As I've said before, you may be one of the good guys in terms of treatment, of which there are certainly (many?) others.

And you are just following rules.

Base point: the rules for Canadian returning citizens and what they get asked should be similar/the same to what another citizen faces going into their own country. And as a dual citizen, I experience both - and there is no comparison.

I think we can all agree here that getting those rules changed, and getting the customs allowance upped to boot would be helpful to all posters on this thread, including you! ^

Simon

beijing airport customs officers(inbound and outbound) have a cute little panel below their kiosk where you can push a button rating that officer "good, bad, ugly", etc


http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=beij...+rating&m=text

Personal opinion: up it to $500/day up to some specified limit. Just like anyone else, I don't like coming back home from a day of clothes shopping at the outlet malls, only to wonder if this is the day I'm going to have to pay tax.

One other thing to point out: the personal exemptions are for *personal* things. If you are buying things for your company or things for resale, they are all subject to D&T. Occasionally I get someone who doesn't understand this.

Cute, but it won't happen here. We have unions in Canada.

On a humourous note, two weeks ago as I was waiting to be processed at customs and immigration, I was certain that I was going to get a secondary. When I was away, my tooth had decided to flare up and when I saw an endodontist there, I was notified that I'd have to receive a root canal when I got back to Canada. My jaw was barely functional. It was extremely painful just to close my mouth. I looked like I was squirreling away nuts for a really long winter and to top it off, I had a mouth guard that I was using so that I could actually talk without doubling over in pain. Unfortunately, this made me look like I was a 16 year old kid with braces in her mouth. Between my barely audible mumbling, the meds I was on, the mouth guard (and I'm quite certain some inadvertent drooling), and the agent's question of "you went there all by yourself?", I was pleasantly surprised to find that the agent had not recommended a secondary.

This is one of the more interesting threads that I've seen on FT. I usually hang out in TS/S which seems to have more US based posts.

Just for the record: CBP officers at pre-clearance stations are not always more professional, more experienced. Some of them apply for the position and are given exemplary references from their own ports, who are quite anxious to get rid of them. That's why I try to stay out of YYZ.

This one seems to go way way back. Reportedly even to the '50s though it seems the way they say it now is less intimidating.

I have. And the responses are a mixed bag with the fine (or better than fine) side being the response on average.

I've had my bad experiences with CBSA but they are limited. If you know how to handle them, then you can handle the situation and you will have a fine experience.

In fact, the other day coming back into Canada, my experience was:

Agent: "Where are you coming from?"
Me: "XXX"
Agent: "You were there for work?"
Me: "Yes."
Agent: "Who do you work for?"
Me: "XXX"
Agent: "You were on a farm?"
Me: "Yes, to visit a friend."
Agent: "Did you go on the farm?"
Me: "No."

And then me: "You're not wearing your vest today?"
[stamp]
Agent: "Yeah, I'm breaking the rules today. Welcome home"

That was pleasant enough.

I got burned by this one a few months back, and have to say that I think that it's more than a bit odd that the exemption is only for personal goods.

I bought a $120 portable hard drive in the US, and declared it when I got home (YOW). The CBSA agent asked about the way the drive was going to be used, and I told him that it would be for business. What then followed was over an hour in the secondary inspection area while I filled out paperwork, found the magic numbers needed to identify the class of goods being imported, and finally failing to find my company's RM number by searching through emails on my laptop. As it turns out, we hadn't ever registered for one, as anything we'd brought in previously we did through a broker.

So now, though I'm happy to pay the $7 GST on my hard drive, I can't, since I don't have an RM number. CBSA takes the drive, and gives me a copy of one of the forms I filled out. Instead of just paying there, I head home, and contact our CFO on the next business day about the RM number. He registers us as in importer, and after a few days we get confirmation that we can use the number, etc.

I then had to figure out where to go to pay. This takes several phone calls, and I go to a CBSA office near the YOW airport to pay my $7. Unfortunately, they don't actually have the drive there. I'm told to go to some shipping company office a few blocks away. They have no idea what I'm talking about. I finally go to the CBSA office at the YOW airport, where I had to wait another hour while they try to find my hard drive. It turns out that I was given the wrong form when I landed, and they hadn't tracked the drive properly. Eventually though they found the drive and gave it back to me.

All told, it took about 3 hours of my time, and at least 1-2 hours of CSBA personnel time to collect that $7 GST. And of course, every last penny of that $7 will be coming back to us via our GST Input Tax Credit.

So, exactly why is that exemption only for personal goods? Makes no sense to me at all.

No idea why. What an utter waste of time and resources, though.

that's just stupid enforcement that encourages lying. and considering how you could have EASILY lied and gotten away with it.
it just brings the law and the process of clearing through customs into complete and utter disrepute. i'm sure you'll be sure to buy everything commercial in canada from now on

i think you should call an MP on that.

experiences like this make me want to buy American more and more.

Actually, users of CBSA services do have the ability and right to provide feedback. Don't they have comment cards readily available like they do at Service Canada Centres?

One could view an electronic thing at the booth as a simple mechanism to do so. It gives police ID number -- which is no different than you wearing your badge visibly and/or even looking at the number on your stamp. Either way, you're identifiable/can be found. And pushing a button is definitely a good immediate way of getting feedback and users who have further issues with the officer can fill in a comment card.

So I don't think your union would be against it.

And if it was, then I would suggest that you need to find new leadership or a new union altogether.

i had a flight with my family to atlanta today at 5:15pm...we were at the pearson airport at 2:00...got checked in and everything and then they gave us to 'customs...so from 2:305-4:30 we kept waiting while people who came after us were done and cleared and left for their flights....at 4:35 they started interrogating my brother in a very rude way and kept going on for 15 minutes...we kept waiting and they let finally left us at 5:10 smirking and ssaying we will be able to get our flight...when we rreached the terminal,our flight had departed...we had to pay extra $250 to book our flights for the next day...all the inconveneience and extra charges we had to go through cuz of the US custom officers...not only those officers but even the ones who were issuing the boardin passes were very rude...who can i complain to ,where do i raise my voice?so disappointed that even i live in canada,there is no one we could ask for help.

That's U.S. CBP you have to complain to. You could get in touch with the YYZ supervisor.

I am afraid when dealing with US customs/immigration there is essentially nothing you can do. Plus, it's not like these guys are terribly competent or civilized. Just take it and go on with your life.

At one point, when the dollar was very low, we had one of them as a neighbor. Not bad people, but at the end of the day, they could tell they were somewhat culturally challenged and they had a huge inferiority complex.

I myself never had a serious problem with US immigration, they have typically been polite if impersonal and looking like the suspect anyone.

Worst that ever happened was that we got admitted up to the 31 of June 1980 something. My wife was trying to tell me there is no such a date; I had to tell her in a foreign tongue to "shut up, woman, can't you see the guy is challenged enough by the situation as it is. You don't want to get us in trouble."