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A sailor from Greenland says he plans to appeal the $1,000 fine he was slapped with for illegally entering Canada this week, saying no one could give him the right contact to register his arrival.

Jens Erik Kjeldsen entered Halifax harbour last Saturday on the S/V Kigdlua with his wife and crew as part of a journey around the world that is being filmed by a Danish TV crew.

He said he visited Halifax and Canada three times before without issue, but “this one was outlandish.”

He said that on a previous trip to Canada he had emailed to pre-register, but when he tried last week he didn’t get a response.

And on another, he said, he was told by customs officials who visited his boat that he should check in with the Coast Guard by radio and was given a radio channel number for that.

“Coming into the harbour we called on channel 16, the Coast Guard, and they said ‘Oh, you’re just a small vessel, report to the waterfront development (agency),’” Kjeldsen said. “So, we tied up and went to waterfront development, and there was no one in the office. We went to the port authority, it was Saturday, and no one was in the office. We waited until Monday morning and went to both places.”

He said he filled out a form at waterfront development not related to his entry, then went to the port authority.

“We said we wanted to get our clearance, that we had passports and we have to get customs aboard, and they said ‘we’ve never heard of anything like that before.’”

'I walked back and forth and back and forth to do everything correctly'

The person at the port authority called the Waterfront Development Agency, and got hold of someone who said that Kjeldsen had to talk to someone else.

“She phoned him, but he wasn’t there. He was on vacation,” he said.

“I walked back and forth and back and forth to do everything correctly, reported as far as I could and hoped I would be given a telephone number to contact Immigration or whatever, because we didn’t have any bad intentions of course. I didn’t want to bring any trouble.”

But on Wednesday morning, as they were getting ready to leave to get ahead of the weather, “we had two customs officers who came up to our boat and they treated us like criminals.”

That’s when he was given the fine.

“They asked us why we didn’t we know the telephone number we were supposed to call, and we said ‘how should we have known?’ No one knew here. The Port Authority, they did not know. The waterfront development did not know. The Coast Guard did not know. We’re from Greenland, come on.”

The officers took everyone’s passports until the fine was paid.

“I’m going to appeal that because I do not find that correct,” said Kjeldsen, who is a judge in Greenland.

“You can’t really haggle with them, so I said yes, I admit that we didn’t do it correct, but it wasn’t intentional, we didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

After paying the fine, the passports were returned so his journey could continue Wednesday evening.

A spokesperson for the Halifax Port Authority could not be reached.

In an email, Canadian Border Services Agency spokesman Allan Donovan said the agency doesn't comment on individual cases

"What I can tell you is that all persons seeking entry to Canada must present to the CBSA and may be subject to a more in-depth exam," he said.

The owner or operator of a recreational boat is required by law to go to a designated telephone reporting marine site and call the Telephone Reporting Centre upon arrival," Donovan said, regardless of whether the owners/operators are preregistered or not.

"It is the responsibility of the owner/operator to know this information prior to entering into Canada," he said.

He said that if a traveller believes an enforcement action was inappropriate, they can appeal the decision within 90 day to CBSA adjudicators.

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