I hate Canada post

Right now, I am really hating Canada post.

"Canada Post has served notice that it intends to raise the price of a basic stamp to 54 cents from 52 cents, starting in January.
The Crown corporation is also proposing to double the cost of mailing large envelopes, like the ones widely used in online shopping.
The cost of mailing a package weighing 500 grams would rise to $5.50 from $2.25."

(source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081022.wpostalhike1022/BNStory/National/home)

Yes folks, that means that small businesses like myself may have to double their shipping costs in order to stay in business.

Now what's my beef, you may ask? I pass that cost on to my customers anyways. Very true. However, my biggest problem with this is that American sellers can send packages into Canada for less then I can. What a great way to encourage people to buy within Canada.

I understand and accept that it should cost me more to send internationally. Because of this, international customers are likely to have a preference to buy within their own country. Fair enough. Some of them still buy from me, but I understand if they choose not to. However, as a Canadian resident, I should have a slight advantage within Canada when it comes to the cost of shipping. Not so.

When I started my clippie business, I intended to have it be a clippie and bow business. That is, until I found out more about Canada post. While clippies can go in padded envelopes, bows would have to go in boxes to not get crushed. It would cost me about $6 to mail a small light box to the States and about $8 within Canada. Meanwhile, an american seller can send a 200 gram box (pretty standard weight for a few bows) to CANADA for a mere $2.86. Pretty hard for me to compete when I have to charge 2-3 times as much for shipping.

So I accepted the fact that everything I sold would have to fit into a padded envelope, and be less then 2 cm thick to fit through the "slot of doom".

Now, Canada post is going to double the cost for me to mail these padded envelopes.

So much for any kind of a level playing field...