this all sounds nice regarding clearing customs, but dont you hasve to clear customs in the city/place the pacage enter's canada if you want to do it yourselve.

as far as I know, and I never did it, becouse of the unknown but if I would have something shipped to me and it would enter canada opn the main land, but I live on the island, than I have to go to the mainland to clear it.

or is it possible to clear the package locally at customs, regardless if the package enters canada on the west coast ore east coast ?

You may be confusing brokerage fees with duties and GST. Brokerage is what the shipping company charges for doing the customs paperwork. Customs duties is the tax that the government applies for importing goods to Canada (rather than buying within Canada...which is the point). GST is applied on top of Customs Duties.

I would love to see the invoice. Was it shipped Fedex Express or Fedex Ground?

The highest custom duties on goods is 20%, plus the 5% GST, plus the $10 brokerage fee. So a $300 tank should be $60 duties, $15 GST, $10 brokerage fee which equals $85. I've never seen anything different than this from Fedex. The only time you should get the charges by mail is if the paperwork fell off the package, otherwise you should get the charges on delivery.

I don't have the invoice anymore as I didn't pay it so it went to the shredder. Not sure which if it was Express or Ground, it came on a truck to my door is all I know. The invoice may have had duty on it but it was 50% of the bill is the part that I remember. When I called the phone number on the invoice to see why I'm paying so much and for a broken product that never even left the truck the rude lady on the other end of the phone kept saying that it was FedEx that broke the package not them as they aren't Fedex and I still had to pay the invoice. When I asked how come the invoice says FedEx right on the letterhead she hung up on me. I had to call back to a manager and they removed the invoice. It was a weird experience anyways. It's probably not the norm but I'm just lucky that way, p'd me off enough to never use them again though. Duty is another story and the odd time I actually get charged for it regardless of who the carrier is which suurprises me as it is the government who gets this money but they hardly ever charge me for it.

It sounds like maybe you were dealing with a contractor and possibly not Fedex at all. Here in Saskatoon contractors deal with all the outlying small towns. I wonder if the contractors were trying to charge you (which I believe is breach of contract).