ORIGINAL: ButchA
.... Canadian Customs service will flatly deny anything that is deemed a firearm accessory!!! [:@]
Butch A.
This isn't absolutely true, Butch, but unfortunately that doesn't help with your particular transaction. Individual Customs officers have a lot of power to screw up and misinterpret our regulations, which certainly do not prohibit the importation of optical sighting devices for firearms. And then we run up against the universal reflex of the bureacratic mind to stubbornly refuse to consider that they might have got it wrong and actually go and look up the rule.
Since you were shipping to a B.C. address the package would go through Vancouver, and it appears there is at least one individual in Customs there who has appointed herself to prevent firearms and anything to do with them from infesting her country. (There is a reason we give that part of our country the nickname "The Left Coast".)
Please don't give up on your friends up here. It is hard enough getting our hands on some of the great gear that is available in the U.S. because we are such a small market it isn't worth the paperwork for some manufacturers to export here.