Whitby Shores Community Forums

The wife and I were in Ohio last weekend and noticed the following things:

1) A bottle of Yellow Tail Merlot and Chardonnay are $9.00 a bottle there - $23.75 at the LCBO here EACH

2) A large bottle of Frank's Red Hot sauce is $1.26 at Target - $4.29 at No Frills here

3) To fill our car (43 L tank) was $26.00 is Ohio - $43.00 here

4) A dog training book in a bookstore - $7.95 USA, 12.95 Canadian

5) At a dealership a brand new Jeep Liberty was on for 16,999.00 - Double that here

Lastly, the states are littered with outlet malls where you save a ton on brand name clothing. Target also sells quality clothes for less...not crappy clothes for less that we get up here.

I am not an advocate for moving there...I love Canada. However, our dollar is worth more than theirs and we are seriously getting taken, we have been for years but now that the dollar is at parity it's glaringly ridiculous. No wonder it's nearly impossible to save money up here. No wonder the borders are jammed with people going across.

We are taxed up the rectum. Ridiculous!!!

The reality is that the Canadian dollar will need to stay above the American dollar for more than 16 months for us to see a decrease in pricing for most goods. Think about the process... Most companies buy way ahead of time and the prices they will charge for end goods are set then. So only once all the "more expensive" goods are sold can we expect to see a drop in prices. C'est la vie to use a Canadianism... Although, I'm very sure that cross border shopping has seen a very marked increase of late. We are taxed heavily but I sure like the fact that I can get some stitches for a bad cut (or 4 hours of micro-surgery which I had to endure after an argument with a table saw recently!) without having to pull out my Visa...

Jabber.

Why do we have to equate lower taxes with paying out of pocket for health care?  If it were the only thing our taxes paid for I'd get it, but there's a lot of government spending outside of education and health that could be significantly cut back.  

This is not even taking into account the surpluses that we're seeing Federally and Provincially.  If you look at total government spending and revenues for Canada between 2004 & 2007 (3 years), the net surplus in government revenues (combined all levels) comes to about $20B.  That is even after combined increases in spending of $16.7B in Health Care (19.5% increase), $13.1B in education (21.7% increase) and $10.1B in social services (18.4% increase) from 2004 levels.  
* all figures taken from Statscan website http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/govt50...di=surplus

So, even after increasing spending by $39.8B (19.6%) on the big 3 services over the last 3 years, goverments still took $20B more in taxes than it needed.  That works out to about $2,400 for a family of 4.  

Should the surplus be used to lower taxes?  I'm on the fence for this one.  Over the same period we also paid $78B in interest on total debt (or about $9,400 for a family of 4).  About 1/3 of our total tax load goes just towards that alone.  It will also only get worse if there is an economic downturn and the interest rate on the debt increases.  It would be nice to get rid of some of that obligation too.  I think there's a balance in there somewhere.

Oh, and don't be fooled by the chicken little argument that we need to be prepared now because the aging baby boomers will be putting additional strain on our health care costs as they age.  Starting in about 10 years these folks will be forced to start cashing in on the significant amount of RRSPs they built up during their working years.  These are all taxable when they're cashed in so government revenues are going to increase significantly once that starts happening.  All that additional money can be used to offset the increased health care costs.

Yellow Tail Merlot is $12.25 and the Chardonnay is $11.25 at the LCBO. I actually drink these wines often.

You are correct...however only for the 750ml size.

The prices I was quoting were the 1.5L...double the size you are talking about!!

The 750ml sizes you speak of were on for $5.99 a bottle at the liquor store in Niagara Falls.

Well that is crazy.

I jsut got back from Florida where I bought a Hyundai Sante Fe for $23,500. Same model here is $29,500. They charge a dealer fee of $500. Our dealers charge freight and PDE/PDI which is around another $2000

Did you speak to your Hyundai dealer here to make sure they will honour the US warranty? I have heard horror stories about reputable dealers like Honda not wanting to have anything to do with cars purchased in the US and brought back to Canada. My uncle bought a Lexus in NY state and couldn't get oil changes performed for free in Canada as they do in the US. Heaven forbid something major happens...

Jordan.

all this talk about the parity of dollars makes me wonder....I suggest you google this word, AMERO