The problem, as I think I've mentioned on your blog before is shipping. U.S. companies won't ship to Canada (I just tried to buy something on Woot.com (great site BTW) and they wouldn't send it here) and the Canadian companies charge an arm and a leg for shipping.

One of the oddities about our shipping in Canada is it is, in fact, more expensive to ship from a Canadian address to another Canadian address, than it is to ship from a Canadian address to a U.S. address.

Until we fix the shipping problem in this country, we will make no progress on e-commerce.

Part of the problem is the lack of selection in Canada. The mall closest to me has two anchor stores - Zellers and The Bay - both owned by Hudson's Bay company. They sell similar merchandise, though Zellers is a discount retailer. The next largest store is Winners, a division of TJX of Framingham, Massachusetts. There are several generic clothing stores and a couple of lingerie and jewelry stores, and a couple of specialty stores. There is really nothing unusual about these stores, and it is probably quicker to pick something up there than to do it online. None of these shops really have their own brands or work from a finite catalog.

Exceptions are the bookstores which work from a catalog of books. I frequently shop online at Amazon.ca, as do many others. Best Buy and Future Shop - electronics retailers - also lend themselves to online shopping.

Contrast this with Victoria's Secret which has a finite catalog to shop online from. A former US resident, I also have a VS credit card, which makes my shopping simpler. They also ship from a Canadian address which eliminates Customs charges. And there are no Canadian specialty kitchen stores as far as I can see, but I can select from Williams-Sonoma or Crate and Barrel online.

I can also select from LL Bean, Frontgate, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, or any number of large specialty stores that have their own well known brands. And US residents actually receive their paper catalogs in the mail too.

Of course Canadians may not realize just what they can do online.

The better example to use than Canadian Tire is Future Shop. Here you can (i) check store stock status (not always reliable if "in stock" but is if it is "out of stock") and (ii) order items via FutureShop.ca for pickup at your nearest (or any) store location. So (except during Boxing Day Week) you can order items on the Internet and have them in your hands within an hour or so.

To build out on Larry's comment I often shop at US sites because an item is just plain not available from a Canadian site. In fact, one of the shortcomings of Amazon,ca is that it does not have the breadth of categories (such as electronics and PC hardware) that Amazon.com has. On the other hand Amazon.ca has John Batelle's popular book on Search whereas it is not available via Chapters.ca. Again Chapters just does not have the breadth of inventory to go into the "Long Tail" the way Amazon can.

And now for the blatant, but purely viral, commercial: I was recently looking for a new Linksys product. Turns out the only Canadian retailer (online or offline) with the product was DirectDial.com. On further investigation I found it was run by one of my best former AST dealers; check it out when nothing else works for PC hardware and software in Canada.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that there is no small package rate in Canada.

It is often cheaper to mail something to the USA than to mail within Canada.