about 300, while about 60 people live in Hyder.

But in April, the CBSA began closing the border overnight to save money. Locals in the two towns, which operate as one, complained the overnight closure hurt tourism and mining.

So since June, it has been possible to cross from one town to another between midnight and 8 a.m. by picking up the phone to a border guard in Yukon and flashing your passport at a video camera.

But Jean-Pierre Fortin, president of the Customs and Immigration Union, says the border cameras can't be seen by the agent in the Yukon until the next day and several people who didn't pick up the phone have snuck across at night.

"They were not able to catch the people that went by the border so far," says Fortin."They weren't able to identify the people, they're still working on the footage, which doesn't seem to produce any results."

When asked to comment on the allegations, the CBSA told CBC News, "It is not the practice of the Canada Border Services Agency to comment on third party remarks."

However, when the agency first installed the telephone system, it described it as a pilot project that would run until Dec. 31, 2015 and said it would assess if the telephone reporting system meets the needs of both communities.