I thought I should chime in, given that I've worked at a knife retailer for the last several years, and have talked to several customers who have had their knives seized when attempting to place orders from international companies, state-side and elsewhere. Back when CBSA was being particularly problematic a few years ago, Kershaw and ZT products stopped being sent up, and most other manufacturers actually went to the trouble of tightening down pivot hardware, just like
A
Arathol
and
shane45-1911
suggested doing now. However, this behavior actually stopped some time ago, and CBSA hasn't claimed anything that's been ordered in, though several similar if not identical knives have been reportedly seized.
So what's going on? It seems like individuals are being targeted as they place orders of their own, and their knives are being seized at the border regardless as to whether the same or similar is available within Canada already. Actually, there is quite a lot of appeals I found where the Tribunal
shane45-1911
mentioned earlier actually dismisses the notion that because similar knives are already commonly and publicly available for sale in Canada, the same should be allowed entry through the mail.
If we are to believe the information given in a transparency page supplied by the CBSA, they say they've stopped 2,091 centrifugally opening knives last year alone-- I have to wonder how many of those knives were actually available to purchase, legal to own and carry in Canada but were misattributed?
So, I actually posted this link a long time ago here in a different thread, but it's [what I believe to be] the most recently updated version of the Memorandum that outlines the official CBSA guidelines regarding knives, amongst other things-- you can read it for yourself here:
https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications/dm-md/d19/d19-13-2-eng.html
However, the relevant part for this discussion comes from how the CBSA chooses to interpret this following piece of the criminal code; again, this first snippet is Federal Law, and has remained relatively unchanged for many years now.
They then interpret the above as this:
Did you catch that? Under (b)? The small line that is their stated reason for all this hassle is
"...and it includes knives that require some preliminary or simultaneous minimal manipulation of either a flipper, thumb stud or other non-edged parts of the blade."
This is how they justify stopping simple thumb stud knives, or knives with flippers, or anything at all, really.
Shane is exactly right. This is precisely why they can decide that gently pushing a thumb stud while swinging a knife in order to open it fully is issue enough to make the knife barred from import. It has NOTHING to do with the speed at which the knife opens, but specifically
how it opens.
Meanwhile, the definition of "open" is left... unwritten. There is actually no precedent that I'm aware of that discusses at what point the knife is considered open. I would have assumed that even partially open, IE the blade's cutting edge is exposed, would count as open, but...
My guess is that the CBSA is leaving retailers alone these days because of a combination of the resulting bad optics, but targeting individuals to look productive in their own reporting.
