Canada Customs is a mess
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Here's a letter I wrote to my member of parliament about my recent experience with Canada Customs.
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I've recently returned to Canada following five years living in Tokyo. I'm pleased to be living in The Beach for the first time and look forward to raising my son in this livable area. I'm writing to relate our experience in returning to Canada, and bring to your attention an issue with Canada Customs that I think requires some improvement.
Upon arrival in Tokyo, I registered as a Canadian living in the city. I also volunteered as a warden with the DFAIT Consular Services department. I completed the training for the warden program and stood ready to respond in the case of a major earthquake by contacting other registered Canadians, leading them to evacuation sites, helping them with injuries, etc. I viewed it a way of maintaining connection with Canada and supporting my fellow expats.
Upon return to Canada, I worked with the Embassy staff to ensure that my Japanese wife could enter the country legally and to understand the process for her sponsorship. All went well until I went to the Customs office in Brampton on February 1 to receive the household possessions that I'd had shipped from Japan. I took a half day off of work and rented a car for the effort, but upon arriving at Customs I was told by an inspector Wagner that none of the documents I'd brought proved my residency in Japan over the required period of the year previous. The documents I had supplied at that time included:
+ my Japanese drivers license
+ a certified translation of that drivers license
+ a certified translation of my family registration in Japan (the most important document in Japan, a citizen card plus an SIN card plus legal proof of my current residency there)
+ two visas in my passport and prior passport showing that I'd been in Japan since 2006
I was also given some paperwork to fill in, without which the goods could not be released. When I advised that it could take weeks to obtain a new set of translated and certified documentation, I was simply told that Customs would wait and that all the while I'd be billed for the cost of storing my goods.
Stunned at the rejection of my various articles of proof, I returned home and after some consulting with my wife (she and our son were staying in St. Catharines with my mother while I worked in the city) I then double-checked with the staff at the Customs 1-800 line. They sounded unsure of why I'd been sent away but during the call they contacted the Brampton office and decided that there was nothing I could do but scrounge around for additional "proof" of my residency in Japan. They cited things like my three-year-old lease document or perhaps statements from a bank.
Neither of those comes from an official source and a lease can be made out of date by the very thing they supposedly wanted to disprove-that I had moved away at some point since. And frankly I don't know what to make of the request for some electronic statements from a bank! My wife and I spent the next 36 hours scrambling to find something suitable. We'd followed the requirements outlined on the Borders Services website and when those had been rejected we didn't have anything suitable at hand. With our plans to move into our apartment in The Beach scuttled by the inspector's strange demands, all of our plans were turned upside down.
And then suddenly everything was cleared up. The shipping company we used had made some inquiries with Customs and had been told that Customs would inspect the goods we'd shipped back. On February 3 the shipping company was able to take possession of our goods, and on February 4 we moved in to our new apartment. Looking at the boxes that arrived, it was clear that not one had had its contents "inspected" by Customs. In discussion with the shipping company, I learned also that none of the official documents had been supplied by the shipping company. The goods had simply been released. Naturally, we cancelled our efforts on getting more documents secured and translated.
This was a costly, embarrassing, and stressful introduction to Canada for my Japanese wife. As it stands, I don't know what happened to change the position of Customs on the issue. I certainly don't understand the process by which Customs makes its decisions. And given that our goods were released without either "acceptable proof" or any of the documentation being provided I can't imagine that Customs is actually performing their mission of controlling the arrival of goods in the country.
I'm not asking you to do anything specific on our behalf-everything, inexplicably, seems to have worked out. But please understand that Canada Customs seems to see fit to unnecessarily make life difficult for law-abiding Canadians, seemingly at random! Despite having maintained what links I could to Canada during my absence, and despite having properly complied with the stated requirements, I was subjected to a runaround that I wouldn't wish on anyone in my position. I will send a similar letter to the head of Border Services if I can track down such a party. If there is ever any future incident requiring testimony on my experience, I will gladly provide it.
Thank you for your long service of Beaches/East York.