A Liberal Member of Parliament from New
Brunswick confessed to his fellow Canadian legislators last week that
he had been a smuggler all his life—and intended to keep on being one.
Said A. Wesley Stuart, a lean, little-known backbencher for six years:
“There is a very unfair difference between the prices paid in the U.S.
and. . . in Canada. . . I live on the bank of the St. Croix River and you
can throw a stone across to-the other side. On [the U.S.] side an
electric refrigerator sells for $225. If you walk across the little
bridge to the other side, it sells, for $460. . . I never came through
[the border] in my lifetime that I did not smuggle something. . . I feel
it is a right.” Spectators and M.P.s alike perked up their ears as Stuart went on to
charge that monopolies are rampant in Canada. He called on the
government to knock down tariff walls and let competitive, low-priced
U.S. goods move into the Canadian market. During a recent U.S. trip , Stuart made a study of “unjustifiable” Canadian price
spreads which ran as high as 50% on many household items . Said Stuart: “Take ladies' lingerie. I have
known many a woman to go across the border, put on three or four pairs
of step-ins and walk back across the bridge. They save several
dollars.” Many Canadian manufacturers, he claimed, just take the U.S.
retail price, add Canada's duty, sales and defense taxes, then trim the
resulting price 2%, “just enough to make sure that people will not. . .
buy in the United States.” Back in his home town of St. Andrews ,
Stuart's candid comments got a laugh from many townspeople. It was not
quite so amusing to local customs men and Mounties, currently engaged
in trying to stop the growing traffic in cigarettes . There was no chance that the government would act
on Stuart's tariff-toppling recommendations. But in a week when the
cost-of-living index passed 190 for the first time in Canadian history,
he had dramatized the soaring prices of consumer goods as no other
M.P. has yet managed to do.
