Cross-border shopping not as popular as it used to be

[Bulldog]

CanWest News Service
TORONTO — The loonie’s rise toward parity with the U.S. dollar may have sparked a surge of cross-border shopping, but a report by Statistics Canada suggests the phenomenon is hardly the issue that it was two decades ago.

"Whether measured by the number of same-day auto trips across the U.S. border or the average amount spent on these trips or online shopping, the recent increases in cross-border shopping have been minimal relative to retail sales," the federal agency said in a study released in the December 2007 edition of its publication, the Canadian Economic Observer.

The Statistics Canada report tracked a close relationship between the exchange rate and U.S.-bound day trips by Canadians from 1986 to 2001. Security at the Canada-U.S. border tightened following the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and U.S.-bound trips have not really picked up since, it said. The southward flow has also been curtailed by a 44-per-cent jump in the value of the loonie between 2002 and October, 2007.

"The propensity of Canadians to make cross-border shopping trips has barely risen between 2002 and 2007,” the agency said. “In the first nine months of 2007, there were an average of 1.9 million same-day auto trips per month, compared with 1.7 million in 2002 and the all-time high of 4.9 million in 1991.”

Meanwhile, cross-border trips by Americans has tumbled about 50 per cent, or 11.3 million trips, since the loonie began its steady climb in 2003. "This is far more than the 2.2-million increase in same-day auto trips to the United States by Canadians in the same period."

http://www.canada.com/globaltv/national/story.html?id=6a4726f8-5125-43cc-9e68-e04885caa95b&k=61893

[Bulldog]

I have been going about 5-6 times a year, but I have only been once this whole year back in Febuary.

Not to bad if it's only a short drive, but being back up in Barrie it's a long drive just to get there and the gas is a killer