WINNIPEG — It was an early Christmas gift for shoppers. The federal government is promising to close the gap between American and high Canadian prices on many goods.
“Its called geographical price discrimination or a more blunt way of putting it is price gouging of consumers, price gouging Canadian consumers because of where they live,” said James Moore, the Canadian industry minister, speaking in Toronto.
Ottawa is letting the country’s competition watchdog investigate distributors, retailers and others who are behind higher prices.
Right now it is $88 dollars cheaper to buy a KitchenAid Mixer at Walmart in the US compared to Walmart Canada.
Kirstyn Walchuk regularly shops in the United States and says she saves a significant amount of money doing so.
“In this day and age you want to save money so if I can save my money and go somewhere else that sells it cheaper for the exact same product than that is what I am going to do,” said Walchuk.
The new legislation won’t set or regulate prices, however the Retail Council of Canada says the cost of many goods should start to drop here at home.
“The end result is going to be lower prices for Canadian retailers to buy those products and trickle that out to the consumers who will have lower prices when they are shopping in their stores,” said Lanny McInnis, the council’s prairie director.
McInnis says the stores are stuck. They don’t want to charge higher prices but distributors are the ones that sell items at an increased cost to them versus their American counterparts.
It is unclear what consequences a business could face if caught charging higher than expected prices.
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