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OTTAWA — The new high-tech equipment Canadian border officers are increasingly relying on to keep contraband out of the country isn’t particularly reliable, suggest data obtained by Postmedia News.

And border guards responsible for operating the machines say the figures don’t even tell the whole story.

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Documents obtained by Postmedia News through access to information legislation suggest large scanners used to inspect transport trucks and shipping containers at a dozen land and marine crossings across Canada were in use, on average, just 24 days last year. Meanwhile, the machines were broken down for, on average, 37 days.

Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2012, an average of 3,047 inspections were conducted at each of the 12 locations. Of those inspections, test results led Canada Border Services Agency officers to conduct follow-up inspections an average of 105 times.

The two crossings with the highest number of days the machines were not working — Halifax and Montreal’s Tellier commercial crossing — were also using brand new, $2.5-million machines. Heimann Cargo Vision Mobile systems are being phased in to replace an aging fleet of mobile gamma-ray scanners known as Vehicle and Cargo Inspection Systems (VACIS) which, according to a September 2012 memo, also “require a lot of maintenance which is to be expected given that they are three years past their expected replacement dates.”