Canadians smuggling cheap cheese across the border, cops say
With respect to superior variety and selection, there really is just one reason Canadians flock across the border to shop: money.
Indeed, there’s little question many goods today, especially with the loonie near par with the greenback, are much cheaper on the American side of the border.
But while Canadian bureaucrats and retailers wring their hands over lost business to the U.S., regulations that are keeping the price of Canadian goods high just might be fuelling the goofiest of black markets.
Like this, the so-called “mozzarella mafia”: a cross-border cheese smuggling operation Canadian cops are fighting to snuff out.
According to police in the Niagara region, the unthinkable is now true. The gap between cheese prices in Canada and the U.S. has grown so large cops are having to visit Canadian restaurants and pizzerias asking where they’ve bought their cheese.
*Bing: The weirdest things people smuggle
The suspicions grow from the rise of cheese smugglers, who are packing their trunks with “bricks” of cheese – the kind typically used atop the pizzas you buy and love.
In Canada, because of market restrictions levied by the Canadian Dairy Board, the same brick of cheese can cost as much as three times the price it does in the U.S.
“On a monthly basis we are approached by someone who wants to bring American cheese over the border and sell it to us,” one Niagara Falls pizzeria told the CBC.
Pizzeria owners say they’re offered cases of contraband cheese for about $150, where normally one might cost $240. That’s a near 40 per cent markdown, and when you extrapolate a $100,000-a-year cheese budget for pizzerias, it’s also nothing to dismiss.
In fact, cheese smuggling has become so lucrative – and so low risk: “It’s not like they’re going to put you in handcuffs and take you away (for not declaring cheese at the border),” one restaurateur said – that some crooked cops have been alleged to take part.
A few Niagara Regional Police Service officers might soon face charges for their part in cheese smuggling, which can make drivers as much as $2,000 a cross-border trip, according to the CBC.
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
Posted by: Al-Man | Sep 28, 2021 9:47:15 AM
With all the murders, gun smuggling, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and terrorist threats between Canada and the US, you'd think that there would be something more important to invetsigate than cheese smuggling. I guess priorities are a little mixed up.
Posted by: Basil Clieff | Sep 28, 2021 1:16:36 PM
Why is there a dairy board? No talent people who just suck taxpayers to pay their wages. Most never had a job and wouldn't no how to do a job!!!. A great many of these people dont look out the window in the morning because they would have nothing to do in the afternoon. Trough feeders!! non productive parasites. I view them disgust
Posted by: Gregg | Sep 28, 2021 5:45:20 PM
I thought cheese was legal??When cheese becomes illegal Ill do something about it. The government has done nothing to get prices in line with the USA, its pretty bad when we export the products to the USA and we end up paying more for it. Like fuel etc. The dairy board has to go, same as the wheat board, this is why Harper is doing this with the wheat board, its so Canadians can have cheaper bread, not feeding this board millions a year to sit back and do nothing but look out windows, you know the same behaviour unions have...
Posted by: fed up canadian | Oct 1, 2021 8:05:06 AM
a dollar should be worth a dollar, not less, like in canada, i think that the only way that the prices will go down is if people smuggle the cheaper stuff from the states, if i lived close to the border, i would not even buy one litre of gas from canada, all of my fuel would come from the states, so would all my clothes, and most of my food, if i could buy my car from the states, i would. one example is the can am bikes, they are made in quebec, they are much cheaper in the states than they are in canada, they are made in canada. i contacted them and asked them why, they said it was because of shipping costs, so i asked why the quads were cheaper in louisiana than they were in quebec, it costs more to ship to louisiana than to ship to quebec, i said. he told me that he had no time for this and hung up the phone. so out of spite, i bought a honda quad, made in the usa (the price gap is not as bad, and the quad costs less), i will not support a factory in canada that sells to the states for a lower price, they can go fu(k themselves. if all canadians were like me, many prices would go down.
Posted by: southbound | Oct 7, 2021 11:43:47 AM
Never mind cheese I can hardly wait to go south to my home that cost me a fraction of my Calgary residence, food ,alcohol,my vehicle and on and on it goes everything is cheaper,maybe soon we can stay there for 8 month, would be interesting how much canadian business ,Dentists,optometrist loose by the yearly snowbird exodus.
book by Keats Connelly is a must read if you have any kind of wealth,
Posted by: 10k.bc | Oct 18, 2021 12:29:08 PM
It's not actually illegal to import cheese from the USA unless you re-sell the stuff. It's not even really smuggling in the purest sense because 6+ cases of cheese is hard to hide. Scotty would have had to declare what it was. There isn't really even hard limit on importing "groceries" or any taxes on them for personal importation (ie. you intend to use it yourself or it's for family). You could even load up a compact car and it probably wouldn't be a big deal unless a border guard "suspected" it was for "commercial purposes."
Border guards typically have better things to do than be the "grocery police" -- a monicker they detest. Even that much cheese wouldn't normally raise an eyebrow. The only way these guys would have gotten caught is if someone ratted them out, and the iron fisted dairy monopoly put pressure on Ottawa to issue orders to Border Services to investigate and detain large cheese imports.