I don't know about that. They were a royal pain in the 90's if you had a bus of high school students. I remember them grabbing a couple of girls (didn't even talk to them first) and taking them away while not allowing the adult counselors to be with them. That lasted about an hour and the girls were crying when they returned. They also kept a group of buses their for multiple hours. I'm not even sure what they were looking for.

The US side would nod their heads and says there was nothing to be done about it.

I entered Canada a couple of times in the 90s and it was basically cursory look at my passport + have a nice a day. Something like 5 seconds. Today I am a Canadian citizen and overall the experience is much worse than it used to be in the 90s or even 10 years ago.

Which border crossing had those incidents? So those girls were on the bus with you, they came back crying, and you have no idea why? Is there more context here?

Just sort of to tie this in to current events, some guy just drove into Canada without stopping the other day: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/driver-who-skipped-...

Now by luck police spotted the vehicle in Vancouver and tried to pull it over.

If someone tried this sort of stunt going the other direction what do you think would happen?

> And entering Canada, the law is not actually suspended at the border and its vicinity

So police in Canada can demand your unlocked phone at any point, not just at the border?

Well, possibly. My point is that in Canada, at least on paper "Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.". Now obviously this is always work in progress and there are situations where asserting your rights is a problem, but people should follow up on these incidents and they do have recourse. Unlike some other places.

http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check...

"The context of the search, and the activity that brings a person into contact with the state, can have an impact on the person’s reasonable expectation of privacy."

...

"The degree of personal privacy expected at borders, where travellers expect to be searched, is lower than in other enforcement situations (R. v. Simmons, [1988] 2 S.C.R. 495 at page 528; Monney at paragraph 34; R. v. Jacques, [1996] 3 S.C.R. 312 at paragraph 18).

The expectation of privacy is reduced in the school setting in relation to the responsibility of teachers and other school authorities to provide a safe environment and maintain order and discipline in the school (M.(M.R.)).

Prisons carry a decreased expectation of privacy (Weatherall; R. v. Conway, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1659). However, the lowered expectation of privacy within a prison does not allow the seizure without a warrant of bodily samples taken as part of a medical examination (R. v. Dorfer (1996), 104 C.C.C. (3d) 528 (B.C.C.A.))."