# Canada Warns Its Citizens Not To Take Cash To Usa



## longknife (Sep 25, 2014)

What the heck? $2.5 *Million* confiscated by Canadians traveling here? What the heck is that all about?


Read more @ Prison Planet.com Canada Warns its Citizens Not to Take Cash to USA


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## Toro (Sep 25, 2014)

Actually, it says $2.5 billion, but it doesn't say that much being confiscated from Canadians.  Or at least I couldn't find it.

And I can't find any reference to the Canadian government telling its citizens not to carry cash to the US.  What I find is a bunch of blog posts referencing each other and a WaPost story about police confiscating $2.5 billion from Americans (which, of course, is interesting enough).

EDIT - OK, what I found is that the Canadian government warning Canadians not to take *large* amounts of cash to the US because it can be difficult to do banking in the US if you're not a US citizen, which is true.  Then, a CBC commentator segues that into another reason - the police seizing money from Americans.



> On its official website, the Canadian government informs its citizens that “there is no limit to the amount of money that you may legally take into or out of the United States.” Nonetheless, it adds, banking in the U.S. can be difficult for non-residents, so Canadians shouldn’t carry large amounts of cash.
> 
> That last bit is excellent advice, but for an entirely different reason than the one Ottawa cites.
> 
> ...



American shakedown Police won t charge you but they ll grab your money - World - CBC News

So the link in the OP doesn't appear to be true.


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## Rikurzhen (Sep 25, 2014)

Toro said:


> Actually, it says $2.5 billion, but it doesn't say that much being confiscated from Canadians.  Or at least I couldn't find it.
> 
> And I can't find any reference to the Canadian government telling its citizens not to carry cash to the US.  What I find is a bunch of blog posts referencing each other and a WaPost story about police confiscating $2.5 billion from Americans (which, of course, is interesting enough).
> 
> ...



Surely you understand how diplomacy works, right? For the Canadian government to forthrightly warn their citizens that they shouldn't bring large amounts of cash into the US because the US government will steal it would cause grave insult to America, so instead they issue a warming under cover of some plausible excuse.

If you take their warning at face value it doesn't have any merit. Why should Canadians be WARNED that banking is difficult in the US? IF they have cash, they can pay for what they need, so their interaction with banks will be minimal. There's no need for the Canadian bureaucracy to ramp up and issue a warning for such a non-event.

However, when Canadians are having their cash stolen from them by American police, this does rise to the need to warn Canadians not to bring cash to the US. This is a real harm done to innocent Canadians.

Difficulty in banking is not a harm to be warned against. Having money stolen by cops is a harm that Canadians need to be made aware of.

Lastly, Norm McDonald's brother works for the Government-owned public broadcaster, so that does carry some weight in terms of how seriously Canadians should treat this news. It's not some podunk radio station up in Tuktoyaktuk.


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## Toro (Sep 25, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> Toro said:
> 
> 
> > Actually, it says $2.5 billion, but it doesn't say that much being confiscated from Canadians.  Or at least I couldn't find it.
> ...



Perhaps you are correct, I don't know.

But you're factually wrong about one thing - it's not the "US government" that is stealing anything.  It's local and state police.  The US government gets exactly $0.

Leaving open the possibility that you may be correct, you also may be confusing correlation with causality - that the government has issued this warning and a single columnist wrote about cash being confiscated by US police doesn't mean the government is warning about the US police.

Let's take the warning at face value.   As a Canadian who has lived in America for 17 years, I can definitely tell you that living here HAS become more complicated.  When I first moved down here, all I had to do was swap my Ontario driver's license and I got a Florida driver's license.  Turned it in, and voila! got a Florida one.  Today, I went to renew my Florida driver's license, but couldn't get it done because they wanted a Passport, an document with my social security number on it, and two other documents that verify where I live.  And I'm an American citizen now!  I can also tell you that it has become more cumbersome transferring money across the border.  What used to happen in a blink of an eye now can take up to two weeks.  I, literally, took months trying to wire money from one account in Canada to another in the US the had slightly different IDs and couldn't get it done.  Even when I moved down here when things were easier, it took some time for my bank account to open.  I can imagine that a Canadian showing up with $10k in bills might be looked at askance by bank managers, given all the government forms financial forms now have to fill out.  I work for a large investment firm, and our filing requirements to the government have exploded over the past decade, from tax evasion issues to terrorism and money-laundering.  So I'm not surprised that someone with large amounts of cash in this day and age where you can do transaction via your phone would raise suspicion by bank managers.  Ergo, Canadians wandering around with large amounts of cash would feel highly insecure, not knowing what to do.

But let's say your supposition is correct - that the Canadian government has issued a veil warning unrelated to banking.  I can think of many other reasons why the veiled warning would have many other reasons other than police confiscation.  Perhaps the government wants the money to stay in Canada where they are more likely to tax it.  Money that leaves Canada is invested outside of Canada, which is a negative for the economy.  Etc.

Like I said, you might be correct, I don't know.  But the fact that this was circulated by the usual Tin Foil Hat crowd - none of whom seemed to have looked at the actual primary information but instead made assumptions and jumped to conclusions - makes me think otherwise.


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## Pogo (Sep 25, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> Lastly, Norm McDonald's brother works for the Government-owned public broadcaster, so that does carry some weight in terms of how seriously Canadians should treat this news. It's not some podunk radio station up in Tuktoyaktuk.









 ?


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## Rikurzhen (Sep 25, 2014)

Pogo said:


> Rikurzhen said:
> 
> 
> > Lastly, Norm McDonald's brother works for the Government-owned public broadcaster, so that does carry some weight in terms of how seriously Canadians should treat this news. It's not some podunk radio station up in Tuktoyaktuk.
> ...


You know the comedian Norm McDonald? That reporter is his brother.


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## Pogo (Sep 25, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> Pogo said:
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> > Rikurzhen said:
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I know well who Norm MacDonald is.  That's actually the only part of the paragraph that _isn't _a head scratcher.

Are you trying to tell us because Norm MacDonald is a comedian, then his brother must be one too?  Btw my screen says the writer is "Martin Armstrong".


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## Rikurzhen (Sep 25, 2014)

Pogo said:


> Rikurzhen said:
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> > Pogo said:
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You're not going to see MSNBC type of bombastic analysis on CBC, it's more serious reporting, so when one of their top political reporters offers this analysis it's not like Rachel Maddow going on an on-air drunken bender.


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## Pogo (Sep 25, 2014)

Rikurzhen said:


> Pogo said:
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> > Rikurzhen said:
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Again, I have CBC on literally every day so ... I have no idea where you're trying to take this.  But thanks for the reminder to update my sigline.


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## DGS49 (Sep 29, 2014)

In today's banking climate in the U.S., anyone showing up at a bank with $10k or more is going to attract some scrutiny, not all of it visible.  You might be asked the source of the funds and what you intend to do with it, and it would be good to have a plausible response.  The USGovernment is pawning off some its obligations in law enforcement on banks.


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## Mad Scientist (Sep 29, 2014)

Banks shift large amounts of money around on a daily basis but YOU might be a Terrorist or Drug Dealer if you have 10K or more?

B.S.! Banks want their cut in fees!


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## DGS49 (Sep 30, 2014)

Money and cash are not the same thing.  If a private individual walks in with 50 thousand United States Dollars in cash and wants to deposit it, no reputable bank will take it unless the depositor has a plausible explanation of how it was obtained - legally.


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## rightwinger (Sep 30, 2014)

Who would want Canadian cash?

Nobody in the US is going to accept those stupid Loonies


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## American Horse (Dec 13, 2014)

This practice has not been borne out of the war on terror as the Prison Planet link implied; it devolved in the beginning out of the war on drugs but any excuse will suffice  "in a pinch"

This has been going on for decades but has become rampant in recent years; neither Americans nor any foreign national is safe from confiscation of cash or any valuable property if the police choose to confiscate it:

" - The perversion is that confiscation — preying on the general public — has become a profit center. The Justice Department's Equitable Sharing program has given police the incentive to steal. No less than the executive director of the Sheriffs’ Association of Texas said to the New Yorker that, “It’s definitely a valuable asset to law enforcement, for purchasing equipment and getting things you normally wouldn’t be able to get to fight crime.”

Philadelphia is a major abuser of the law. Police and prosecutors took in $64 million between 2002 and 2012 in a state that allows them to keep 100% of the loot, says that Journal edit. It's been used to pay for 20% of the Philadelphia District Attorney's general budget and the staff's salaries. Supplicants who hope to get their money back find themselves appealing not to a judge but to their adversary, a prosecutor in an office at City Hall. - "


Law Enforcement s License to Steal

More on this frim circa 1996:

" - Willie Jones of Nashville was flying to Houston on February 27, 1991, to purchase plants for his landscaping business. Because Jones was black and paid cash for his plane ticket, the ticket clerk reported him to nearby Drug Enforcement Agency officers, who presumed Jones was a drug courier. DEA officers at the Nashville airport approached Jones, checked his identification, and asked permission to search him. Although Jones refused to grant permission, the officers searched him anyway and found $9,000 in cash. The DEA agents then announced that they were “detaining” the money. Jones observed: “They said I was going to buy drugs with it, that their dog sniffed it and said it had drugs on it.” (A 1989 study found that 70 percent of all the currency in the United States had cocaine residue on it.) Jones never saw the dog. The officers didn’t arrest Jones, but they kept the money. When Jones asked the officers for a receipt for his money, they handed him a receipt for an “undetermined amount of U.S. currency.” Jones objected and asked the officers to count the money out, but the officers refused, claiming that such an action would violate DEA policy.

Federal judge Thomas Wiseman, in an April 1993 decision, concluded that “the officers’ behavior at this point was casual and sarcastic . . . /they believed that the seizure of the currency was all but a _fait accompli_ . . . they cared little for Mr. Jones’s feelings of insecurity.” Judge Wiseman concluded that the DEA officials’ testimony on the seizure was “misleading,” “unconvincing,” and “inconsistent” and ordered the money returned—after a two- year legal battle. Jones observed: “I didn’t know it was against the law for a 42-year-old black man to have money in his pocket.”- "

Http://fee.org/freeman/detail/seizure-fever-the-war-on-property-rights/


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