Trucker fined for trying to smuggle cheese into Canada (with video)

Cheese prices can be dramatically higher in Canada than the U.S. The tightly regulated dairy market operates under a supply management system, which keeps prices inflated by limiting production and imposing limits on imports. Cheese above annual quotas is subject to 270 percent tariffs.

Prosecutions for cheese-smuggling are relatively rare, though not unheard of. A Canadian police officer in Niagara Falls received a four-month jail sentence for his role in a large-scale smuggling ring that brought low-cost cheese from the U.S. across the border to be resold locally   – especially at pizzerias.

The U.S. has long bemoaned the supply management system, which also covers poultry, saying it unfairly denies its producers access to the Canadian market. NAFTA’s successor, United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, foresees allowing more imports of U.S. and Mexican dairy products into Canada.

Canada’s powerful dairy industry has long resisted efforts to open up the market, arguing that domestic producers could be undercut by foreign competition, particularly the U.S.