Toronto Drug Import and Export Offence Lawyer

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An importing charge is the heaviest drug allegation in Canadian law. For a Schedule I or II substance the ceiling is life imprisonment, the bail onus flips onto you, and the investigation was usually built long before you knew you were a suspect. Almost every one of these files is fought on a single question: what did you actually know? If you were stopped at Pearson, accepted a package the police were watching, or learned that a shipment with your name on it was flagged, get advice before you give anyone a statement.

By Fadi Matthew Kazandji, Founding Partner, Kazandji Law. Toronto criminal defence. Updated July 2026.

What counts as importing or exporting under the CDSA?

Section 6(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act reads: except as authorized under the regulations, no person shall import into Canada or export from Canada a substance included in Schedule I, II, III, IV, V or VI. That is the whole offence. There is no minimum quantity, no requirement that money changed hands, and no requirement that you crossed the border yourself. A single envelope of pills ordered from an overseas website engages the same section as a container load of cocaine. The difference shows up at sentencing, not at the charging stage.

Section 6(2) adds a second offence: possessing a substance for the purpose of exporting it. You can be charged before anything ever leaves the country. The Crown does not need a completed export, just proof that you held the substance intending it to go out.

Notice how wide the net is. Simple possession under s.4 reaches only Schedules I through III. The import and export offence reaches every schedule, including Schedule VI, which lists precursor chemicals used to synthesize drugs like methamphetamine. Precursor prosecutions usually travel with allegations about clandestine labs, and if that is the theory in your file you should also read our Toronto drug production and cultivation defence guide.

The opening words matter too. Importing is only criminal when it happens outside the regulations, which is how pharmaceutical companies, hospitals and researchers move controlled substances lawfully every day. Licensing and authorization questions occasionally decide real cases, particularly around medication carried for personal use.

One carve-out: cannabis. Since October 17, 2018, cannabis is not a CDSA substance at all. Taking it across the border in either direction is charged under s.11 of the Cannabis Act, with a maximum of 14 years, no matter how small the amount. Our Toronto marijuana offence guide covers the cannabis side. And if you are still working out which charge you are actually facing, start with our Toronto drug offence overview, which maps every drug charge to its own guide.

What sentence does importing carry? The schedule sets the ceiling

Penalties under s.6(3) turn on the schedule of the substance, not its street name and not the quantity. Quantity, role and purpose drive where within the range a sentence lands, but the schedule fixes the ceiling.

Substance category	By indictment	On summary conviction
Schedule I or II (fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and similar)	Liable to imprisonment for life	Not available. These counts proceed by indictment only
Schedule III or V	Up to 10 years	Up to 18 months
Schedule VI (precursor chemicals)	Up to 10 years	Up to 18 months
Schedule IV	Up to 3 years	Up to 1 year
Cannabis (Cannabis Act s.11, all amounts)	Up to 14 years	Fine up to 5,000 dollars, 6 months, or both, for individuals

Possession for the purpose of exporting under s.6(2) follows the same ladder. And a border file sometimes carries a companion count under s.159 of the Customs Act, which prohibits smuggling goods whose importation or exportation is prohibited, controlled or regulated. That count is prosecuted under the Customs Act's own penalty scheme and runs alongside the CDSA charge, not instead of it.

Because Schedule I and II importing is punishable by life, two procedural doors open that most drug charges never touch: you can request a preliminary inquiry, and your bail hearing runs under a reverse onus. Both are covered below.

Is there a mandatory minimum for importing? Not anymore

For a decade there was. Parliament added a one year minimum for certain Schedule I importing offences in 2012, and a two year minimum where the quantity exceeded one kilogram. Bill C-5 repealed them in 2022 (S.C. 2022, c. 15, s. 16, in force November 17, 2022). Today no offence in the CDSA carries a mandatory minimum sentence.

Be careful with what that means. The repeal restored judicial discretion; it did not soften how courts treat commercial hard-drug importing. The Supreme Court's decision in R. v. Parranto in 2021 confirmed that wholesale trafficking in drugs like fentanyl attracts severe, penitentiary-level sentences, and importing sits at the top of the drug offence hierarchy. What the repeal really changed is the terrain: role, knowledge, quantity, addiction, immigration status and personal circumstances are all live sentencing arguments again, and outcomes short of jail are legally possible in cases that used to be excluded from them. For a fuller picture of how hard-drug sentencing actually runs in this province, see our Ontario drug trafficking guide.

How a border drug file starts in Toronto

These investigations rarely begin with a Toronto police officer on a street corner. They begin at the border, in three usual ways.

Passenger interdiction. A traveller is referred to secondary examination at Pearson, luggage goes through the x-ray, and something is found in a suitcase lining, a shoe shipment or a checked box. Border officers handle the search and detention at the port of entry, and once a criminal offence crystallizes the file moves from CBSA screening into a police investigation. That handoff, who did what and under which authority, is one of the first things we reconstruct from disclosure.

Cargo, courier and mail. Packages get flagged in transit, opened, tested and resealed. Police then run what is generally called a controlled delivery: the parcel is delivered under surveillance, sometimes with the substance removed or substituted, and the arrest happens when someone accepts it, opens it or moves it. Controlled deliveries are warrant and paperwork intensive, which is good news for the defence, because every step generates a record that can be attacked.

Long-run projects. The Toronto Police Service Drug Squad includes a Major Project Section with an embedded Canadian Border Services Agency Intelligence Officer, and the multi-agency Toronto Airport Drug Enforcement Unit. Its published mandate includes enforcement on importing offences and enforcement in relation to offences committed at Pearson International Airport. Joint-forces importation projects out of these units can run for months before takedown, with wiretaps, surveillance and production orders stacked behind them.

One practical note about venue. Pearson sits outside Toronto's court boundaries, so airport arrests are often prosecuted in the neighbouring court region rather than downtown. It changes the courthouse, not the law. We defend import and export files for Toronto residents wherever those files proceed, and Toronto-laid charges run through the Toronto courts described below.

Controlled deliveries: how a parcel becomes a prosecution

When a package is flagged in the mail or courier stream, police rarely just grab it and go looking for the addressee. They build a controlled delivery. The substance is examined and often removed or swapped for an inert stand-in, sometimes with a small representative sample left inside so the charge survives. A tracking or alarm device may go into the box. Officers obtain the judicial authorizations they think they need, stake out the address, and send the parcel back into the delivery stream under surveillance.

Then they wait. Who signs. Who carries it inside. Whether it gets opened, moved, hidden or handed to someone else. The arrest usually comes minutes after the box is opened, because opening it is the Crown's best evidence of knowledge and control.

For the defence, a controlled delivery is a gift of structure. Every stage generated paper: the initial interception and examination, the decision to substitute, the authorizations and their supporting affidavits, the surveillance notes, the timing of entry into a home. Each stage can be measured against the Charter and against the statute that supposedly authorized it. If the entry warrant fails, or the affidavit misled the issuing justice, or the surveillance account does not hold together, the case built on top of it starts to come apart. And even where the process holds, the central question survives: signing for a box is not knowing what is in it.

The first days after arrest: what actually happens

If you were arrested at the airport or at your door, the sequence is fairly predictable, and knowing it lowers the temperature.

First comes the bail stage. For Schedule I or II importing that means a reverse-onus hearing, so the priority in the first 24 to 72 hours is assembling sureties, an address, and a plan strong enough to answer the flight-risk argument. This is the single most time-sensitive piece of the whole case, and it is where early counsel earns its keep.

Then the disclosure waves start. Border files arrive in instalments: police synopses first, then CBSA examination records, lab certificates, surveillance packages, and eventually the affidavits behind every warrant and authorization. We audit each wave against what should exist, demand what is missing, and start the Jordan clock analysis immediately.

Meanwhile the defence theory takes shape early: knowledge, control, Charter, continuity, or some combination. Decisions about the preliminary inquiry and the court election come faster than most clients expect, and they are strategic decisions, not scheduling ones. The worst mistake in an importing file is drift, months of routine appearances while the Crown's theory hardens and the defence has not committed to one. The second worst is talking, to police, to cellmates, to the co-accused, or on a jail phone line that records everything. Say nothing about the facts to anyone but your lawyer.

Our results page shows how prepared files resolve. The pattern repeats: the earlier the defence starts, the more doors stay open.

The knowledge war: couriers, suitcases and packages you did not pack

Here is the heart of almost every importing defence. The Crown must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you knew about the substance and had control of it. Since R. v. Beaver in 1957 there is no possession in law without knowledge of the character of the thing possessed, and R. v. Morelli restates the same pair, knowledge and control, in modern terms. Physical proximity to drugs is not guilt. Your name on a waybill is not guilt.

That is why the blind courier fight matters so much. Real cases look like this: someone agrees to bring back a suitcase for a friend of a friend, gets a paid trip with vague obligations, carries a sealed package as a favour, or signs for a parcel addressed to their apartment. In each one the defence question is the same. What were you told? What did you actually see and handle? Was the compartment hidden even from you? Would the story you were given have alarmed a reasonable person, or was it genuinely plausible?

The Crown's usual answer is wilful blindness, the argument that you deliberately shut your eyes to an obvious risk and chose not to ask. It is a real doctrine and it convicts people, but it has limits: suspicion is not knowledge, and naivety is not a crime. Where the line falls depends on the details, the payment, the route, the packaging, the messages on your phone.

And this is why the airport interview is so dangerous. What you said at secondary, before you ever spoke to a lawyer, becomes the spine of the Crown's knowledge case: small inconsistencies get framed as lies, and lies get framed as consciousness of guilt. Once questioning shifts from routine screening into detention on a criminal matter, your right to counsel is engaged. If you are reading this before that interview happens, say less, and ask to call a lawyer.

The fact patterns we see again and again

The favour suitcase. A friend of a friend asks you to bring back a bag, a gift, a sealed box of food or electronics. You are stopped at secondary, the lining comes apart, and suddenly you are the importer. These files rise or fall on what you were told, what the arrangement paid, and whether the concealment was hidden even from you.

The parcel at your door. A package addressed to you, or to a name close to yours, arrives by courier after being intercepted and rebuilt by police. Accepting a delivery is not knowledge of its contents; the Crown needs more, and what you did in the minutes after delivery usually decides whether they have it.

The paid trip. Flights and hotel covered, vague instructions, a handler on the phone. The Crown calls it a courier run; the defence question is whether the trip made you a knowing participant or a disposable decoy. Phone extractions cut both ways here, and we read every message.

The logistics worker. Truck drivers, warehouse staff and freight handlers touch containers all day. Proximity plus opportunity is not proof of knowledge or control, and prosecutions that lean on job descriptions rather than evidence can be pulled apart.

The online order. Ordering a controlled substance from a foreign website, including pills sold as medication, is importing under s.6. Small-quantity personal files sometimes resolve very differently than commercial ones, but the exposure on paper is identical, so treat the charge seriously from day one.

Exports get charged too. Packages heading out of Canada, cash-and-product swaps at the border, and s.6(2) possession-for-export counts built on packaging and messages alone. The defence framework is the same war over knowledge, control and paper.

Charter, warrants and the paper attack

Border searches run under different rules than street policing. Travellers at a port of entry face broad screening powers, and nobody needs a warrant to x-ray a suitcase at Pearson. But different does not mean lawless. Once routine screening hardens into detention on a criminal matter, Charter protections engage: the right to counsel under s.10(b), protection against arbitrary detention under s.9, and s.8 scrutiny of how searches beyond the border context were conducted. Reviewing exactly when your file crossed that line, and what happened after it did, is core defence work in every import case.

Away from the airport, these prosecutions are built on judicial paperwork: warrants to open and substitute packages, warrants to enter homes after a controlled delivery, production orders for phones and financial records. Every warrant rests on an Information to Obtain, and R. v. Morelli is the standing warning about ITOs built on thin, stale or misdescribed information. If the ITO fails, the search fails, and under R. v. Grant the evidence can be excluded. In a case where the drugs are the case, exclusion usually ends the prosecution.

Then there is the paper the Crown must hand over. Since R. v. Stinchcombe, disclosure of all relevant material is a constitutional obligation, and border files generate more of it than almost any other drug prosecution: CBSA officer notes, x-ray and examination records, continuity logs tracking the substance from seizure to lab, certificates of analysis under s.51 of the CDSA, surveillance notes, and the affidavits behind every judicial authorization. Gaps in continuity, late disclosure and defects in the certificates are not technicalities. They are how these cases get won.

Will I get bail on an importing charge? The onus is on you

For most criminal charges the Crown must justify detention. Importing or exporting a Schedule I or II substance flips that. Under s.515(6)(d) of the Criminal Code, CDSA offences under ss.5 to 7 that are punishable by life imprisonment carry a reverse onus at bail: you must show why your detention is not justified.

That is not a formality. It means walking into the hearing with a real plan: sureties who can supervise and pledge meaningfully, a stable residence, surrendered travel documents, reporting terms, employment or treatment structure, and answers to the Crown's flight-risk theory, because in border cases the Crown almost always argues flight. Toronto bail hearings, including weekend and statutory holiday courts, run at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre, 2201 Finch Avenue West. The first attempt matters enormously; a failed hearing means a detention order and a slower review route. Our Toronto bail lawyers guide explains how we build and run these hearings.

The court path and the Jordan clock in a border file

Every CDSA prosecution in Ontario is conducted by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, the federal prosecution service, rather than the provincial Crown. For Toronto-laid charges the file starts at the Ontario Court of Justice at 10 Armoury Street. Because Schedule I and II importing is punishable by life, you have an election: stay in the OCJ, or elect trial in the Superior Court of Justice at 361 University Avenue, with the right to request a preliminary inquiry first under s.535 of the Criminal Code.

That election is strategy, not paperwork. A preliminary inquiry lets us test the Crown's knowledge case, pin down officer evidence while memories are fresh, and sometimes end the case early. A Superior Court election opens a jury and longer runway for Charter litigation.

And the runway is measured. R. v. Jordan sets presumptive ceilings of 18 months for OCJ cases and 30 months for Superior Court cases, from charge to the end of trial. Import files are exactly the kind that strain those ceilings: multi-agency disclosure from CBSA, police and the lab, wiretap packages, translation issues, co-accused. We track the clock from day one, put delay on the record, and bring the s.11(b) application when the ceiling is crossed. Stays for delay are not rare in border prosecutions.

Who is actually prosecuting you

Not the provincial Crown you see on television. Every CDSA prosecution in Ontario is conducted by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, and drug files make up the largest share of the PPSC's national caseload. In Toronto, PPSC counsel work out of the same courthouse as the provincial Crowns at 10 Armoury Street, but they run their files under federal policies, with their own approach to resolution, forfeiture and sentencing positions.

That matters to you in practical ways. The prosecutor who decides whether your case resolves, and on what terms, applies the federal deskbook rather than provincial practice memos. Disclosure requests route through federal channels that also have to pull material from CBSA, which is a separate agency with its own records systems, and that seam is where disclosure fights tend to live. A defence lawyer who deals with PPSC counsel every week knows which arguments move them and which are wasted breath. It is a different audience, and we prepare for it as one.

What else a conviction touches

The sentence is only part of the damage. If you are a permanent resident or foreign national, a conviction for importing a controlled substance can have severe immigration consequences, up to and including loss of status and removal, so tell your lawyer about your status at the very first meeting; it shapes every decision in the file, including whether any resolution is safe to accept. Cross-border travel, especially to the United States, becomes complicated for years. And property connected to the offence, vehicles, cash, even real estate in some cases, can be restrained and pursued as offence-related property in a forfeiture proceeding that runs on its own track and needs its own answer.

None of this is a reason to despair. It is a reason to treat the file as one problem with several fronts, and to plan the criminal defence with the immigration and property consequences in view from day one.

Records last, too. An importing conviction is not in the sequestration lane Parliament created for simple possession, so it sits on your record like any other serious conviction until a record suspension is possible years later. For students, licensed professionals and anyone who travels for work, that long tail is often the strongest argument for fighting the charge rather than pleading early to end the stress.

Why Kazandji Law for a border drug file

Import and export prosecutions are a specific craft. They are won by lawyers who read wiretap affidavits and ITOs line by line, who understand how CBSA and police divide a file and where the handoff gets sloppy, who know what a real blind-courier defence looks like in front of a jury, and who prepare the reverse-onus bail hearing like it is the trial. That is how we built our practice.

Fadi Matthew Kazandji leads every serious file personally. We defend clients across the Greater Toronto Area from four offices: our head office at 180 John St, Unit 320, Toronto, plus Thornhill at 7191 Yonge St, Suite 310 serving Markham and York Region, North York and Oakville. Airport and border files that proceed outside Toronto's courthouses are part of our regular practice, and we appear wherever your case is heard. The consultation is free, the phone is answered around the clock, and nothing you tell us leaves the room.

This page is general legal information for people facing drug import and export allegations in Ontario. It is not legal advice about your specific case, and reading it does not create a solicitor and client relationship. Penalties and procedures reflect the law as verified in July 2026 and can change. For advice on your situation, call Kazandji Law at 647-588-3234. Kazandji Law, 180 John St, Unit 320, Toronto, ON M5T 1X5.