Warning for Traveling Otaku in Canada: Beware Customs

14 Comments

yuricon on Dec. 31, 2008

It's been well known in the GLBT publishing world that the Canadian customs officials are completely out of control and have been for over a generation. They seize and destroy GLBT themed books without cause, they harass bookstores and hold their shipments indefinitely. There's no one to oversee them and hundreds of lawsuits against them. No one in the Canadian government has seen fit to address this issue. Nor will they, because they confine themselves to looking for "obscene material" which we all know is bad....

gia on Dec. 31, 2008

This is really awful. Has it just been impossible to get citizens together to protest or petition or write their representatives or whatever?

SimonJones on Dec. 31, 2008

To echo yuricon, this isn't new (the post he referenced was made in 2006).

Canadian customs operate with little oversight, employ arbitrary enforcement which differs from province to province, and act in open defiance of Canada's own Supreme Court. Agents apply obscenity standards which are lower than that of Canadian law, meaning material which would be legal inside Canada may still be seized at the border. But Canada gets free healthcare, so it's a wash.

Seriously, look at the beady smirk and the molestor mustache on the agent to the right. I wouldn't leave a kid with that guy.

Agent_Lost on Dec. 31, 2008

as a Canadian, i field ashamed

OkazukiIchigo on Dec. 31, 2008

That never happened to me when I brought "that" type of manga, customs back to Canada can be a pain.

And please no Canadian jokes....

hazelnutman on Dec. 31, 2008

I'm Canadian, and I can't help but to shake my head in disgust.

Remind me to ship everything to myself via secret underground postal services when I get back from Japan.

Pyro on Dec. 31, 2008

Ugh, even more overzealous people pushing their ideals on others. We need moral laws for a reason, but we're talking about manga here (hentai, or not).

On a side note, this article's picture made me laugh.

Lunarmoth on Dec. 31, 2008

Canada, what the hell! This sounds like a uptight thing us Americans would do instead of you Canadians. But now that the pieces are set I can see a way to make money off this. O if it was only that easy to make cash (no really I need money).

MoonStorm on Dec. 31, 2008

Well that no good the sad thing is they probably do the same things in the states.

Chicken008 on Dec. 31, 2008

...WTF, why aren't like officers at comic shops and book stores then?

Sigue on Jan. 2, 2009

I feel bad for the customs workers. Let's face it - if you lived in an igloo you'd be pretty disgruntled too, especially if the hockey game was canceled. If I was Canadian, I would import manga during the summer month, when the customs officers are likely to be a little more pleasant.

Lemegeton300 on Jan. 2, 2009

this kind of thing disgusts me. people like that have such a stereotypical view of the world and other cultures

Damnation_Lee on Jan. 3, 2009

Ya well personally F**K Canada. They're just pissed because they suck and don't ever do anything relevent to anything. I'm mean if they disappeared then nobody'd even notice.

HeeroYuy on Jan. 4, 2009

As it says in their pledge, "Oh Canada..."

lol

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