Greg Kanargelidis has more than 30 years of experience practising in the areas of international trade, customs and commodity tax law. He heads the international trade and investment group at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP, and is recognised as one of the leading international trade and customs lawyers in Canada and the world.
Greg has extensive experience representing Canadian and foreign clients with respect to cross-border trade and investment issues. He advises clients on multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements, bilateral investment agreements, economic sanctions, export and import controls, and government procurement disputes. Greg has substantial experience in and regularly assists clients with trade remedy matters, including anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations and appeals, as well as safeguards.
Greg is a noted expert in all areas of customs law, including planning and compliance with respect to all aspects of the importation and exportation of goods and services, such as tariff classification, customs valuation, rules of origin, export and import controls, marking of country of origin rules, seizures and ascertained forfeitures, administrative monetary penalties, and voluntary disclosures.
He also assists clients with respect to planning, compliance and appeals involving federal and provincial commodity taxes, including but not limited to value-added taxes such as the goods and services tax (GST)/harmonized sales tax (HST), Quebec sales tax, and other federal and provincial excise duties and taxes.
Greg is very active in legal organisations. He is senior advisor and past co-chair of the Customs Law Committee, Section of International Law and Practice, of the American Bar Association; chair of the Customs Committee and vice-chair of the Commodity Tax, Customs and Trade Section of the Canadian Bar Association; and past chair of the Ontario Bar Association's International Law Section. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the CITT and the Trade Compliance and Recourse Subcommittee of the Border Commercial Consultative Committee of the Canada Border Services Agency. He is also a frequent author and speaker on customs, international trade and commodity tax topics.
Greg was named the 2018 and 2016 Toronto "Lawyer of the Year " for International Trade and Finance Law by Best Lawyers. He also received a 2014 Lexpert Zenith Award for excellence and thought leadership in commodity tax/customs. In 2013, he was presented with a Client Choice Award in Trade & Customs – Ontario by International Law Office.
Greg's expertise has been recognised by numerous publications, including: Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business 2020; The Lexpert/American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada – 2019-2020; The Legal 500 Canada 2020; The Best Lawyers in Canada – 2020; Who's Who Legal: Trade & Customs 2019; The Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory – 2019, among others.
