Exactly what it says, minus the anxiety: your package has landed and joined the queue at a CBSA mail centre, where border officers review incoming mail. Most packages pass through in a few days without any action from you. During the review, officers check the declared value and contents, and decide whether tax or duty applies — if it does, you'll see the amount later on your tracking or delivery notice, with the option to pay online before the truck arrives. The queue length varies with volume: after big US shopping events, expect it to move slower. There's nothing to do at this stage except wait, and we'll show you the next scan the moment your package is released to Canada Post's delivery network.

The full roster, coast to coast. Canada Post and Purolator carry the classics, and we follow them scan by scan — alongside the e-commerce specialists who now deliver a huge share of online orders: Intelcom (Dragonfly), UniUni, GLS Canada (the old Dicom), Canpar and Nationex, plus FedEx, UPS and DHL for express and cross-border. Your Amazon.ca order, your Shein haul clearing customs and a document from Toronto all fit in one timeline here. We track more than 1,000 carriers worldwide and recognise the number format automatically — paste it in and we'll figure out who's got your package, and keep following it even when it switches carriers at the border.

These limits are about you crossing the border, and they reward longer trips. Away more than 24 hours, you can bring back CA$200 of goods tax-free; past 48 hours, the allowance jumps to CA$800, with alcohol and tobacco inside limits. Under 24 hours — the classic cross-border shopping dash — there's no personal exemption at all, so that outlet run gets taxed. Go over your allowance and you pay tax and duty only on the amount above it. One point people mix up: these traveller exemptions have nothing to do with packages mailed to you, which follow their own much lower thresholds. So "I could carry it back tax-free" doesn't mean the same item ships to your door tax-free — often it's the opposite.

Those two names carry most of Canada's international mail: Mississauga processes the eastern flow near Toronto, Richmond the western flow near Vancouver. Nearly every posted package from abroad funnels through one of them — so when volume spikes, the queue at these exact facilities is where everyone's tracking pauses. A stay of several days is routine; peak season and postal disruptions can stretch it to a couple of weeks. Being "in customs" here usually means waiting in line, not being inspected. Nothing is expected from you at this stage — assessments come later, with a chance to pay online. If your package sits well past two weeks with no movement, ask the seller to open a trace from the origin post; enquiries started by the sender get processed, ones from recipients mostly don't.

Yes — and it's genuinely worth doing, because it turns an awkward doorstep moment into a ten-second tap. Once the border agency has assessed your package and it's moving through Canada Post's network, track it on canadapost.ca or the Canada Post app and look for the Pay button. Pay by credit card — or Apple Pay and Google Pay in the app — and you'll get an email confirmation with a barcode as proof. After that, the package comes to your door with nothing owed. Two caveats: the payment window is limited (it closes once the package is out for delivery), so act when you see the option rather than saving it for later; and if you miss it, you can still pay at the door or at the post office pickup.

Give the mystery a day before treating it as a loss — that solves most cases. Check the usual hiding spots first: mailbox, porch corners, behind the screen door, with the building concierge or a neighbour who signs for things. Canada Post sometimes scans "delivered" for items that actually went to a community mailbox or a post office, so read the delivery details on the scan carefully. If it mentions a card, your package is waiting for pickup, not missing. Still nothing after 24 hours? Open a service ticket with Canada Post using your tracking number — they can check the delivery GPS — and tell the seller, who can refund, replace or claim. Your timeline here gives you the exact scan time and location wording to quote in both conversations.

Yes — Canada screens these categories closely, and it's the hidden reason behind many long customs stays. Food and plant products fall under CFIA rules: meat, dairy, fresh produce, seeds and live plants range from restricted to flat-out prohibited in the mail, and even packaged snacks can get pulled for inspection. Cosmetics are usually fine in personal quantities, but certain ingredients and health products cross into regulated territory — supplements and medications have their own strict rules. If an item fails inspection, it can be seized or destroyed, usually with a letter explaining why, and refunds then depend on your seller. Before ordering anything edible, growable or medicinal from abroad, two minutes on the CFIA or Health Canada site tells you whether it will actually make it through.

Same way as everything else here: paste the tracking number in and we take it from there. Intelcom (now branded Dragonfly) and UniUni deliver a big slice of Amazon, Shein and Temu orders in Canada, and both are fully supported — we recognise their formats and pull their scans into your timeline. The trick with these couriers is that your order often starts under a different number: the international leg travels with the platform's logistics arm, then a local number appears when Intelcom or UniUni takes over. Enter whichever you have; we follow the handover. If the seller's page shows a code your courier's own site doesn't recognise, that's usually the international number — still valid here, and often the more complete story.

Porch theft is maddening, and unfortunately Canada's carriers deliver to the door by default — so let's focus on what actually gets your money back. Report the theft to the seller first: marketplaces like Amazon typically refund or replace stolen deliveries, and independent shops can claim against the carrier. File a report with Canada Post or the courier too, since they can verify the delivery scan's GPS. If the package was valuable, a police report strengthens every claim, and some home insurance covers it. Then fix the exposure for next time: have orders sent to a post office or parcel locker via Canada Post's FlexDelivery, require a signature on valuable items, or time deliveries using your tracking here so packages don't sit outside for hours.

Distance changes physics. Once your package leaves the southern sorting hubs for the territories, northern Ontario, or fly-in communities, it may travel by winter road, sea lift or small aircraft — and scans get sparse, because there simply aren't sorting facilities generating them along the way. A package to Iqaluit or a Yukon community can go quiet for a week and still be perfectly on schedule. Weather adds real variance: storms ground the flights that carry mail north. So read northern tracking differently — judge progress by the last confirmed location, not by the silence after it. We keep watching and will surface every scan that exists. If a delivery is time-critical to a remote address, express services with guaranteed timelines are worth the premium; standard mail up north rewards patience.

Two things landed on that bill, and only one of them is tax. Canada charges sales tax on imported goods — GST, or HST/PST depending on your province — calculated on the value of what you bought. The threshold is low for mail: postal imports over CA$20 are taxable, so most online orders from abroad qualify. Orders from the US or Mexico shipped by courier get friendlier treatment under CUSMA, with higher tax and duty thresholds. The second charge is the messenger's cut: Canada Post adds a $9.95 handling fee for walking your package through customs, and express couriers charge their own brokerage fees, which can run higher. The tax you can't avoid; the fees you can sometimes soften by shopping with retailers who handle duties at checkout.

It's $9.95, added whenever Canada Post processes a package that owes duty or tax. The fee covers the customs presentation work — collecting the assessment from the border agency, fronting the paperwork and collecting payment from you — and it's included in the amount owing you'll see on the notice or online. A few things worth knowing: it only applies when there's actually something to collect, so packages under the tax threshold or with taxes prepaid at checkout skip it entirely. And it's flat — the same $9.95 on a $25 package or a $500 one, which stings less as your order gets bigger. If you shop from abroad often, retailers that collect Canadian taxes at checkout are the cleanest way to never see this line again.

You may also want to explore tracking for these other destinations:

• Tracking made easy for United States

• See deliveries to and from Mexico

• Where's your Brazil parcel?

• Follow your shipment in Argentina

• Got a parcel from Colombia? Track it here

• Track parcels going to or from China

• Track every parcel in the world

These carrier pages are worth a look too:

• See where your Canada Post package is

• Got a Purolator number? Start here

• Check your Canpar Courier shipment

• Landmark Global updates in one place

• Waiting on UPS? Track it here

• Track your FedEx parcels