The interesting thing about e-commerce trade is that it's going through consumer channels like you and I would send something to our aunt in Bethesda. It's not going through programs that have been set up for commercial use. That creates specific frictions. No one's going to be surprised when I say de minimis is one of those big frictions both in terms of increasing the cost of low-value inputs—the reality is these small micro-businesses are bringing inventory in to resell in the hundred of dollars—and then it also is a huge pinpoint in terms of processing returns.
Returns on e-commerce transactions are table stakes. It's something that you need to offer now in order to compete. When you're doing more than a half of your business outside Canada, as most commercial sellers on eBay are, you're bound to be receiving returns from international customers. They tend to get assessed for duties and taxes, which you can reclaim, but that process costs money and diverts time and attention away from what you really want to be doing, which is running your business.
For that reason, aligned with what Dr. Geist was saying, we need to have regulation that acknowledges this new kind of trade and removes some of that friction, while still focusing on the key things of preventing dangerous goods, preventing the kinds of things that CBSA really needs to focus on. It's clear that picking up a $21 package, assessing it for duties and taxes, costs way more than the revenues that this generates.
If we feel we need to protect Canadian retail, there must be a more efficient way of doing that and in a way that consumers can trust that this package is above the threshold so it will get assessed, but this is package below so it won't. We play duty roulette now. Half the time the stuff coming across the border is assessed; half the time it's not. That creates a lot of red tape. It doesn't permit Canadian consumers to participate in global e-commerce in the way that it appears other countries do, and to use global e-commerce to fill the gaps from what they're able to get domestically.