I am in the greater, greater Montreal area. Longueuil, which is to Montreal what New Jersey is to NYC. Did I say that? Well all comparaisons are odious. Canada does not have a floating currency, it has a sinking currency, to borrow from one of our fine banks' executives. Could it be time to adopt the USD? It will not be done for the sake of audio equipment, that's for sure. Not even a reasonably sized blip on the economy's radar screen. All is not so dark, friends and neighbours, as I found out not too long ago, quite a few Canadian companies do produce a variety of good to extremely good hi-fi equipment. Insofar as buying used from our good neighbours to the South, makes very little economic sense, factoring in shipping paid for in USD, the GST and PST based on the equivalent in CDN $ for which we are fleeced at the border, the usual brokerage fee (hey UPS as a right to be paid for its efforts too), the rate at which credit card cos charge for exchanging money if you are buying from a dealer and using plastic, and the hassle in trying to ship something back should it prove to be defective for whatever reason (try getting your $ from the Federal Gov't- like all of them, way better at collecting than cutting a cheque). My pet peeve: Canadian vendors who don't even bother giving a price in CND $ when they post (all of them actually...). Better yet, the friendly fellow who did not deign to reply to my e-mail asking how much he wanted for an Audio Research LS-16 in CDN $ and where he was situated. Somebody out there has discovered a form of audio arbitrage in scooping up high end products (the few that can be found)in Canada and being paid USD for them.