NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO — The upcoming end to Canada’s remote area border crossing permit won’t affect a separate slate of rules for water crossings into Canada, border officials say.
Earlier in December, the Canadian Border Services Agency (or CBSA) announced it will be shuttering a program that issued permits which allowed citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. and Canada to cross the border into Canada through specific remote areas without physically presenting themselves at a designated crossing.
“The CBSA’s decision was based on an internal review of the remote area border crossing program, which considered the security, operational efficiency and the evolving risk environment at Canada’s border,” Luke Reimer, a spokesperson for the CBSA, told Newswatch in an email.
“Ultimately, the change aligns with our processes already in place for remote border crossings across the country and with how travellers report to U.S. Customs and Border Protection when entering the U.S. in remote areas.”
The program has covered a vast stretch of the international border over land and water from the Northwest Angle area on the Ontario-Manitoba boundary, through Northwestern Ontario and east to Cockburn Island, which is right next to Manitoulin Island.
Existing permits will be valid until Sept. 14, 2026, at which time, “all travellers entering Canada through remote areas of northern Ontario or from the Northwest Angle into southern Manitoba must report to the CBSA in person at a port of entry or a designated telephone reporting site,” the Canadian border agency says on its website.
No new permits are being issued.
While these changes will affect people who used the remote access permit to cross into Canada on the water, boaters will still be able to make the same marine crossings without checking in under separate and still-existing rules around reporting requirements for private boat operators.
Those rules say boaters “are not required to present themselves and report their goods to the CBSA” as long as they do not land on Canadian shores, nor anchor, moor “or make contact with another conveyance while in Canadian waters and do not disembark or embark any people or goods in Canada.”
Any firearms on board must be reported, however, the CBSA says.
Those exemptions, the border agency says, apply to “all types of private and commercial cross-border movements through Canadian waters, regardless of their origin and destination,” and include a host of water-based activities, including fishing.
Commercial operators, such as fishing charters, do require Canadian work permits.
When asked whether the end to the remote area border crossing program in Northwestern Ontario will affect those exemptions under the private boat operators reporting system, Guillaume Bérubé, acting director of media relations with the CBSA, confirmed to Newswatch in an email that it won’t.
A group of stakeholders on the Canadian side of border lakes, like Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake, has long been pressing the federal government to step up enforcement and regulations over what they say is an increasing number of American anglers making day trips from the U.S. into Canada on the water.
In a July 2025 letter to numerous federal and provincial ministries, a coalition of municipalities, tourism and First Nations interests recommended — while citing the existing rules around exemptions if boaters don’t make landfall or otherwise tie up — that regulations be changed to mandate “all non-residents entering Canada by water be required to go through a physical CBSA checkpoint to allow for admissibility checks and compliance with all other federal regulations as well as monitoring for aquatic invasive species,” among other things.
The CBSA has told Newswatch that the boating exemptions are set out in the Customs Act, and that any changes to the act have to be made by Parliament.
