CORNWALL – Border officials are warning travellers about the consequences of low-balling the value of goods coming into Canada.
This, as the Canada Border Services Agency has dealt with a dozen different cases at Ontario border points from mid-March to mid-April.
In those cases, the items were seized and the travellers had to pay a fine to get them back or lost them altogether.
In Cornwall on April 11, a Quebec resident declared a motorhome with a value of $1,000 U.S. and a new motor for the motorhome at $3,000 U.S. That total was $5,338 Canadian.
It turned out the actual value was around $33,367 Canadian.
The items were seized and the resident from Baie-Comeau, Que. had to pay $15,788 to get them back “instead of $1,668 Canadian, if he had made a truthful declaration,” the CBSA said.
This traveller was lucky because, in other cases, the items are seized for good.
The penalty for undeclared or falsely declared items range from 25-80 per cent of the value of the seized items.