CBC Radio 3 Lives On

It's a few weeks old news, but for anybody else that hasn't heard, CBC Radio 3, known for its vast array of Canadian music (see article) will not be sold. The service has been invaluable for Canadian indie musicians (including some who played at the CBC Radio 3 Sponsored Stereophonic 6 in Sackville) to connect with their fans since it began airing in 2000.

From the Gazette:

CBC Radio 3 offers a vast library of music

By Michael Gregoris

Friday, September 21, 2007

Finally, the CBC has something worth listening to.

Point your web browser tohttp://radio3.cbc.ca and check out the online database of 100 per cent Canadian indie artists. Discover why Exclaim! calls CBC Radio 3 “Canada’s most important podcast” and Spin Magazine labels it as “the top podcast in Canada.”

CBC Radio 3 features a continuous satellite radio beam (provided by Sirius Satellite) with an assortment of musical genres, including hip-hop, blues, folk and electronic — not to mention weekly podcasts. In fact, since late 2005 there have been over 3.8 million downloads.

This is great news for music fans and independent Canadian musicians. There is great potential to expose Canadian artists to a wider international audience.

Boasting more than 9,000 artists and 43,000 original songs, Radio 3 is the largest collection of independent Canadian music in the world. From grungy basement demos to pristine professional recordings, New Music Canada has it all.

The website features an online media player, complete with customizable playlist settings, with an option to listen in “radio mode.”

Currently, CBC Radio 3 is showcasing LOLA acts.

An interesting aspect to note is customizable user playlists can be submitted for others to sample. The playlists are archived and ranked based on listener feedback.

CBC Radio 3 is helping new and up-and-coming bands trying to break onto the scene. Along with a platform to stream music and videos from, artists get a blog, a tour calendar and an image gallery.

On top of that, every track uploaded to the site will have its own permanent link. If you want someone to hear a song without having to send them an actual disc, you can a forward them a link from the New Music Canada stream.

CBC Radio 3 also invites artists into the studios and records exclusive material where the recorded shows are uploaded online for streaming.

A sidebar also contains a drop list of new music sorted by genre and band name for easy browsing.

Perhaps the most unique feature of CBC Radio 3 is its online blog. The blog offers readers the chance to sit down with a Canadian artist and participate in an intimate discussion regarding a variety of different topics, whether in the studio or out at a live show.

The website also offers a comprehensive concert listing, allowing users to track their favourite Canadian act. You can even download entire live sets with the click of a button.

CBC Radio 3 is a luxury suite of web tools, carefully designed to get musicians’ names and music out to listeners.

And from Radio 3 itself:

Thanks For Your Help In Keeping CBC Radio 3 Alive

Posted by Steve Pratt on Mar 26, 2009 | 62 comments | » Post a Comment

I know a great many of you have been following CBC’s financial difficulties closely and have been concerned about the effect on CBC Radio 3. Today, everyone at Radio 3 found out that, contrary to previous reports, we are NOT being sold and we are NOT being shut down.

However, like the rest of the company, we are undertaking a significant cut to our budget next year. There are two primary impacts for us, one of which will be felt strongly and the other of which many of you may not notice.

The first impact is that CBC Radio 3 will be recording significantly less live music in the coming year. Our recording budget is being merged with the recording budget of CBC Radio 2, which in turn has been reduced by 50%.We will still be recording musicians from across the country, but how much we can do and whether those recordings will be live concerts or studio sessions we don’t yet know.

I will be working with CBC Radio’s head of music, Mark Steinmetz, in the coming weeks to create a new live music strategy between Radio 2 and Radio 3. This is very painful – I know how much all of you appreciate our live recordings and I also know how much it means to the many amazing Canadian musicians we record every year.

The second impact is related to our radio stations. Many of you may not know this, but CBC Radio 3’s Sirius satellite radio station (channel 86) broadcasts a separate and often distinct set of programming from the streaming radio station on our website. Yes, some of our programs are simulcast on both, but many are not. Moving forward, we will have the exact same programming on both Sirius and web radio.

Very sadly for all of us here, this will very likely mean an impact on our staff.We won’t know what that impact will be until mid-May at the earliest, as it depends on a number of factors such as the internal take-up on a voluntary retirement incentive plan and discussions with our union colleagues about how to minimize staff reductions.

This is a bad day for CBC Radio 3. There is no doubt about it. However, it could have been much worse and for that I think we are all thankful. We are moving forward with a very strong radio station, a brand new version of the website coming within a couple months, and a powerful, passionate community of artists and music fans. Despite today’s bad news, I’m personally very confident that Radio 3 will continue to grow and prosper in the future and that impact of the cuts to our budget has been minimized at best as humanly possible.

I would personally like to thank each and every one of you who raised awareness online about the risks to Radio 3 since the infamous ‘unload Radio 3’ quote was seen in the media. Your support and the visibility of that support was heard loudly inside the company and I hope was a factor in making today’s news considerably less than it might have been otherwise.

Steve Pratt
Director, CBC Radio 3

Entering the U.S. Visa Free: Visa Waiver Program and ESTA

I know that I've talked about requirements for Canadians and Americans to enter the U.S. but for others there are other steps to take. For people from most countries you'll need to apply for a visa at a U.S. embassy/consulate in your country, but for a fortunate few you can simply submit an online application and, assuming you're accepted, enter the U.S. visa free. See the Visa Waiver Program and ESTA information below.

Overview – What is the Visa Waiver Program?

The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables nationals of certain countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business [visitor (B) visa purposes] for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa. The program was established in 1986 with the objective of eliminating unnecessary barriers to travel, stimulating the tourism industry, and permitting the Department of State to focus consular resources in other areas. VWP eligible travelers may apply for a visa, if they prefer to do so. Not all countries participate in the VWP, and not all travelers from VWP countries are eligible to use the program. VWP travelers are required to apply for authorization though the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), are screened at their port of entry into the United States, and are enrolled in the Department of Homeland Security’s US-VISIT program.

Which countries participate in the Visa Waiver Program (VWP)?

Currently, 35 countries participate in the Visa Waiver Program, as shown below:

Andorra	Iceland	Norway
Australia	Ireland	Portugal
Austria	Italy	San Marino
Belgium	Japan	Singapore
Brunei	Latvia	Slovakia
Czech Republic	Liechtenstein	Slovenia
Denmark	Lithuania	South Korea
Estonia	Luxembourg	Spain
Finland	Malta	Sweden
France	Monaco	Switzerland
Germany	the Netherlands	United Kingdom
Hungary	New Zealand

America is becoming the new Canada...or not.

Although many, including my fellow American expat soon-to-be Canadian blogger Laura from we move to Canada disagree strongly, it has been the "easy headline" that with the election of Barack Obama and Stephen Harper's stronger grip on Canadian government last year that the US and Canada are switching places along the left-right spectrum.

I tend to agree with Laura. There has clearly been a shift to the left (well...center really) in the US and a shift to right (well...center really) in Canada, the shift can be oversimplified and over exaggerated. But there are a few good points in this article. See wmtc for the poignant rebuttal.

Macleans.ca

Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine.

How did America become the new Canada?

Apr 4, 2009 by Andrew Potter

In a remarkable reversal of political directions, America has been transformed into a hothouse of liberal and—shhh—even socialist experimentation, while Canada seems a hotbed of reactionary conservatism. Yes, America is the new us, we’re the new America, and the Canadian left has to be wondering just where it all went wrong.

The eight years of the Bush presidency allowed progressive-minded Canadians to indulge in an orgy of moral superiority vis-à-vis the United States, but in three short months that country has almost completely changed course. Acting on the premise that it would be a shame to let a good crisis go to waste, Barack Obama has put his ship of state in a hard left turn, and his countrymen have dutifully gone along with it. Huge tracts of the economy have submitted to massive state intervention even as the President pushes full-steam ahead on school reform, a national health care program, and a new energy- and climate-change initiative.

On virtually all of the defining issues of America’s relentless culture war—drugs, stem cell research, gay rights—it is clear Obama is trying to push the U.S. away from the tightly ideological positions of the Republicans while adopting a looser and far more pragmatic approach. One of his first moves as President was to make more embryonic stem cell lines available for research, which sent scientists into raptures, and left the public shrugging in quiet approval. The U.S. has joined the UN’s Human Rights Council, reversing a decision by the Bush administration, and will back a UN resolution supporting the decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide. (Bush had refused to do so, making the U.S. the only Western country not to sign on.)

Weirdest of all, ratings for National Public Radio—an institution so liberal even liberals make fun of it—have skyrocketed this year, with listenership for its flagship news and current affairs programs growing by nine per cent over the last year.

Meanwhile, up in Canada, the CBC is laying off 800 employees after the Conservatives refused to float it a bridge loan during the recession. And why would they? The Tories are too busy chumming their home waters, introducing measures aimed at starting a feeding frenzy over non-existent threats such as polygamy, illegal immigration, violent crime, and Islamic fundamentalism.

To boot, we’ve gone and got ourselves our very own culture war. In all of the excitement surrounding the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birthday, a reporter had the cheek to ask Science Minister Gary Goodyear if he believed in evolution. His bizarre reply (“I am a Christian, and I don’t think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate”) was followed by some predictable and worn-out back-and-forths over the place of religion in the public sphere.

Wasn’t it just a few years ago that The Economist celebrated Canada’s embrace of gay marriage, pot decriminalization, and anti-Iraq pacifism by putting a moose in sunglasses on the cover? Or recall Michael Adams’ book Fire and Ice, which argued that while Canadians were moving toward liberal values associated with idealism and personal self-fulfillment, Americans were moving away en masse from civic engagement and social and ecological concern. As Adams noted (with smug satisfaction), Americans were becoming reactionary, paranoid and isolated, more likely to see society as a war of all against all.

For a while there, it seemed that the obvious social and political differences between Canada and the U.S. underscored distinctive and immutable aspects of our respective national characters. So, what happened?

The lesson for the left here is that politics matters, and—more importantly—elections matter. That may seem obvious, but it is something that large segments of the left have been resisting for years. Ralph Nader based his entire campaign for president in 2000 on the premise that there was no essential difference between Democrats and Republicans, a preposterous conceit that cost Al Gore the election and gave the world the disaster that was the Bush administration. Noam Chomsky made the same point last fall, telling a CBC Radio audience it didn’t matter who won because Obama and John McCain were just leaders of two factions of “the business party.”

The Canadian left is far from immune to this sort of idiocy. Keep in mind Stephen Harper only got his shot at power in 2006 after Jack Layton pulled the plug on Paul Martin’s minority. It wasn’t enough for Layton that Martin was more than willing to be a lapdog to the NDP—he wanted Martin to fetch and play dead as well. If Martin’s government had lasted another couple of years, Harper might well have gone sulking back to Alberta, and the federal Conservatives would be a shell of a party led by a cream puff like Peter MacKay or Jean Charest. Instead, the Tories are in power while the Liberals are led by a man whose views on the economy, federalism, Iraq, and Afghanistan are virtually identical to Harper’s.

Obama’s success is that he has persuaded the harder edges of the American left that ideological grandstanding is a poor substitute for big-tent retail politics. And until it comes to the same conclusion, the Canadian left is going to have to get used to Canada’s status as moral inferiors in the new North America. But there’s also a lesson for the rest of the country: the moral high horse might be fun to ride, but it is always an uncertain and unpredictable beast.

Canadian/Quebec French on Facebook

I've been taking French in Canada, and every now and then someone is corrected and as professor is explaining something, it has sometimes been explained as been you can't write that, it's Acadian French, they only say it like that in Quebec...or the endlessly belittled Chiac language...but now at least Québécois has been given official recognition by Facebook as distinct from European French. Here's the story from the CBC:

Facebook now available 'en bon québécois'

Social networking website launches French-Canadian version based on users' translations

Last Updated: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 | 5:09 PM ET Comments45Recommend38

CBC News

Hundreds of Facebook devotees have helped the popular social networking website translate its contents to create a distinctly French-Canadian version.

'I like the French language, and I try to protect it — on the Internet and in real life. I'm especially proud of Quebec French, also called Canadian French, which is recognized as a different dialect from the European French language.'— Jimmy Lavoie, Facebook user and volunteer translator

A French-language setting has been available on Facebook since last year, but many Canadian francophone users wanted a version that better reflected Quebec French.

So, Facebook created an application to allow users to submit translation suggestions for the site.

More than 1,200 people offered their suggestions.

The French-Canadian language preference was added to the site last week and was officially launched Monday.

"Our goal, essentially, is to let people who use Facebook be able to openly share and connect with people around the world, especially their friends," company spokesman Elmer Sotto told the Canadian Press.

"As we start seeing people use the site, we also start getting a lot of requests from various users asking for a version of Facebook in their native languages."

The European French version – launched in 2008 – refers to "collège" and "lycée" while the French-Canadian platform uses terms familiar to Quebecers such as "CÉGEP" and "école secondaire" to refer to post-secondary college and high school.

"If not for the users translating it into Canadian French, those kind of subtleties and nuances would likely not have ended up being reflected in the final version of Canadian French Facebook," Sotto said.

Facebook has more than 175 million users worldwide and started translating the site in 2008 — first into Spanish, then French and German. Users around the world have since helped translate the site into Arabic, Hebrew and Mandarin.

One of the most active translators for the French-Canadian platform was Jimmy Lavoie, 16. The Quebec teenager contributed more than 56,000 words, and 8,000 phrases to the translation application.

"My goal was to help create a site that feels natural and comfortable to French Canadians," Lavoie wrote in a blog posting on Facebook's corporate website.

"I like the French language, and I try to protect it — on the Internet and in real life. I'm especially proud of Quebec French, also called Canadian French, which is recognized as a different dialect from the European French language.

"People spend a lot of time on Facebook in Canada and Quebec, which is why I think it's really important for Facebook to be available in people's native language," Lavoie wrote.

Price Gouging in Canada

As I had mentioned earlier...Canadians get gouged pretty badly, especially University students in small towns like Sackville, where it costs $4 for a slice of pizza (albeit a large slice) and $3.50+ for a bag of chips and $1.80+ on sale for $1 for two weeks...(voiding any excuse about shipping costs) for bottles of pop (before deposit and taxes). The article below details the price differential between the US and Canada. Most Canadians I've spoken to here don't realize the price difference is so large...but international students from the US and elsewhere have not failed to notice. I know that I'll be stocking up in the summer so that I can save money next year.

Why you're still getting gouged

Inflated profits, regulations, taxes and timid shoppers keep prices high

COLIN CAMPBELL | August 6, 2008 |

Once a month, Henry Tenby jumps in his car — just after the morning rush hour and with a tank close to empty — and makes a 45-minute drive from his Vancouver home to Blaine, Wash. After zipping across the border using his recently acquired Nexus pass, he fills up with cheaper American gas and stops off at a packaging store, Hagens of Blaine, where the aviation buff and Internet entrepreneur picks up the computer parts and memorabilia he routinely buys online from the U.S. and has shipped there under his name. The cross-border shopping ritual saves him anywhere from $50 to hundreds of dollars a trip — at the very least, the equivalent of a nice dinner out, he says. This month, he plans to buy a piece of new computer hardware in the U.S. for about $200. Buying the part in Canada would cost $320, he estimates. As for Canadian retailers charging more than their American counterparts: "I think they're just being greedy and gouging Canadians," he says. "I don't like it."

It wasn't supposed to turn out like this for Canadian consumers. When the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. greenback on Sept. 20, 2007, Canadians celebrated. The news was trumpeted in headlines like the results of some epic sporting match. "$1 Cdn = $1 US," one simply stated. For the first time in over three decades, Canada seemed to be back on equal footing with its neighbour to the south. But after reaching such great heights, Canadians quickly discovered that the view wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Shoppers noticed they were still paying alarmingly high prices for basic goods compared to Americans — in the case of big-ticket items like cars, sometimes many thousands of dollars more. Retailers and distributors vowed these cross-border price gaps would narrow over time as they adjusted to the stronger loonie. Well, almost a year later, we're still waiting, and savvy shoppers like Tenby are still saving thousands by taking their business to the U.S. — even after factoring in things like the cost of gas and duties.

Few people have been shafted worse than Canadian consumers by recent economic conditions. The loonie has soared in the past few years compared to the U.S. dollar largely because of demand for Canadian goods and confidence in the oil- and commodities-rich Canadian economy. That's all good news, and with a dollar that gives them more bang for their buck, Canadians should feel richer. Few are. Over the past year, the loonie has averaged almost US99 cents. But consumers are still paying as much as 30 per cent more than Americans for many basic goods, according to some surveys. "It's maddening," says Carrie Trueland, who works at an interior design store in Burlington, Ont. She crosses the border about every six weeks to visit her sister in Lockport, N.Y., and buys nearly all her clothes and cosmetics there, as well as groceries and electronics. Trueland says she went against her better judgment this spring and bought a sweater at a Canadian Winners for $29.99, only to find it at the retailer Bon-Ton in Lockport for $19.99 (all U.S. prices are in U.S. dollars) — 50 per cent less. "I was sick!" she says. "I wish it didn't have to be that way."

Why is it, then? There's plenty of blame to go around for the price assault on Canadian consumers, from retailers and distributors pocketing the difference from the stronger loonie, to government regulations and taxes pushing up prices higher than they need be. But the end result is always the same: at cash registers across the country consumers are losing out, and in that typically Canadian way, tolerating it without much of a fuss.

According to a recent report by BMO Capital Markets, prices of consumer goods in Canada are, overall, 18 per cent higher than in the United States. That's down from 24 per cent in 2007, but the gap is still "extraordinarily large," says Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO. In fact, consumer prices have actually risen faster in Canada than in the United States over the past three months, suggesting that any meagre price reductions we've seen so far thanks to the stronger dollar may be all we're going to get, adds Porter. The Consumers' Association of Canada (CAC) has also been tracking prices in the U.S. and Canada, and its informal survey pegs the difference at closer to 25 to 30 per cent. Building on the BMO survey, Maclean's looked at an additional 60 items — everything from cars to perfume — and found Canadians are paying 24 per cent more than their American neighbours. A Hannah Montana toy microphone costs $14.99 in Canada and just $10.99 in the U.S. — 36 per cent less. The average price of ChapStick in Canada is about $2.50. In the U.S., it's more like $2 — or 25 per cent less. Forget a narrowing of the price gap, these results (based on nationally advertised prices where available as well as averages from across the country) suggest that, overall, retailers and wholesalers have not made any progress at all over the past year. "It's still very real and it's still there," says Bruce Cran, president of the CAC. "We're being ripped off."

Even purchasing power parity data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which shows currency conversion rates that eliminate the differences in price levels between the two countries, haven't budged. In the past five years, they've hovered stubbornly around 1.20, suggesting Canadian currency gives us 20 per cent less purchasing power than Americans.

Nowhere have these pricing distortions been more glaring than in the auto industry. When a Canadian pays 25 per cent more than an American for a DVD, it amounts to a few extra dollars. When the item in question is a $41,000 BMW sedan, suddenly it's an extra $8,000. Earlier this year, under pressure from consumers, several automakers took out full-page newspaper ads announcing new "Canadian" prices. In some cases, the reductions were significant. Lexus cut the price of its RX350 SUV to $42,950 from $51,550. It's now 14 per cent higher than the U.S. suggested retail price of $37,700. But these were the exceptions. In general, the price gap remains about as wide as the Grand Canyon. The manufacturer's suggested retail price for a Mazda CX-9 SUV, for instance, is US$30,070 compared to $39,995 in Canada, or 33 per cent more. In its survey, BMO found that mid-range cars cost 19 per cent more in Canada, while luxury brands costs 30 per cent more. A Maclean's survey of 20 vehicles in various classes found 25 per cent higher prices in Canada. "If there are 1.5 million vehicle sales a year in Canada and if each vehicle is on average three or four thousand dollars higher in price, that's about an extra $6 billon a year that consumers are paying for cars," says Ian Irvine, a professor of economics at Concordia University, who has studied the price gap. Irvine's survey prompted him to travel across the border, to Burlington, Vt., to buy his new Subaru — saving about $9,000, he says.

Carmakers say the gap is due to the extra costs of doing business in Canada. Toyota says the only reason its prices are higher here is because of regulatory requirements (to its credit, Toyota has gone further than most other automakers to close the gap). But that defence hasn't stopped Canadians from taking their money and heading south in record numbers to buy cars (many of which are built in Canada). In just the first six months of this year, Canadians have bought over 150,000 vehicles from the U.S., putting them on pace to smash last year's record of 190,000 cars. "When you go down the car prices, that's where it really becomes obvious that there's more than just traditional factors at play here," says Porter.

Arguably, the price reductions automakers have made in Canada have less to do with giving Canadians the best deal possible than they do with trying to shut down the fast-growing grey market for cars created by cross-border shoppers. Cross-border deals for consumers are lost profits for automakers, who are putting enormous pressure on U.S. dealers not to sell to Canadians, says Avi Zur, manager of Toronto Auto Brokers, which imports cars from the United States. Subaru, for example, has until recently tolerated Canadians buying its cars from U.S. dealers. Now, like other automakers, it's telling dealerships in the States to cut it out, says Zur. Consumers, however, aren't giving up. Last September, a $2-billion class action lawsuit was launched against automakers, alleging they have been interfering with independent dealers who sell cars across the border. "There's a big problem here," says lawyer Henry Juroviesky, whose firm filed the suit in September. "We feel there's a carefully choreographed and designed behaviour to keep prices inflated in Canada."

There are plenty of places in the supply chain where price bottlenecks can stop the benefits of a strong loonie from reaching consumers. More often that not, it's retailers that get fingered as the main culprits. But retailers and wholesalers have no shortage of excuses for their pricing behaviour. Topping the list is the notion that Canada is a smaller market than the United States. Because Americans live in a land brimming with fierce competitors and 10 times the number of shoppers, they inevitably end up with cheaper prices. Canadians, on the other hand, have fewer options, and retailers here don't get the same volume discounts as their American counterparts. On top of this, retailers argue that it's simply more expensive to do business in Canada. Transportation costs in a huge country like Canada are higher and there are unique costs associated with things like bilingual labelling.

Economists agree there's some truth to all this. "Companies around the world fight tooth and nail for market share in the U.S. because it's the largest and most important," says Porter. "When the U.S. dollar weakens they are very loath to raise prices. It's as much a U.S. story as it is a Canadian story." Size also does matter, says Millan Mulraine, an economist at TD Securities who has studied the price gap. Take the book industry, he says. In Canada, there are only a few big publishers. "In the U.S. there's much more diversity. You can take that right across the board," he says. It's Economics 101: more competition leads to lower prices. Even so, these complexities don't account for the enormous size of the markup that Canadian consumers are being forced to pay, say economists. Ten per cent perhaps, but not 20 or 30 per cent.

Scratch a little deeper and many of the explanations for such a large price gap between Canada and the U.S. quickly begin to wear thin. First off, Canada isn't such a small market. Its population (33 million) is roughly the same as that of California (36 million), which has never been brushed aside as an uncompetitive market. In fact, Canada is one of the 10 biggest economies in the world. Second, Canada may be geographically large, but most of the population is bunched along the border, a short drive from the U.S. The same thing that makes cross-border shopping so easy for consumers should make transporting goods relatively painless for businesses. If transportation costs were really such a big factor, then prices of some goods in Calgary or Winnipeg would be noticeably higher than they are in, say, Toronto.

Despite all the rumblings about the costs of doing business in Canada, there are companies, large and small, that do sell many products for the same price in both countries. A rechargeable Black and Decker lawn mower at Wal-Mart actually sells for $12 less in Canada than it does in the United States. The Canadian company Roots sells hooded sweatshirts for $89.95, in both countries. Madonna is selling tickets for her upcoming tour slightly cheaper in Canada than in the United States. Toyota sells its made-in-Canada Matrix for about $400 less in Canada. If they can do it in these cases, why can't everyone?

Even retailers will point out that there are cases where unfair gaps in prices exist. But the blame lies with multinational distributors, they argue. "Big multinational brand owners will price goods into different markets at very different prices according to what the cost will be for them and taking into consideration what they think the market can bear," says Derek Nighbor, senior vice-president of national affairs at the Retail Council of Canada. Bombardier Recreational Products sells its made-in-Canada Ski-Doo Legend Touring model for $10,199 in Canada and $8,349 in the States, a difference of 22 per cent. Individual markets, not exchange rates, determine the price of its goods in different countries, and nothing else, says spokesman Pierre Pichette. "That's the way it's got to be." BRP, which is headquartered in Canada, argues that doing business here is 15 per cent more expensive than in the U.S., so its prices are not all that out of line.

Many companies, including BRP, are extremely reluctant to react to exchange rates at all — adjusting prices, after all, is costly and complicated. The dollar has been at or near par for a year, but BRP's Pichette says there's no guarantee it won't start falling again in the near future. (Many currency traders are now predicting that will indeed happen over the next year.) Even when companies do factor in rates changes, it can happen at a glacial pace. While the bulk of adjustments should have happened already, it can take up to two years for the changes to trickle their way into retail prices, says Avery Shenfeld, senior economist at CIBC World Markets. That's the case at Reebok, where its EDGE hockey jersey sells on the NHL's online store for $299.99 in Canada and $249.99 in the U.S. The difference reflects wholesale prices set by Reebok 18 months ago, for the 2007-2008 hockey season, says Craig Ryan, the vice-president of Reebok-CCM's sports licensed division. The price won't get adjusted again until the upcoming hockey season in September. At that time, the jersey will cost the same in both countries, he says. But it won't be much of a coup for Canadian consumers — Reebok plans to boost U.S. prices to $299.99, not cut Canadian prices.

Bargaining with these big brand companies is difficult, says Nighbor. "We don't have the size and are not buying in the quantities that would allow us to affect a great deal of change." But consumer advocates say that's no excuse. Retailers, they argue, need to pass on the pressure they get from consumers to suppliers. "The reality is that what you can buy in the States for a dollar costs $1.35 up here. That's the reality they should be facing, not this other smoke and mirrors," says Cran.

The evidence suggests that it is largely at the retail level where the benefits of a strong dollar hit a wall. "The pass-through to import prices and the producer price index from changes in the exchange rate are high and statistically significant," said TD's Mulraine in a report last September. "It is just the follow-through to consumer prices that is non-existent," he added. "The evidence appears to point to the pricing behaviour of Canadian firms." Cran is more direct when asked what's behind the gap. "There's only one reason and it's got to be greed on the part of Canadian retailers."

But shifting exchange rates and nefarious pricing are not the only factors at work. An unhealthy dose of government interference also plays a role, particularly in one important industry: agriculture. Christopher Maule, a professor emeritus of economics at Carleton University, recently surveyed 11 food products, shopping at a Wal-Mart in Ottawa and one in Fort Myers, Fla. The goods in Canada cost 35 per cent more than in the U.S., he found. The main reason, he notes, is because of supply management policies in Canada, especially in the dairy industry. In the most extreme example, 500 ml of Häagen-Dazs ice cream cost $5.97 in Canada compared to US$2.81, or 112 per cent more. "You've got a series of price differences that are directly due to government policy," he says.

Canada's import tax system also adds, on average, about 10 per cent more to the price of goods imported from outside North America. For instance, a Canadian company will pay a five per cent import tax to bring an MP3 player in from Asia, while an American company won't pay a dime, says Nighbor. It all adds up, say retailers.

If Canadians are being bullied into paying more, they may also be the only ones who can do anything about it. As the car industry experience has shown, a backlash from consumers does indeed help push down prices. It also worked in the case of the Apple iPhone. When Rogers Wireless Communications announced its price plans for the much-hyped cellphone, customers were outraged at the idea they would be paying far more than Americans to download data — potentially hundreds of dollars a month more. Petitions, angry calls and mountains of bad publicity ensued. Rogers then announced a new plan that would bring monthly data rates closer in step with U.S. ones. Most products, however, don't evoke the same kind of passion as cars and iPhones. Who's going to march in the streets over paying more for running shoes than Americans? Ruthless as it seems, by setting prices as high as the market will bear, companies are behaving quite naturally. "The retailer's job isn't to give you the item at the cheapest possible price. Their primary job is to make money," says Avi Goldfarb, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Canadian consumers are also acting predictably. "There's nothing irrational or uneconomic about the Canadian consumer," says Goldfarb. "It's not so much that the Canadian consumer is willing to pay higher prices. It's much more that the Canadian consumer doesn't have a choice," he says. Canadians can cross-border shop for better deals. But at the end of the day, once duties, taxes and shipping are taken into account, it's often not worth the added effort for everyday items. Tenby set up a site called crossbordershoppingdeals.com to try to share his tips, but participation on it has been disappointing, he says. In the end, the Canadian market has settled into an unhappy balance, with prices just high enough that Canadians will swallow them without setting off a stampede of cross-border shoppers.

The government has been reluctant to step in and try to correct the price gap. Transport Canada recently took the small step of changing vehicle bumper standards to harmonize them with U.S. rules, making it easier and less costly to import cars. But the message from the Finance Department has been simple: "I say to Canadians, shop around, put pressure on retailers," Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters this summer. "It's up to consumers to make sure they exercise their choice and their power in the marketplace and insist on parity, on our dollar being treated as a dollar that's at par with the American dollar or a little bit lower." In other parts of the world, consumers just might rise to that bait. Protests over high energy prices have broken out in France, Britain, Portugal and South Korea, to name a few places. Ill tempers over the rising cost of living these days are flaring everywhere. Everywhere but Canada.

"The way that the commodity boom that we're seeing can be spread amongst everyone in the country is through a stronger currency and thus lower import prices for everyone," says Porter. Given what we've seen in the past year, don't expect that to happen anytime soon. This boom has been all bust.

With Kate Kennedy, Zachary Sniderman and Aleksandar Zivojinovic