Clearit.ca's Blog on Customs Brokerage and News Updates

Canada is preparing to enter a new era of unprecedented free trade involving countries from the Pacific-Asia region, the Americas and Europe. Stakeholders and various government departments are taking steps ahead of the implementation of the different agreements – those in the industry who haven't yet started analyzing how they'll be affected by the agreements should consider starting now. Steps Towards a New Trade Regime The Comprehensive Ec...

The road to the implementation of the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been quite a long one, but one senior European Union politician is hopeful to see it come into effect according to schedule, sometime in 2017. The hopeful EU politician in question is Bernd Lange, chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee who made his comment while visiting Ottawa and Montreal during a series of meetings...

With the Canadian dollar averaging $0.75 USD over the past year, you could be tempted to jump on the situation and increase your business south of the border. By combining a well-planned shipping strategy with the current economics, Canadian businesses and online retailers are facing an opportunity that can’t be missed. Shipping from Canada is great leverage Canadian businesses have over their U.S. competitors. It allows them to take advanta...

In a recent opinion piece on the TPP written by former RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie and published in the Globe and Mail, Balsillie shares his views on how Canada failed to set its own IP policy and continuously caved in to foreign pressures, namely from the United States. “Canada’s prosperity strategies for the past 30 years were dominated by the production principle of comparative advantage and trade liberalization. Unfortunately, this approa...

Government lawyers have been hard at work scrubbing away at details related to the Canada-European Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), and Steve Verheul, Canada’s chief negotiator, has just advised the House of Commons international trade committee that the legal scrub is “virtually complete”. Verheul also mentioned to the committee members that the current timeline would allow for CETA to be implemented in early 2017. “...

Considering getting your NAFTA Certificates of Origins (NCO) updated? While setting up your review for your blanket certificates - here are some best practices you should consider: Tip 1: Be sure certificates are accurately completed Ensuring that at face value, the certificates have proper coding and are fully completed is one of the first thing companies reviewing NCOs for their North American vendors will do. It may seem like good sense but ...

In early February, the Canadian government eased restrictions on trade with Iran. The amendments to the economic sanctions were brought into force following Iran’s promise to comply with imposed restrictions regarding its nuclear proliferation activities under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action presented by the P5+1 countries. In addition, the UN Security Council also eased its sanctions and many countries including the United States and th...

What seemed to be a rumour only a few days ago as Prime Minister Trudeau was about to embark on his trip to Washington has now been announced officially: Canada intends to introduce legislation in Spring 2016 to implement the Canada-U.S. Agreement on Land, Rail, Marine and Air Transport Preclearance. At a recent forum hosted by the website Politico and the Canadian American Business Council, Alan Bersin, assistant secretary for international a...

It was almost a year ago that the United States and Canada signed a new agreement on managing our long shared border. U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and then Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney signed in March 2015 what is known as the Agreement on Land, Rail, Marine and Air Transport Preclearance, an innovative mutual understanding between the two governments which many anticipated would produce significant benefits for Canada ...

Figures related to Canada’s 2015 trade numbers were published in early February by Statistics Canada: imports are up while exports are going through a gloomier period. As non-energy exports are showing a promising growth, the numbers don’t cancel out the reduced energy exports in addition to the loss of 0.6 per cent in total merchandise exports. But on the other side, imports have gone up 4.5 per cent, creating what experts are now calling th...