Ontario business owner fined $36.9M for failing to declare exported used vehicles

The Canada Border Services Agency says its investigation determined the Ontario business owner failed to declare hundreds of used vehicles exported from Canada.

An Ontario business owner is facing a steep $36.9 million penalty after the Canada Border Services Agency says he failed to declare hundreds of used vehicles exported from Canada.

According to a CBSA release on Monday, the agency’s criminal investigations section in Halifax launched an investigation in 2021 to further examine an Ontario exporter believed to be shipping a large number of used vehicles from Canada to West Africa without completing the required export declarations.

Through its investigation, two search warrants were executed by CBSA in London, Ont., in July 2023 that resulted in the seizure of business and financial records, vehicle titles, bills of sales, bankers boxes of documents, computers, cellphones and SIM cards.

Two years later, in August 2025, the CBSA served notice of ascertained forfeiture to the business owner for not reporting the exported goods as prescribed under section 95 of the Customs Act. This form of notice, the CBSA says, is used to issue a fine when seizing goods is either impractical or impossible, such as when they’ve been exported from Canada.

The notice came after the agency said it had reviewed and analyzed more than 750,000 records collected through the course of the investigation.

In total, the owner was determined to have failed to declare more than 2,300 used vehicles exported from Canada. The $36.9 million penalty is equivalent to the full value of the exported vehicles.

“The multi-million dollar penalty attached to the outcome of this investigation sends a strong reminder to commercial exporters that they will be held accountable for not respecting mandatory reporting requirements and Canadian laws,” said Dominic Mallette, regional director general of the CBSA, Atlantic Region.