Canada Border Services Agency - Examinations, Searches and Seizures

Examinations, Searches and Seizures

All persons and goods entering Canada are subject to examination by CBSA officers. An examination can be as simple as a few questions, but can also include an examination of the subject's vehicle and/or luggage, more intensive questioning, or personal searches. The intensity of an examination depends on the reasonable grounds that the officer has to escalate the intensiveness of a search.

Examinations are performed to ensure compliance with Customs and Immigration legislation. CBSA officers are given their authority by the Customs Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. In addition, BSOs are also able to enforce other Acts of Parliament as they are designated as Peace Officers under the Criminal Code of Canada.

The agency will also seize items it labels obscene, as it did in February 2009 when it detained and banned two films by the adult film director Michael Lucas. The CBSA's Policy On The Classification Of Obscene Material states that the "ingestion of someone else's urine... with a sexual purpose" makes a film obscene.

In the year 2000 after a ten year long controversy over items the agency labeled obscene, the case reached the British Columbia Supreme Court. One judge in the case concluded not only that Customs officials had wrongly delayed, confiscated, destroyed, damaged, prohibited or misclassified materials imported by the appellant on numerous occasions, but that these errors were caused “by the systemic targeting of Little Sisters' importations in the Vancouver Customs.

Secondary examination can at times be a lengthy process and may cause delays to travellers selected for examination.