TORONTO, Oct 20: Canadian retailers have begun to trim prices amid growing concern that consumers are not gaining the benefits of a strong Canadian dollar.

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told Reuters on Thursday that he had “been concerned about it (pricing) for some time” and would meet retailers and ask for quicker price cuts.

He will meet the Retail Council of Canada and some other representatives of retailers in Ottawa on Tuesday.

It’s an opportunity for us to be persuasive and to, on behalf of the Canadian people, to encourage retailers to reflect in their prices the fact that they have an advantage with respect to costs now, and if their costs go down because of the increased value of our currency, then that should be reflected in prices -- and the sooner, the better, Flaherty told reporters in Washington on Friday.

Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, went further, charging retailers with “greed, gouging and bad citizenship” in an article in the Globe and Mail newspaper on Wednesday.

Retailers say they have also come under pressure from consumers who find it’s cheaper to shop in the United States now that the Canadian dollar is at its strongest level in more than 30 years against the US dollar.

As an example, the latest Harry Potter book costs C$45 in Canada, or almost $47, compared with just $35 in the US.

On Friday, discount chain Zellers, which has some 300 stores across Canada, said it was cutting some prices in a bid to prevent Christmas shoppers from heading south of the border.

Canada’s biggest city, Toronto, is just a two-hour drive from ample shopping facilities in Buffalo, New York Hopefully it (the cuts) will be compelling enough to prevent Canadian consumers from crossing the border to shop.

---Reuters