I mean, say, you want a really nice camera, or a drone, or maybe a gaming laptop, and since those things are made in China, they are too expensive to buy right now in the US, since tariffs are over 100%. So you just go to Canada, buy the thing, unpack it from the packaging, and pretend like its just personal items. Just like a smartphone.
AFIAK, border agents usually don’t ask if you bought your phone in the US or from outside, they shouldn’t ask about other personal electronics, right?
I have technically smuggled cheese and champagne into Canada with the help of a border guard.
I studied there for a few years and usually came back to France for Christmas or summer and always brought some cheese and wine with me when going back to Canada. I declared them the first time, but after waiting 2 hours just to have a guy take a bewildered look at my 1kg piece of brie, 1kg of comté and 2 bottles of wine and ask “how much is that worth?” (To which the answer was like 150€ at most) I stopped declaring them.
Once I was waiting for a friend at the airport and there was some border guard dude patrolling with a dog and I guess I stared at them too long wondering if the dog was trained to sniff non pasteurized french cheese, so the guy started questioning me. I didn’t lie and he was understanding because I was obviously not going to prop up some cheese smuggling crime syndicate with these quantities, so he just let me go and told me I should have declared the items.