So Happy Canada Day, eh? We all woke up to gas at 8 cents a litre more, and smokes cost me an extra 75 cents, and here's another story about my Canada Day.

I wandered up to the Shoppers Drug Mart at the 404 Mall here in Newmarket  to pick up a few sundry items, seeing as Shoppers was one of the few retailer open today. Should have been a non event, but, well, when I went for my walk I just threw a credit card in to my pocket, and had no cash. Not a problem normally, until checkout of Shoppers.

The cashier rang my order through, and then asked if I needed a bag. 'Yes, I do', said I. On top of the HST goodness here in Canada, Shoppers also decided this would be a good day to start charging 5 cents for plastics bags, and was informed of such. 

I don't care really - I always get the plastic bag. It's only 5 cents, and they're really handy around the house, for lining garbage pails, bringing my lunch to work etc., and I really don't give a damn about impact on landifills. Come on people, there are REAL problems out there.

But she had already run my credit card through, and I had no cash currency of any sort. Under the circumstances, I think the reasonable thing would have been to simply give me, the customer who has spent thousands of dollars at Shoppers over my lifetime, a 5 cent plastic bag and be done with it.

Apparently Shoppers employees are not empowered to make such big decisions, so I handed her back the credit card, and made her run through another 5 cent charge for the stinking plastic bag. And I want my Optimum points for that too.

Thing is, looking at my receipt, now plastic bags get the HST too, so that 5 cent bag is now a 6 cent bag.

For a moment I reconsidered  my requirement for a plastic bag, and to maybe ask for a refund for the plastic bag credited back to my credit card, but I'm just not that kind of guy. Inhale, exhale.

Oh, Canada.

There was talk of getting rid of the penny. With the HST, we'll need that penny to pay the tax on our plastic grocery bag.