Widespread tech outage affects Canadian airports, hospitals and border crossings

Toronto –

A global technology outage grounded flights, disrupted hospitals and backed up border crossings in Canada on Friday, as issues persisted hours after problems with Microsoft services were said to be getting fixed.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said the problem occurred when it deployed a faulty update to computers running Microsoft Windows – and that the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and disruptions continued after the technology company said it was gradually fixing the problem.

Major Canadian companies, including Porter Airlines and Telus, said their operations had been affected. Newfoundland and Labrador’s government and health authority reported disruptions, as did several major Ontario hospitals.

Brent Arnold, a Toronto-based cybersecurity and technology lawyer, called Friday’s outage a software update gone wrong.

“This may be, I think, the biggest scale one that we’ve seen,” said Arnold, a partner at law firm Gowling WLG.

Porter Airlines, which initially grounded flights until 12 p.m. ET, extended cancellations until 3 p.m. due to the outage. That meant the majority of its flights — the carrier runs more than 230 per day on average — were scrapped.

Martin Bertrand, who was scheduled to fly Porter from Toronto to the U.S. for a weekend trip with his wife, said his plans had been put in limbo.

“We’re kind of disappointed that this whole thing happened,” he said in an interview from the city’s island Billy Bishop Airport.

“We’re still in the dark. So, we’re trying to figure out if there’s a glimmer of hope for us.”

Allan Friedland, who was set to fly from Billy Bishop to New Jersey for a family gathering, said he had to rebook on an Air Canada flight out of Toronto Pearson International Airport.

“We should hopefully make it,” he said.

At Pearson airport, as well as the main airports in Montreal and Calgary, most arrivals and departures between Canada and the U.S. were called off or postponed.

Passengers at Pearson saw early morning departures to cities including Houston, Denver and Washington, D.C., delayed for up to five hours. Flights from Chicago and Newark, N.J., were cancelled.

U.S. airlines were among the carriers affected, including United and Delta Air Lines, which have partnerships with Air Canada and WestJet, respectively. The fact the outage occurred overnight meant fewer flights were affected, with airlines’ IT systems back up and running by sunrise on the East Coast.

“If you take a look at this from a global perspective, the impact in Canada is pretty minimal compared to what happened in other parts of the world,” said aviation consultant Duncan Dee, pointing to airport pandemonium in parts of Europe and Asia.

Some travellers will likely have to wait up to 72 hours before they reach their destinations, Dee said, “not to mention the rolling delays that will occur as a result of this.”

Disruptions extended to government offices, agencies and health care.

University Health Network, one of Canada’s largest hospital networks, said some of its systems had been affected by the outage. In a social media post, it said clinical activity was continuing as scheduled, but some patients may experience delays.

St. Joseph’s Healthcare said its Hamilton hospital remained open as it worked on a fix to the issues it was experiencing with its IT systems.

The Canada Border Services Agency said it had experienced a partial systems outage of its telephone reporting system, primarily used by small aircraft passengers and boaters, that had since been resolved.

“The CBSA worked urgently with its partners and service providers to mitigate any disruptions and restore full service as quickly as possible,” spokeswoman Jacqueline Roby said in a statement.

“We are continuing to monitor further potential impacts. No CBSA systems are affected at this time.”

Earlier on Friday, Windsor police reported long delays at both Canada-U.S. border crossings at the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel.

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador advised users of its digital platforms of possible service disruptions. The province’s health authority, NL Health Services, said its IT services had also been affected, including the main information system used to manage patient care and finance information.

Banks in Canada were “reviewing the situation based on updates from their technology partners,” a spokeswoman for the Canadian Bankers Association said.

“Any current impacts on banking services would be temporary,” Maggie Cheung said in a statement.

Calvin Watt, who said he held an investment account with RBC, said he was unable to make any trades Friday morning.

“Nothing is able to go through,” he said, speaking in the lobby of a downtown Toronto office building. “I am still not able to make trades.”

At least one major Canadian telecommunications carrier said the outage had affected its operations.

A spokeswoman for Telus said some of its employees were unable to access “the tools and systems necessary to support our customers.” The company was working with “the utmost urgency” to get the systems working again, she said.

Bell and Rogers, two of the other major carriers, said their networks were unaffected.

Canada Post said a small number of post offices across the country appeared to be affected by the outage, calling the impact to customers “minimal.”

Microsoft 365 posted on social media platform X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”

CrowdStrike said it was “actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”

“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed,” it wrote in a statement.

Arnold, the Toronto cybersecurity lawyer, said the outage was a startling reminder of how dependent companies in Canada and around the world have become on just a handful of operating systems.

“We have also become more vulnerable because of that concentration in just a few companies and a few pieces of vital technology,” he said.

“I think it’s probably going to be days or weeks before we understand the full impact.”

With files from Maan Alhmidi, Sharif Hassan, Chris Reynolds, Sammy Hudes and The Associated Press.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2024.