This holiday long weekend is Canada Border Services (CBS) second busiest time after Black Friday and for the province’s taxpayers, it’s an expensive weekend.
For Canadian border guards, Sunday and Monday will be long days when the exodus of thousands of holidaying British Columbians return home. And while some border guards will be paid overtime salaries, there are reports that many travelers will have their duty fees waived by guards.
This weekend last year almost 100,000 vehicles crossed into the U.S. and the Pacific Region border guards charged more than $11 million in overtime.
At the same time, CBS has been told to wave those same-day shoppers through and not collect taxes and duties to prevent the types of lineups that occurred into the U.S. on Friday. Wait times were nearing four hours to cross.
“Small business are impacted when these things happen when people are waved through the border and don’t have to pay duty,” says Mike Klassen, Canadian Federation of Independent Business. “Of course they are going to go where it’s cheaper and easier to get, but let’s make the playing field as fair as possible.”
Other critics say the real issue is the high tariffs and taxes we pay on goods on this side of the border; which is what ultimately creates such long lineups, and costly overtime for border guards.
“That’s the bigger problem that the politicians don’t want to talk about,” says Jordan Bateman from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “There was a report done by the senate, that looked at billions of dollars more than Canadian consumers have to spend for identical products to what you can get in the United States – and it all comes down to taxes and tariffs.”
For now, most drivers Global BC talked to say the bargains in the U.S. are still worth the wait. But be warned, the CBS is saying the return traffic back into B.C. on Sunday and Monday could be even worse.
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