londonhatter

Hi everyone


I will be landing this Friday coming and seem to have got myself into a tiz with the rules on goos accompanying.

I will be entering Canada on a spousal PR (Wife is a Canadian citizen) and the wife will be accompanying me on the flight.

I am taking 4 bags of goods accompanying. This is mixed his and hers clothes. The question is, what do I put down for the list of accompanying goods quantity wise. I am a bit confused as my wife can bring whatever she wants as a Canadian citizen returning to Canada. I could just list two bags (What I can physically carry) I guess but I am unsure if my wife should be returning to Canada with paperwork to say that she is coming back.

Technically, she is just going back for a visit. I am landing then returning to the uk as we are heading out for good in July 09. I assume that my wife will not be any part of the landing process as she is Canadian.

Confused or just mildly panicky, either way any pointer would be great.


Thank you in advance. I am probably worrying over nothing

Cheers

Judy in Calgary

First of all, the customs officer is not going to be so anal as to worry about which items in the suitcases belong to you and which belong to your wife, down to the last toothbrush.

It's okay for you to say you have a couple of suitcases' worth of clothing (if that's the rough proportion of the clothing that belongs to you).

Secondly, it's not true that, when your wife returns to live in Canada, she can bring into Canada whatever she likes, duty-free. She will be able to bring in duty-free those items that she registered with the Canadian government at the time that she left Canada.

Again, when your wife returns to Canada, customs officers are not going to be so anal as to worry about a couple of suitcases' worth of her clothes. But, if your wife brings back a sofa, dining room table, chairs, etc., she should have registered those items on her way out of Canada. She should still have that list with her, so that she can show it to customs officials when she returns to Canada to live.

This is not an issue for your wife now, when she returns to Canada for a trip. It will be an issue when she returns to live in Canada. At that time she will be subject to import duty on the things she brings into Canada (if she did not register them on her way out of Canada).

If you, as a couple, ultimately will be bringing into Canada a larger shipment of furniture, and if you wife does not have a registered list of goods she removed from Canada, it would be in both of your interests if your Goods To Follow list had on it all of your joint furniture. The reason is that you, as a new settler in Canada, are entitled to import your belongings duty-free.

The bad news is that you must show your Goods To Follow list when you land in Canada and activate your permanent resident status, that is, this coming Friday. Your Goods To Follow list must include all of the stuff that is not with you on the plane when you land but that will follow you to Canada later.

I have personal experience of leaving Canada as a Canadian citizen and returning. We registered with the authorities the goods that we removed from Canada. While we were absent from Canada, our kids' beds bit the dust, and we replaced them. Same thing with our washing machine and dryer.

But, on returning to Canada, the list of stuff we were bringing back in roughly matched the list of stuff we had taken out. Not that customs officials examined the lists that closely. They glanced at them. But we felt comfortable that, if they had looked at the lists in more detail, we would have been covered.
x

londonhatter

Judy

You are a star. Thank you so much for answering. Our goods to follow list is ready after much thought and the list is in my name only of which I have three copies.

I think that somewhere in my mind I realise that nobody would be so anal in customs but its nice to have somebody who has been through the process say so.

On my wifes stuff she does seem to remember filling in a list when she came here 8 years ago but has no idea where that list might be so our goods to follow list will be in my name.

This loss of the original list was one of the reasons I was worried about goods accompanying


Again, many thanks

MarkG

No-one cared in the least about my 'goods accompanying' form when I landed; that seems to be the same for most people.

Really, unless you're carrying something particularly valuable, I doubt you'll get any hassle over it; heck, I had $10,000 worth of HDTV camera in my bag and they still didn't care.