[Delphinus]

You know a price difference of $50 on an item worth a couple hundred wouldn't even bother me. What bothers me is where the price differential is so vast it's just ridiculous for lack of a better word.

Luckily, I find that at least in this hobby, we don't see too many cases of "let's rape the Canadian consumer". But there are easy examples in different industries:

The bike carrier I use is made by Thule. At one point, Thule was a Swedish company. I don't know if the brand still is or isn't. But the exact model I use has a MSRP of $600 in Canada. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. The same model in the U.S. has a MSRP of $300. How does the exchange rate of even 6 months ago to a year ago or whenever it was really bad, justify a DOUBLING of the cost? I found an ebay retailer who was selling them for $260. With taxes shipping and brokerage and with a WEAKER Canadian dollar at the time, I landed that thing to my door for less than half the Canadian MSRP. I don't mind paying a premium to keep things local but there is a point where it makes no financial sense anymore to do so.

Another example? Cars. Look at the prices of cars in Canada and the U.S. .. Again, it's just ridiculous. I know a person who bought his Subaru in the U.S. 2 or 3 years ago, could sell this 2 or 3 year old car locally here for still more than what they paid for. Absurd.

But what's really outrageous now is some companies are putting policies in place to prevent U.S. retailers to selling to Canadians. A lot of people in the media telling their stories about how they tried to buy a car and the dealerships aren't allowed to sell to them.

Bombardier takes the prize here. A Canadian company who we've subsidized with our tax dollars has said to U.S. retailers "You may not sell your products to Canadians." They say it's to protect the Canadian retailers. Even the U.S. retailers find this frustrating. The article I read in the Herald quoted one as saying "for years Americans would go to Canada and buy Sea-Doos up there because the dollar was in their favour. Who was protecting MY interests then?" In my opinion this is flat-out a policy of discrimination against Canadians which when you think about how we've paid our TAX dollars to subsidize this company is really offensive.