The LCBO’s year-round operation of the FTA Program aims to reduce importation costs and downstream pricing impacts on products that may otherwise be imported with duty-reduction if they qualify as originating within the territory of a country with which Canada has an existing Trade Agreement.
Each year, eligible products must be certified, or re-certified, by LCBO Suppliers on Origin Declaration Forms upon which a Certification of Origin is provided for qualified products. These Declarations serve as the foundation for the LCBO’s ability to substantiate the application of duty-reductions on import declarations sent to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA); this mechanism is known as applying preferential tariff rates for certified products.
Each January 1st, the LCBO must execute a re-alignment of all products in the LCBO product database which rolls back any applied preferential tariff rates to their default non-preferential “MFN” rates, inclusive of all products certified in the previous “applicability year”. These MFN rates will impact importation costs and thus the pricing of any product that isn’t certified. In order to alleviate the risk and impact of pricing changes that may potentially be exposed to this realignment, the LCBO requires Suppliers to certify all eligible products imported by the LCBO using a formal, blanket Certification of Origin using our prescribed Declaration Forms.
All Suppliers anticipating the application of preferential tariff rates to their 2022 importations must provide their valid and compliant Certifications of Origin on the prescribed template Declaration Form by November 5th, 2021 in order to qualify for Tier 1 provisioning, service level, and rate applications at the beginning of January 2022.
To support our trade partners, the LCBO Customs team has launched an automation initiative aimed to enhance client service and data quality within the scope of this Program. With this, we have created an improved Declaration Form, designed with end-users in mind. The enhanced design is aimed at making the completion of Certifications as easy as possible, while also enabling our newest technological advancements to shine – see our 2022 Program Changes section in the FTA Program Guide (located here on the Hub) to see a recap of these advancements.
In addition to the new Form, we have created a brand new online Resource Hub to enhance our partner communication and provide direct accessibility to key resources for all stakeholders. Please visit FTA Template Forms Library to learn more and to download the 2022 template Declaration Forms.