Moving to Newfoundland and Labrador from the US

What a move to Newfoundland and Labrador costs depends on how much you ship and where the load starts. There's no published rate card for Canada here. Each move is priced after a survey and set out in writing, so the figure follows your volume and your starting point.

What moves the price of a Newfoundland move?

• Volume. Measured at the survey in cubic feet, room by room.
• Starting point. A load leaving Portland and a load leaving San Diego are different American road legs.
• Packing. Hand the dishes and the bookcases over instead, through our packing and unpacking service.

A car arrives with an import bill of its own, and none of it is ours. For a car less than 15 years old, the Registrar of Imported Vehicles charges CAN$325.00 plus GST/HST for the Vehicle Import Form declaration, and a CAN$100 excise tax falls on any imported vehicle carrying an air conditioning unit. One provincial note runs the other way: NL Motor Registration tells people who recently moved here that they may be exempt from paying Retail Sales Tax when the vehicle is registered.

How is the written estimate produced?

Call (855) 822-2722. The line runs 08:00 to 20:00, every day of the week. If the move starts a long way from the Atlantic, our long-distance moving page explains how the domestic road leg is handled.

Canada's border agency calls you a settler when you enter to set up a residence for the first time, for a year or more. Personal and household goods may come in without duty or taxes once CBSA's conditions are met. Work of 36 months or less, or study, falls outside that.

Settlers' effects and Form BSF186

Goods have to have been owned, possessed and used abroad before you arrive for them to enter duty- and tax-free. Leased goods fail that test, since CBSA doesn't count you as their owner.

CBSA advises taking two copies of your own list: value, make, model and serial number wherever those apply. Hand it to the border services officer at your first point of entry, even when the shipment is still behind you. From that list the officer completes Form BSF186, the Personal Effects Accounting Document, and your copy later claims the rest. The form can be filled in before you arrive, CBSA says, and Form BSF186A covers the list itself, where anything still to come gets its own section. All of it sits on CBSA's moving to Canada page.

One condition trips people up. The settler declaration has you undertake to notify CBSA and pay the duties owing if you dispose of an item in Canada within 12 months of importing it, and CBSA says goods sold or given away within one year of importation become subject to the duty and taxes originally waived.

What happens to goods that follow you?

Anything reaching Canada after you counts as goods to follow, and it comes in duty- and tax-free only when it appeared on the list you handed over at that first point of entry. CBSA's settlers' effects memorandum sets no time limit on goods listed to follow. Alcohol and tobacco run the other way under the tariff: they count only when they accompany you on arrival. Put timing questions to CBSA, not to a moving company.

Which goods draw a closer look?

• Alcohol and tobacco. Under tariff item 9807.00.00 a settler may include wine up to 1.5 litres, or other alcoholic beverages up to 1.14 litres, plus set tobacco quantities, and only inside the goods that accompany you on arrival. For alcohol, CBSA ties the minimum import age to the province or territory where you enter Canada: 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec, 19 elsewhere. Tobacco and vaping products under a personal exemption carry a minimum age of 18.
• Firearms. Each one is declared to a border services officer. Prohibited firearms, devices and weapons cannot be brought in by a visitor under any circumstances, and importing non-restricted firearms as a Canadian resident calls for a Possession and Acquisition Licence.
• Cannabis. Crossing the border with cannabis is illegal, Health Canada says, and that covers cannabis used for medical purposes.
• Food, plants and anything carrying soil. Food, plants, animals and related products are all declared, and firewood needs a permit. Goods contaminated with soil, from boots to garden tools to vehicles, are usually refused. A used mattress needs a certificate that it was cleaned and fumigated in the country of export, though the tariff exempts mattresses imported as settlers' effects.
• Cash. Currency or monetary instruments worth CAN$10,000 or more get reported on arrival.

Bringing your car to Newfoundland

Start on the American side. Under 19 CFR 192.2 the export documents reach US Customs and Border Protection at least 72 hours before a vehicle leaves by road, and the vehicle is presented at export; under 15 CFR 30.4 the Electronic Export Information is filed and its citation given to CBP on the same clock. A leased car, or one with a recorded lien, needs a letter from the third party expressly allowing the export, and RIV advises getting the supporting documents to CBP at least 3 business days ahead.

On the Canadian side the RIV program takes vehicles under 15 years old on the date of importation, clear of any inadmissible flag on the Vehicle Import Compatibility List, free of outstanding safety recalls, and holding an original valid US state certificate of title. Declaration goes on Transport Canada's Vehicle Import Form, the Form 1, or a RIV e-Form 1. Let 45 days pass from the date of import with no inspection done and RIV issues a delinquent notice. Leasing a car in the United States breaks the settler ownership requirement. Financing one doesn't. Then comes the province. NL Motor Registration lets a non-resident operate a vehicle for a maximum of 3 months without registering it here, and tells people who have recently moved that they must register the vehicle within 90 days of arrival. For a vehicle imported from outside Canada it asks for the customs clearance papers: the Form 1 Vehicle Import Form together with a B15 Casual Goods and Accounting Document or a B4 Personal Effects Accounting Document. A copy of an inspection appears on that list only for the purchase of a used vehicle, which is narrower than people expect, so ask Motor Registration what your own case needs.

Which papers do a dog or cat need?

The United States isn't among the rabies-free countries in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's list, so a pet from the US falls under the rules for a country that is not free of rabies. Dogs older than 3 months but under 8 months, arriving with their owner, need a valid rabies vaccination certificate. So do dogs of 8 months and above. Send a dog of that younger age without its owner and CFIA wants a valid Veterinary Certificate of Health on top. Cats of 3 months or older need the rabies certificate as well, and any dog must have been 3 months old at least when vaccinated. No microchip, no tattoo: Canada requires neither.

Is the 2026 surtax a problem?

Effective September 8, 2026, CBSA Customs Notice 26-23 laid a surtax of 15%, 25% or 50% of the value for duty on certain US-origin goods. Chapters 98 and 99 of the tariff are exempted unless the tariff item appears in Schedule 4 to the Order, and 9807.00.00, the settlers' effects item, is not there. On that reading, household goods qualifying as settlers' effects land inside the Chapter 98 exemption. Take it to CBSA before relying on it.

Your first weeks in Newfoundland: a checklist

1. Register with MCP. The province requires every person residing here to register in order to become and remain a beneficiary of the Medical Care Plan, and there are no fees or charges for registering. Beneficiaries are also entitled to insured medical services received in hospital under the Hospital Insurance Plan. Eligibility conditions sit on MCP's own page.
2. Check the regulation on when coverage starts. The province's consolidated Medical Care Insurance regulation, CNLR 20/96, says a person arriving from other than a participating province who becomes a resident is entitled to insured services from the date of arrival. MCP's web pages don't spell that out, so the regulation is the source for it, and your own start date is a question for MCP.
3. Send a complete application. MCP says applications arriving complete, with all supporting documents, typically have a response time of two weeks. Coverage for permanent residents runs one year for new applicants, then up to five years at a time.
4. Book the licence appointment early. Motor Registration requires an appointment when you have moved here and need a licence exchanged, and your existing licence is handed in.
5. Swap the licence within three months of becoming a resident. People taking up residence from the United States can exchange without a written, vision or road test where the criteria are met: 17 years of age, the required identification, a valid licence that has not expired. Commercial Class 1 to 4 exchanges need a medical report.
6. Put plates on the car inside 90 days. Motor Registration asks for the federal customs paperwork when you register, so the RIV steps need to be in hand first.
7. Budget for 15% sales tax. The Canada Revenue Agency lists the combined GST/HST rate in Newfoundland and Labrador at 15%, with no separate provincial sales tax on top.
8. Know the provincial income tax. CRA puts the lowest Newfoundland and Labrador rate for 2026 at 8.7% on the first CAN$44,678 of taxable income. Federal tax comes separately.
9. Read the IRCC pages yourself. Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada sets out permanent residence programs, Express Entry and family sponsorship among them, plus a work permit page for people planning a few years in Canada. Status is IRCC's call, never a mover's.

Newfoundland and Labrador turns on weather, rent and a resource economy more than on postcards. Statistics Canada put the province at 547,910 residents on April 1, 2026, a St. John's two-bedroom averaged CAN$1,361 last October, and the province is estimated to have had the highest real GDP growth of any province in 2025. Here is what each source reports.

How much is rent in St. John's?

CMHC's Rental Market Survey put the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the St. John's census metropolitan area at CAN$1,361 in October 2025, across privately initiated apartment structures of three units and over. The same survey reports a 2.0% vacancy rate for rental apartments there. That is the primary rental market, so plenty of online listings will sit apart from it. Renting first? Set the lease start against the date your goods clear the border, not the day you load.

How snowy is a St. John's winter?

The 1991-2020 climate normals for St. John's Airport, from Environment and Climate Change Canada, give an average of 363.4 cm of snow a year against a January daily average of -4.2 °C. Snow is the headline here, not cold. January alone brings 95.4 cm on those normals, worth knowing before you decide which coats travel in the shipment.

How is Newfoundland and Labrador's economy doing?

Budget 2026 from the province's Department of Finance estimates that Newfoundland and Labrador recorded the highest real GDP growth rate among provinces in 2025, at 4.8 per cent, with 5.5 per cent forecast for 2026 on oil and mineral production. Offshore crude oil production reached 87.6 million barrels in 2025, up 14.6 per cent on 2024, and landed value in the fisheries climbed 32.0 per cent to a historical peak of nearly CAN$1.3 billion. Population is projected to hold steady through 2026, largely on cuts to federal immigration levels.

What is life like in Labrador?

Labrador is the mainland half of the province, and roads reach it without a ferry. On July 5, 2022 the provincial government announced that paving of the Trans-Labrador Highway was finished, giving more than 1,100 kilometres of paved highway between the Labrador Straits and Labrador West. Labrador City sits at the western end of that run. It is a long drive from anywhere, and worth planning around.

Ready to put a plan under it? Ring (855) 822-2722 and we will book the survey and send the estimate in writing. USDOT #4176875 and MC #1607491 cover the American road leg, while our international moving page sets out the overseas side of the business.