You want me to what?!

You know what really grinds my gears? Repeated exhortations to "shop Canadian".

I understand the sentiment, and I agree with it on a limited basis: when you shop Canadian, you're protecting Canadian jobs. I get that. I really do. But protecting Canadian jobs should not cost me up to a fifty percent premium.

I work in retail, so I have some understanding of price drivers. If you feel you're getting gouged on an item, chances are very good to excellent that it's not the retailer itself that's gouging you. There are middlemen galore, each of whom takes a little cut...and all that red tape costs, too.

Example: Michelina's frozen "entrees". Made in Canada, packaged in the U.S., and re-imported. There's a reason for this, I'm sure, but nobody has been able to tell me what it is in ten years of asking. But I have no doubt that's one reason why they retail at $2.29 here versus 87 cents in northern Florida.

Bilingualism adds a cost to everything. Not near as big a cost as some would have you think: after all, the French side of packages here wouldn't be blank if this were an English-only country. But it is a cost.

Quality occasionally drives the price. I won't, for instance, drink American milk unless it's organic, and I don't care that you can buy a gallon for half the price it costs in Canada. I'd rather avoid the bovine growth hormones, thank you very much.

The most cited reason for Canadian higher prices: economies of scale. This country has a tenth the population spread out over a considerably larger area, and so of course everything's going to cost m---


BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ BZZ BZZZ

Hello Mr. Fly! What's that you're circling around? Why, it's a massive pile of bullshit! And I almost stepped in it!

Let's look at this last claim a little more closely, shall we? Roughly eighty percent of Canadians live within a hundred miles of the U.S. border. For purposes of transportation, that's negligible. I can definitely grasp why it might cost an arm and a leg for an apple in Iqaluit...but the prices in Sarnia should be within a country kilometer of those in Port Huron. Since most of this stuff is coming from China anyway, what's another hundred miles?

I have a friend in southern California that refuses to spend more than ten dollars on any item of clothing. Every time he comes up here, we do a mall walk, and without fail he'll walk into Roots and gawk at the prices. Shirts for $35. Sweaters for $90.

Our dollar is at f**king PAR. We have a free trade agreement between our two countries.

You know what's really causing the ridiculous price differential? Competition, or more specifically, the lack of it in Canada. Competition always lowers prices, and in Canada there really isn't very much in many sectors. There are, for all extents and purposes, three national telecommunications providers--Rogers, Bell, Telus--and there's widespread suspicion that they're ultimately the same outfit ("Robellus"), being as their prices are uniformly obscene. Aided and abetted by a complacent government they own, they make it a matter of policy to crush upstarts. There has been some movement on this over the last few years, but nowhere near enough to see meaningful price drops for the average Canadian consumer.

Not only are the prices so much lower in the States, they have access to products and services we can only dream of. Check out the pop aisle in any American supermarket. You could make an entire Canadian pop aisle out of the products we don't have here. Hell, we just got Wild Cherry Pepsi. It's selling like crazy. No Vanilla Coke, no Mello Yello. There are eleventy dozen varieties of Mountain Dew in the U.S.; often only one here, two or maybe three in the biggest stores. No Cherry Coke. No Minute Maid Pomegranate Lemonade, which just might be the tastiest beverage ever manufactured.

(Oddly, there are several kinds of chocolate bar only available in Canada, and many kinds of potato chips, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

I don't mind paying a small premium to support the local economy, but I'm sick and tired of being told that true Canadian patriots must throw away the lube and bend over on command.