My shopping list keeps getting longer. As it turns out, so are the shopping lists of my friends and colleagues.

Nope, it’s not because we have a lot of Christmas gifts to buy — I’m not down with observing fake holidays in the first place, not to mention my disdain for mindlessly obeying the urgings of retail conglomerates — it’s because, well, we consider ourselves smart shoppers. We do our research, we use the interwebs, we comparison-shop. We do the math regarding cross-border shopping.

And we get really pissed off about the way Canadian retailers are gouging us. We wouldn’t buy from a store crying the import-duty-wages-rent blues if the store across the street was selling for less, so why should we really give a second thought to crossing the border to pay less? It’s not like Canadian retail conglomerates don’t do exactly what we do: comparison shop and buy from the cheapest vendor, often in the U.S. of A. If they don’t, they’re just, plain stupid.

And we decide that maybe we don’t need that new computer or new HDTV or new chest of drawers as urgently as we thought we did when we first started investigating the prices. We can wait until our next trip south or, maybe, wait until Canadian retailers are hemorrhaging unsold products after the traditionally-profitable Christmas season. Or maybe we’ll just make do with what we have now.

Increasingly-vocal, angry and non-buying consumers must really freak Canadian retailers the fuck out.

So they respond by sending our favourite Raelian priestess Retail Council of Canada President, Diane Brisebois, out to meet the press:

“If I bring in boots from China, I’m paying 18 per cent duty. My competitor in the United States is paying zero because the U.S. has a deal with China that we don’t have. So I’m always going to be 18 per cent more expensive,” Brisebois said. “If I bring in a sweater from Italy I pay 20 per cent duty. My competitor in Boston pays 1 per cent.”

The council has been lobbying Ottawa to level the playing field by lowering import duties. (Link)

Well, yes, this is true, although why the hell have you waited until now to cry foul? Anyway, if I was going to buy Chinese boots or Italian sweaters I would give a crap but I’m not so I don’t. (And, by the way, Diane, thanks for the tip; if I do want those items, I now know not to bother shopping for them in Canada.) It’s a classic magician’s trick, though: misdirection. Of course she’s going to pick the most egregious examples of unfair tariffs. And we’ll fill in the blanks, obedient sheep that we are, and assume she’s describing the entire retail import climate.

Or we can use the interwebs to look up the actual tariff rates, of which her examples are very much not the norm.

And when the boo-hoo-we-pay-higher-tariffs-hoo shpiel falls on deaf ears, retail marketing departments cook up further misdirection — “we’ll match U.S. prices!”

But:

When consumer electronics specialty retailer Best Buy Canada announced “U.S. prices” on its hottest sellers last week, Tim Smith figured he’d be getting a good deal on the Sony voice recorder he wanted.

But when Smith compared the price of the same product at a Best Buy store on the other side of the border, he was surprised to learn it was still $40 cheaper there.

“I phoned them (Best Buy Canada) three different times and was never told any reason for this,” Smith wrote in an email to the Toronto Star from his home in Hanover, Ont. “This leads me to think that Canadian shoppers might think they are getting a deal when the opposite is true.”

A Best Buy spokesperson said later the special “U.S. prices” offer applied only to some products and that U.S. prices fluctuate frequently and can’t always be immediately matched. Still, Smith says he was so annoyed he decided not to buy the product. (Link)

Gee, there’s a familiar refrain. And:

Book lover Bill Reno went shopping at the Indigo store at Yonge and Eglinton after the retailer said it would knock an additional 10 per cent off any book in the store.

But the deal came with so many strings attached, he says, he ended up saving all of $2.70 on an $85 order.

“I wasn’t very impressed,” said Reno, a communications consultant in Toronto. “I offered to pay in U.S. currency because the U.S. price of the book was $5 less. But the clerk gave a contorted reason why they couldn’t do that.” (Link)

And, as you might imagine, I was particularly delighted to see IKEA mentioned:

The same week that Ikea Canada announced it had lowered prices on thousands of products since last year, a consumer called the Star to complain that the Kramfors sofa priced at $899 south of the border is $1,399 in Canada.

“I was shocked and appalled to see that Ikea’s Canadian price was grossly over-inflated compared to that of the United States,” said Tabatha Holtz. [The Candaian tariff on furniture is anywhere from 0% to 9.5%, according to the guidelines -- bs23]

President of Ikea Canada Kerri Molinaro told the Star the company has also passed on millions in savings on imports as the dollar rose over the past few years. (Link)

And we really couldn’t care less. What we consumers care about is what we pay at the checkout. And you’re still gouging us. If we buy, we won’t buy from you. Or, after being lied to and misdirected for so long and with such disrespect, maybe we won’t buy at all. Maybe those nutbars at Buy Nothing Day had the right idea all along.