Our US arm sells precision components to an Ontario distributor, and two truckloads are moving now. The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) counter-tariffs against US-origin goods took effect at 00:01 EDT today, Sep 8. Both loaded on Sep 7, but one carrier's bill was printed only this morning.
The Order in Council carves out goods already on their way on Sep 8. As far as I can tell, that means handed to the first carrier for an unbroken journey to Canada, proved by a through bill or waybill whose date is Sep 7 or earlier.
What I cannot work out is which date decides it: for a truck, the date printed on the bill, or the moment the driver picked up?
Truck at Windsor: the date printed on the bill does not decide it. Pickup does. Have the shipper's dispatch record and the GPS trace showing the driver loaded before 00:01 EDT on Sep 8, plus a bill or waybill dated Sep 7 at the latest. Then Chapter 99. It has to match the annex your product sits in, not the headline rate. Get it wrong and CARM flags it on the first pass; the K-84 comes back carrying the wrong rate and your winter goes on BSF-715s.
Your two trucks are the easy case, Hana: loaded in time, moving, and the dispatch record proves it. What bites is freight that left your dock but not anyone's yard: on a trailer in a carrier's lot, or on a railcar awaiting a pull. Left the warehouse is not the test, moving is. This morning's real problem is the queue, at the crossing and in CARM. Stage the CAD (the accounting declaration you file in CARM) now and release it only when the truck is at the booth.
The real issue here is not which date wins, Tomás. It is what the carve-out is written around, and it is not motion.
First, on your test. The relief runs on goods bound for Canada and under the control of a carrier. Control, not movement. A trailer standing in a yard overnight is still in that carrier's hands, and freight does not lose the exemption because the driver took his mandated rest. Your railcar awaiting a pull troubles me for the same reason: I would want to know who held it, not whether it was rolling.
Second, and this is the part Hana should note: the proof has to sit with the importer, and the importer is the Ontario distributor. Her US arm cannot make this claim at all. It can only fail to supply the evidence behind it.
What should have existed already is a handover pack, custody documents travelling with the goods, so the party answering the officer already holds the answer.
Two questions sit in your post, one asked and one not. Asked: which event counts when paper and pickup disagree. The dispatch record usually carries the point, because the exemption is written around the movement, not the paper; the losing case is a bill dated Sep 7 over a pickup that a GPS trace puts on Sep 8. The unasked one: if any line had remission under the existing steel and aluminium counter-tariff order, that eligibility carries into the new 50 percent band, claimed at entry, not refunded afterwards.
The same moment runs differently in the EU, which settles nothing for Canada. Under the Union Customs Code duty is fixed when the declaration is accepted, so goods at sea when a measure begins bear it unless carved out. Whether a measure spares goods already on their way, and by which date, is written into each measure separately; I have seen it turn on the date of export shown on the transport document rather than handover to the first carrier, a different event from the one your Order names.
