If your company is US-based, then you’re probably thinking, “Oh, it’s easy to send swag to Canada. It’s literally right there.” And, technically speaking, you won’t be wrong; Canada is literally right there, sharing the world’s longest land border with the US. Except when you actually try to ship your branded hoodies to your team in Toronto, some complications may come up.
For instance, after two years of trade tension with the US, Canadians are now more inclined towards local goods, with 91% saying they’re now prioritizing Canadian-made products, and 71% willing to pay more for them.
It also has its own rules, contrary to what you might infer from its close proximity to the US. In Canada, every commercial shipment is treated as an import, sales taxes differ by province, and de minimis thresholds can affect duties.
So, in this guide, we break down everything you need to know before you start shipping swag to Canada. How do customs and taxes work after CUSMA? What is CUSMA? What swag items do Canadian recipients actually want? And how can PerkUp relieve you from all of the stress and logistics associated with shipping to Canada?
Interesting Facts about Canada
Before we delve into customs, let’s first begin with why sending swag to Canada is worth your effort in the first place.
Canada is the 11th-largest economy in the world by nominal GDP, sitting at roughly $2.4 trillion in 2026, with services making up about 70% of output and finance, tech, and media clustered in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
There are around 21 million people employed across the country, and a steady flow of global tech and finance companies keeps opening Canadian offices. This makes Canada a common second or third location for teams headquartered in the US.
It’s really cold in Canada. As a matter of fact, Canada's year-round average sits near -3.6°C, among the lowest of any country, and Winnipeg ranks as the coldest major city. (This is actually something you need to keep in mind when picking swag because that means a branded t-shirt means nothing for someone scraping ice off a windshield in February.)
Local sentiment also runs deep among Canadian residents. The Bank of Canada has confirmed the “Buy Canadian” shift has held into 2026 rather than fading as a short-term reaction to the recent US tariff changes.
Why is shipping swag to Canada trickier than just crossing the border?
The quickest answer to this question is that Canada has its own customs regime, and it always has. Often, the country’s proximity to the US fools companies and HR teams into treating a Canadian shipment like a domestic one, but every commercial parcel that crosses the border is actually a formal import.
Since 2024, that import runs through the CBSA Assessment and Revenue Management (CARM) system, which is now the official system of record for assessing and collecting duties and taxes on commercial goods.
What does it mean in practice? Let’s say you’re sending a box of branded fleece from a US warehouse to a Vancouver employee. That shipment needs a commercial invoice with HS codes, an accurate declared value, country-of-origin details, and the correct party named as the importer of record.
If you skip any of that, either your swag will sit in customs while someone sorts out the paperwork, or your recipient will pay for duties and taxes they never agreed to pay.
How do duties and taxes work on swag shipped to Canada?
So, you want to avoid any issues stemming from incomplete paperwork. In that case, what you need to remember is that Canada doesn’t apply one flat import tax.
The country actually runs a tiered system built around de minimis thresholds. For context, a de minimis threshold is just the value a courier shipment has to stay under to clear customs with no duty or tax owed. That said, where your swag lands comes down to two things: what it’s worth, and where it ships from. Let’s break that down.
If you ship by courier from the US or Mexico, the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) sets higher thresholds.
Goods (or swag, in this case) valued at CAD 40 or less will be cleared with no duty or tax
Items between CAD 40 and CAD 150 will dodge duty but still attract federal and provincial sales tax.
Above CAD 150, both duty and tax will be calculated at the border and settled before the parcel is released.
The catch here is that the products or swag items have to have actually entered US or Mexican commerce to ride those higher thresholds.
If you ship by mail or from anywhere other than the US or Mexico, then the older CA$20 threshold kicks back in. A few categories never qualify for de minimis relief at all, including alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and vaping products.
Then there’s also the sales tax. Every province pays 5% federal Goods and Services Tax (GST), but the combined rate climbs depending on where your recipient lives. For example, Ontario applies 13% Harmonized Sales Tax (HST or the combined federal + provincial, used in some provinces), and several Atlantic provinces run as high as 15%.
So when you’re shipping swag to Canada, the same kit can be assigned to a different tax line depending on whether it lands in Toronto or Edmonton.
Let’s further look at some examples of swag shipment to Canada.
Small, low-value sends
A single sticker pack, one t-shirt, and a notebook going out one at a time from a US warehouse will often slide under the line, especially the CAD 40-and-under sends from the US. This is the lightweight, no-issues-at-all end of the spectrum.
Kits and bulk above CAD 150
A full onboarding kit or a bulk run almost always clears CAD150, which means duty and tax both apply. To land 0% duty on those higher-value shipments, the items generally need to qualify as CUSMA-originating, meaning they’re made in the US or Mexico, with the origin properly documented. Without that, the duty rate follows the HS code and the country of origin.
This is where Delivery Duty Paid (DDP) comes into play. With DDP shipping to Canada, you or your swag partner will cover the duty, tax, and clearance fees upfront, so your recipient never opens the door to an invoice instead of a swag kit. It also keeps Canada shipping costs predictable. The alternative is leaving your recipient to settle duty and brokerage fees on delivery themself. For swag campaigns, that’s not something you should do, which is also why employee gifting almost always goes out DDP.
What swag actually lands well with Canadian recipients?
Getting the customs paperwork right is half the job. The other half is choosing swag items that your people in Canada actually want. So, if you're sending swag to Canadian recipients, here are a couple of things to keep in mind.
Made in Canada
This is the big one. The local-first sentiment running through Canadian buying behavior carries straight into swag, and items with a clear Canadian connection will be accepted more warmly. A locally made or locally branded product reads as thoughtful right now in a way it simply didn't a few years ago. If you can source it in-country, do.
Lean on Canadian drinkware brands
Going off from the first point, the easiest place to put that made-in-Canada instinct to work is drinkware. It's a swag staple everywhere, and Canada happens to have homegrown brands that nail the local-first note. One of which is Grosche, a Certified B Corp based in Cambridge, Ontario. It’s woman-owned, carbon neutral, and every product sold funds 50-plus days of safe drinking water for someone in need. A bottle like that does double duty, since it works as a daily-use item and quietly signals the values a lot of Canadian recipients care about.
Apparel suitable for the Canadian winter
Gloves, mitts, fleece-lined layers, and a jacket are all perfect for the Canadian climate, meaning if you choose to gift these swag items, they will be used for months. A heavyweight hoodie or an insulated shell is also the kind of thing a Canadian recipient will wear. Seasonality and timing also matter: winter apparel sent in October beats the same items sent in May.
Skip the power banks
If you’re thinking of adding tech to your swag campaign in Canada, keep in mind to skip power banks. They run on lithium-ion batteries, which are classified as dangerous goods and come with strict air-shipping rules that gum up cross-border delivery and customs. They’re more trouble than they’re worth for a Canada send.
Dos and Don’ts for Shipping Swag to Canada
Most Canada swag programs that run into trouble do so for the same handful of avoidable reasons. Here’s the short version you need to know:
Do
Ship under DDP - Make sure that you or your platform will cover duty, GST/HST, and clearance fees upfront, so your swag reaches your recipient with no problems.
Include a complete commercial invoice - List every item, the declared value in CAD, the currency, sender and recipient details, and the Incoterms.
Add HS codes for every item - Apparel, drinkware, and stationery all sit under different codes, and the wrong one can change the duties you’ll need to pay.
Claim CUSMA origin where it applies - Your swag items made in the US or Mexico can clear at 0% duty above CA$150, but only when the origin is properly stated.
Let your courier or platform act as the importer of record - For most swag sends, you don't need your own Canadian business number, since the carrier clears low-value shipments for you.
Use a Canadian warehouse for bulk items - Holding stock in-country skips the border entirely and allows for fast domestic delivery.
Lean into local - As mentioned before, made-in-Canada items and Canadian brands like Grosche outperform imported defaults in the current climate.
Don’t
Don’t ship DAP (Delivered At Place) for employee gifting - Recipients getting hit with customs and brokerage bills leads to refused deliveries, which defeats the purpose of your swag campaign.
Don’t undervalue shipments to dodge duty - Seizures, penalties, and audit risk cost far more than declaring honestly.
Don’t skip the paperwork details - Missing HS codes, declared values, or origin info are the leading causes of delays at the Canadian border. Make sure everything is in order.
Don’t send power banks or other lithium-battery items - They’re restricted, dangerous goods and a customs headache. Avoid them.
Don’t treat Canada like an extension of US domestic shipping - While it’s easy to forget this, remember that Canada has a different customs system, province-by-province taxes, and its own thresholds.
How PerkUp Ships Swag to Canadian Teams
Let’s say you’re onboarding five new hires in Montreal next week. Ideally, you want them to receive their new hire swag kits before their start date. With all of the things you need to keep in mind about sending swag to Canada, there’s bound to be something you forget, whether that’s using local brands, including power banks, or shipping DAP.
The good news is that you actually don’t need to know everything about shipping swag to Canada if you have a reliable swag management platform like PerkUp as your partner. Here are a few reasons why:
Optimized fulfillment
Canadian recipients want to receive their items as soon as possible, and the quickest route to their desk is often a surprising one. A domestic Canadian shipment lands in about 5 business days, and a cross-border one runs 5 to 15, but producing or stocking everything inside Canada usually costs more time and money than shipping in from the US. That’s why PerkUp optimizes for the fastest clean path on each order (whether that’s local fulfillment or shipping in from the US or elsewhere, depending on your swag needs). As a result, the end-to-end turnaround tends to beat waiting on local production, even when the swag travels a little farther to get there.
A dedicated Canada catalog for swag
PerkUp curates Canadian-relevant swag items rather than defaulting to the same items a US program would ship. For instance, the platform carries Canadian drinkware brands like Grosche, winter-ready apparel and outerwear built for the cold, and locally sourced gifts through its in-region suppliers.
Local sourcing through Canadian suppliers
PerkUp also has a Canadian warehouse, so the swag your team needs is already inside the country before you even place an order. Swag items produced elsewhere can be shipped or produced in advance, held locally, and sent out as standard domestic shipments for when you finally need them.
Regional warehouse in Canada
Beyond the local warehouse, PerkUp can also source Canadian and regional items through local suppliers when it makes most sense. This approach aligns with the made-in-Canada preference, since the swag is genuinely produced or supplied in-country. It also keeps the carbon footprint low and skips the customs path entirely for anything made and shipped within Canada.
100% customs fees covered with full duty reimbursement
Every cross-border PerkUp shipment to Canada covers customs and defaults to DDP terms, so duty, GST/HST, and clearance fees are settled before your swag even arrives. If a parcel somehow gets flagged for an unexpected charge, PerkUp reimburses it in full.
What does shipping swag to Canada actually look like in practice with PerkUp?
PerkUp already works with a couple of companies with employees and recipients in Canada. Let’s check them out one by one.
Wealthsimple
Wealthsimple runs all of its swag effectively through PerkUp, and all of it stays inside Canada. For a homegrown Canadian company that keeps the whole program on the right side of the made-in-Canada preference, it means the border barely factors into a shipment at all.
EUNA Solutions
EUNA Solutions sends to its Canadian recipients as one piece of a wider, multi-region rollout with PerkUp. Canada isn’t the company’s only target region here, which is part of the appeal: the same platform and dashboard that handles a Canadian send can also handle the rest of the map. For EUNA Solutions, this saves them from spending time, money, and effort on different swag vendors.
And that’s what PerkUp is all about: a swag management platform for global teams, where one dashboard handles the catalog, the budgets, the automation, and the international logistics, so a Toronto send and a Tokyo send live in the same place.
Takeaways on Shipping Swag to Canada
Canada is a manageable destination for your swag once the framework clicks into place. Get the de minimis threshold right for where you’re shipping from, ship under DDP, keep HS codes and declared values clean on every commercial invoice, and pick swag items that fit both the weather and the strong local-first mood.
But the easiest, stress-free version of how to ship to Canada at scale is to stop making the border your problem. Let a reliable swag platform like PerkUp source each swag where it makes the most sense, ship it DDP so the duties are handled, and keep the customs paperwork off your plate, whether the swag comes from a Canadian warehouse or crosses in from the US.
If you want to see what that looks like for your own team, take a quick walkthrough with PerkUp and map out your Canadian rollout with someone who has already done it for companies like Wealthsimple and EUNA Solutions.
Frequently Asked Questions About Shipping Swag to Canada
How do you handle customs and duties for international gift shipments to Canada?
The cleanest way is to take the customs work off your plate entirely. PerkUp fulfills from inside Canada wherever an item is stocked or sourced locally, and ships every cross-border order DDP with any unexpected fees reimbursed in full. Either way, the recipient never deals with a border step or a surprise duty bill.
Can you ship swag to recipients across Canada?
Yes. PerkUp ships across Canada as part of a global warehousing network covering 65+ countries, with in-region fulfillment so swag items arrive as domestic deliveries rather than international imports.
How much does shipping swag to Canada cost compared to domestic shipping?
When swag is fulfilled from inside Canada, the cost sits much closer to a normal domestic delivery in the destination than a US shipping rate with cross-border fees stacked on top. Domestic Canadian shipments typically land in about 5 business days, versus 5 to 15 for cross-border shipments, and the regional model keeps duty and brokerage charges out of the equation for most orders.
What are the tips for shipping corporate gifts to Canada?
The single most useful tip for shipping corporate gifts to Canada is to ship from inside the country whenever you can. Cross-border sends add de minimis thresholds, CARM registration, customs paperwork, and unpredictable timing. Beyond that: ship DDP, declare values honestly in CAD, attach HS codes and origin info, lean into made-in-Canada picks, and skip restricted items like power banks. PerkUp's Canadian warehousing and broader global network handle most of this automatically.
What are the top corporate gift suppliers for Canadian companies?
The name that comes up most for Canadian programs in 2026 is PerkUp. PerkUp runs in-region warehousing as part of a global network covering 65+ countries, ships cross-border orders DDP with full duty reimbursement, and curates a Canada-relevant catalog so your swag feels local.
