Update on Importing Goods to UBC

The UBC community regularly imports goods from outside of Canada as part of the university’s world-class research activity and to support operations.

As all goods imported into the country need to be cleared through the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), it is important to understand how we manage this process at UBC, and when there are important changes.

The physical movement of goods into Canada (as well as location tracking) is managed for us by various couriers (FedEx, Purolator, etc.), but the coordination of CBSA clearance is handled by the university’s customs broker Livingston. Couriers are not directly involved with customs clearance, and brokers are not involved in the physical movement and location tracking of goods.

What’s changing?

The CBSA is initiating a multi-year transformation of the collection of duties/taxes for goods imported to Canada called the CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management project (CARM).

As part of this project, CBSA is introducing an online client portal on May 25. Functionality of this portal will expand in early 2022. More information about CARM is available on the CBSA website.

What does our community need to do?

While there is a new client portal being established by CBSA, we want our community to understand that our individual community members need to take no action.

Individuals ordering goods from outside of Canada should not create individual accounts in the CBSA client portal, as our brokerage activities will still be managed centrally through UBC’s broker. At this point there are effectively no changes for our community to action, and the ordering of international goods should continue as normal.

UBC’s current key process points for importing goods are as follows:

1. Goods are ordered by UBC community member.
2. Shipper ships the goods through a courier, and the courier physically moves the goods into Canada.
3. Once at the border, CBSA informs our broker Livingston that there are shipments awaiting customs clearance.
4. Livingston reviews documentation on UBC’s behalf, and may require more information from the receiver (the UBC addressee/contact for the shipment), such as Workday worktags and additional backup documentation.
5. Livingston also handles and manages brokerage fees and duties up front.
6. In Workday, individual programs, funds, and departments are charged for relevant fees via the worktags provided to Livingston.

More information about international shipments to UBC is available on the Transport page of the Procure to Pay section.

If you have any questions about brokerage please contact Bryan Antenor, Customer Support Manager in Financial Operations.