How?

A UK seat is surely a Right Hand Drive seat, and the Canadian seats would be Left Hand Drive....

I don't know, huge great big cars here, minis in the uk? Different airbag usage? I think the tests here are more rigorous than there. No idea why.

Thanks to everyone for your advice. I am content that the requirements are v strict in the UK and the seats we bought were almost £200, great quality with good reviews. On that basis I am convinced that they are safe for my children in the UK or here. (In fact the infant seat with the isofix base seems well more secure than any of my friends in Canada!

Now I know that it wouldn't effect the insurance, (which was really my main concern) I think I'm just going to risk it and keep them.

I'd rather risk the fine and know that my kids are safe in seats I have done loads of research on and know are fitted correctly

Thanks again

I used UK car seats here. Sure, they didn't have a CSA sticker on them. I was quite prepared to challenge any stupid nonsense by an over-zealous police officer if they called me out on it. The CSA test for car seat safety is an extract (almost verbatim) of the same ISO standard that the European test is based upon. The only significant difference is that the Canadian standard includes top tethers and chest clips, neither of which are mandatory in Europe, but I was able to buy both as after-market accessories for our seat (a Maxi-Cosi something-or-other).

The expiry date thing is a complete red herring. It is an advisory notice, and not part of the legislation. It was initially designed to discourage second-hand purchases of car seats with doubtful provenance, and has much more to do with marketing than safety - it's a classic case of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) communication.

The health-and-safety lunatics bang on about deterioration of plastics, but I call bullshit on that: the indicator stalks and cupholders in my car undergo the same temperature cycles as the child seat and they seem to survive OK, so why should a substantial polypropylene moulding suddenly fall apart when it reaches 8 years old, or whatever the arbitrary number is?

I used my UK ones too. No way was I buying 2 car seats when I had two perfectly good ones.

I figured that the sorry guv, didn't know I was doing anything wrong approach would work if challenged by anyone.

As long as they were buckled in properly and I knew they were safe, what's the issue? Now, I haven't been able to recycle them to another family which did pain me! (I pass all my stuff on if possible) but I tried......

How about going into toysrus or some place similar and snaffling a couple of stickers of the car seats there?

the whole car seat thing is a scam (imo)

I wouldn't use them. I have a Canadian seat for my daughter and it is different from the same seat made by the same company in the UK. In Canada since January this year they brought in new anti rebound standards that mean only the Canadian seats are currently passing their crash tests.

Even if you buy a seat in the states the same seat here will have an anti rebound bar or sides to make it safer.

In Alberta if stopped the fine is $115 for each thing wrong with each seat, so you can be ticketed several times on the 1 seat.

What if you have last year's CSA stamped seat? It won't have this new attachment, how much is the fine for that?

At the end of the day though you need to be comfortable with what you use for your child - no self respecting parent would deliberately put their child at risk and I agree the UK seats are much better than most out there.

To me the main risks are the car seat not being installed correctly and people putting their child forward facing too early. Children should be rear-facing until they are at least 20lbs and 1 year or older.

You can use an existing seat until it expires. I was just pointing out one of the big differences in seats that would affect their infants seat.

If you are happy with the install etc it is up to you if you want to take the risk. The 2 big differences that will make it obvious if you are stopped that its not a Canadian seat are the top tether being missing on the Britax and neither seat having a chest clip.

Oh and if you ever need to flagpole they do spotchecks on the seats to see if they are Canadian at times to stop seats being imported from the states. If they aren't Canadian they seize them and keep you until you have a Canadian seat to transport them in.

Do you happen to have an actual documented example of this happening?

I've had my own seat checked to see if it was Canadian when coming back from the states previously and I asked what would happen if it wasn't.

Think about that for a moment. How are you supposed to get a Canadian seat if you are being detained?

It's absolutely ridiculous to suggest that people crossing the boarder are expected to pull over, take the car seats out, install a new set, and carry on driving.

It may be ridiculous but it does happen but it depends on your province. Alberta has a seize and detain policy but I "think" some of the other provinces don't.