E-Commerce Marketing in Canada: Duties, Carriers, MER and the Quebec Rules
Canadian shoppers check CAD pricing, duty, carriers and reviews before they buy. Here is the 2026 marketing system for online stores in Canada, with CAD benchmarks, the Quebec regimes and a 90-day plan.
Canadians buy a lot online, but they buy carefully. Statistics Canada's monthly retail trade survey puts retail e-commerce at roughly $4 billion a month, about 6% of total retail sales, a definition that excludes services, travel and many marketplace sellers. (Statistics Canada) The same agency's Canadian Internet Use Survey found about 8 in 10 Canadians bought goods or services online in the survey year. (Statistics Canada)
A shopper arriving from Google, Amazon.ca or an Instagram ad looks for CAD pricing, whether the item ships from Canada, whether duties or a surtax appear at the door, and delivery time to their province. Since the 2025 tariff dispute many also check whether you are Canadian-owned, and Angus Reid and Leger polling found a majority deliberately seeking Canadian products. Most of this happens on a phone, where Shopify and analytics vendors put mobile at roughly two-thirds of Canadian traffic and conversion benchmarks sit between 1.5% and 3%.
The off-site checks that happen before your add-to-cart button
Google reviews matter even for an online-only brand: a real Canadian address, phone number and pickup detail is a trust signal, and "[product] near me pickup" carries volume in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary. On-site reviews through Judge.me, Yotpo or Okendo feed product pages and Shopping listings.
Off-site, "[product] canada reddit" surfaces threads that outrank your homepage for your own brand name, and r/BuyCanadian spots seeded posts quickly.
Ask for the review after delivery, not after purchase: Canadian transit times are long, and a request that lands before the parcel collects the worst ratings you will ever see. Review requests are commercial electronic messages, so sender identification and a working unsubscribe belong in them.
The store pages that decide a Canadian sale
Put the answers on the page. Price in CAD, say whether GST, HST, QST or PST is added at checkout, and if you hold inventory here, put "ships from Canada, no surprise duties" where the eye lands. Show a delivery estimate by region, name the carrier, and show the distance to free shipping.
Payment expectations are Canadian too. Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay lift mobile conversion and PayPal remains widely used, but the domestic signal is Interac: Interac Corp. announced in February 2026 that Interac Debit is available for online and in-app payments through Stripe, and at least one Canadian provider now puts Interac e-Transfer inside the checkout. Installments are near table stakes in apparel and furniture, where Shop Pay Installments, Affirm, Sezzle and Klarna all operate. Platform matters less than how the theme handles these details, which is most of what e-commerce development is.
Product SEO, feeds and showing up in AI answers
Canadian product search is predictable: "buy [product] online canada", "[product] canada free shipping", "canadian made [product]" and city-level terms. Build collection pages against them, and build Quebec French pages from French keyword research, not machine translation.
Your Merchant Center feed is a ranking asset: complete GTINs, accurate CAD pricing, and shipping and return policies that match the site. Feed disapprovals are the most common reason a Canadian store's paid performance quietly collapses. Google's AI Overviews reached Canada in late 2024 and AI Mode followed in 2025, and assistants cite brands with clean product schema and review coverage, so structured product and category SEO serves the classic results and the generated ones alike.
What paid media actually costs a Canadian store
Most published benchmarks are North American and Canadian CPCs typically run below them, so treat these as planning ranges, not targets.
| Metric | Planning range (CAD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shopping / PMax CPC | $0.60 to $1.50 | Feed quality drives the spread |
| Search CPC, retail | $1.00 to $3.00 | Beauty and apparel top the range |
| Cost per conversion | $30 to $90 | LocaliQ 2025: gifts lowest, apparel highest |
| Meta CPM | $12 to $25 | Rises to roughly $25 to $45 in Q4 |
| Meta cost per purchase | $25 to $70 | Products under about $100 |
| First-order CAC | $40 to $120 | $100 to $250 for furniture, premium apparel |
| Blended ROAS | 3x to 5x | New brands often 1.5x to 2.5x at first |
| Agency fee | $1,000 to $2,500/month | Or 10% to 20% of spend |
Our Canadian CPC benchmarks break the search side down further. Meta remains the largest paid acquisition channel for Canadian direct-to-consumer brands, and on paid social creative volume moves cost per purchase. TikTok Shop has still not launched here, so TikTok drives discovery and sends the purchase to your product page.
Amazon.ca, email and the channels that protect margin
Amazon.ca is the most visited shopping destination in Canada and, in many categories, the default first stop. Treat it as discovery and your own store as the margin channel, with Walmart.ca Marketplace and Etsy filling niches. Email and SMS, where platform vendors report mature stores draw a fifth or more of revenue, need a Canadian-registered sending number and a list built in September and October.
Landed cost: carriers, duties and the surtax
Canada Post's Canadian Online Shopper Study consistently finds shipping cost the top reason Canadians abandon carts, with most expecting free shipping above the $50 to $75 mark, which makes it a pricing decision, not a logistics one. Rate calculators put a regional 1 kg parcel at roughly $10 to $18 on negotiated small-business rates and $18 to $30 cross-country, before remote and northern surcharges.
Carrier risk is now marketing risk. The month-long strike in late 2024 and the disruptions through autumn 2025 mean every store needs a second carrier configured before Q4: Purolator, UPS and FedEx nationally, Canpar and GLS Canada on ground cost, and Intelcom, UniUni and Nationex in Quebec on last mile.
Duty is next. Canada's courier de minimis is $150 duty-free and $40 tax-free for US and Mexican goods under CUSMA and only $20 otherwise, which is why "no surprise duties" converts for brands stocking here. (Canada Border Services Agency) The US ended its own de minimis exemption for all countries on August 29, 2025, so brands shipping south need CUSMA origin documentation. Finance Canada's counter-tariff order effective September 8, 2026 applies surtaxes reported at 15%, 25% and 50% to a long list of US-origin goods, consumer categories included; check your tariff lines before you set Q4 pricing.
Provenance sells now, but the claim is regulated: Competition Bureau guidance sets "Made in Canada" at 51% or more of direct costs plus the last substantial transformation here, and "Product of Canada" at 98% or more. (Competition Bureau Canada) A maple leaf that fails those tests is a misleading representation.
Selling into Quebec: French, Law 25 and the Consumer Protection Act
Quebec is roughly a fifth of the Canadian market and points three regimes at your store. The Charter of the French Language, as amended by Bill 96, reaches any business selling into Quebec, not only those located there: site, product pages, checkout, order confirmations and support must be in French, at least equivalent to the English. Since June 1, 2025 a non-French trademark on packaging is exempt only if registered under the federal Trademarks Act, with older stock allowed until June 1, 2027. Our Bill 96 guide has the working version, and most Quebec launches start there.
Law 25 is the privacy half. Technology that identifies, locates or profiles a visitor must be deactivated by default, which the Commission d'accès à l'information reads as express consent before advertising and analytics cookies fire. Consent Mode v2 and Meta's limited data use setting are the usual fix.
The third regime is the one stores miss. Quebec's Consumer Protection Act governs distance contracts: before the consumer is bound you must disclose your name and address, a description of the goods, prices and extra charges, the total, the currency, the delivery date and carrier, and your cancellation and refund terms. A consumer who does not get what was promised may seek a credit card chargeback. Bill 29 added a replacement-parts and repair warranty in October 2025, with a warranty of good working order on goods such as appliances and electronics scheduled for October 2026, and Bill 10, largely in force since September 12, 2026, requires an easily accessible online cancellation button for subscriptions. That button is a product change, not a copy change.
Advertising, pricing and consent rules for Canadian online stores
This is general information, not legal advice; get your own counsel before relying on it.
- CASL (federal, enforced by the CRTC). Commercial email, SMS and review requests need express or implied consent; our CASL compliance guide is the canonical version and carries the consent windows, wording and penalties.
- Competition Act (federal, Competition Bureau). Drip pricing is prohibited, so the advertised price must be attainable without mandatory fees; Cineplex was ordered to pay roughly $39 million in 2024 over a booking fee, upheld on appeal in January 2026. (Competition Bureau Canada) Sale claims must meet the ordinary selling price test, environmental claims need proper testing, and influencer posts must disclose the connection.
- Sales tax (CRA plus provinces). Register for GST/HST once worldwide taxable sales pass $30,000 in four consecutive quarters, then charge by the customer's province, with the rates in the FAQ below. (Canada Revenue Agency) QST and the western PST regimes need separate registration.
- Quebec. Bill 96, Law 25 and the Consumer Protection Act, enforced by the OQLF, the Commission d'accès à l'information and the Office de la protection du consommateur.
- The rest. PIPEDA governs marketing data federally after Bill C-27 died in 2025, and Ontario's AODA requires WCAG 2.0 AA websites for private organisations of 50 or more employees. (Government of Ontario)
Boxing Week, moving day and the Canadian retail year
November and December can carry a quarter or more of annual sales in gift categories, but the run-up differs from the US. Canadian Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday of October, so there is no late-November pause, and Amazon's October deal event pulls demand forward. Canada Post's standard parcel Christmas cutoff typically lands in mid-December, so "order by" dates move earlier and shift to couriers.
Boxing Day and Boxing Week remain a genuinely Canadian clearance period, search spiking December 24 to 27. Elsewhere in the year, Mother's Day is the largest non-Q4 gifting peak, back to school runs mid-July through Labour Day, and Quebec's July 1 moving day lifts home and furniture demand. Paid costs climb sharply from early November and fall in January, which is why September list-building pays.
Measure MER and contribution margin, not ROAS
Platform ROAS misleads at Canadian shipping distances. Blended marketing efficiency ratio, total revenue divided by total ad spend, is the number to run the business on, and break-even MER is the inverse of your contribution margin. Track four things:
- Contribution margin per order after product cost, duty, shipping, payment fees and ad spend
- Blended MER against that break-even line, read weekly rather than daily
- First-order CAC against first-order gross margin, and the month it breaks even
- New versus returning revenue split against average order value
The first 90 days:
| Days | Focus | Output |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 30 | Store and feed | CAD and tax clarity, duty messaging, feed errors cleared |
| 31 to 60 | Demand capture | Shopping and PMax live, branded search defended, second carrier live |
| 61 to 90 | Demand creation | Paid social tests, collection SEO, French pages, Quebec consent |
Where Better Businesses fits
What usually breaks is the work underneath: feeds, consent, French pages, carrier logic, landed-cost messaging and reporting that shows whether a channel pays after shipping. Better Businesses works with e-commerce brands in every province on exactly that. Get in touch for a second set of eyes on your store.
Sources
- The Daily — Retail trade, December 2025 — Statistics Canada
- Online shopping in Canada in 2020: Results from Canadian Internet Use Survey — Statistics Canada
- Increase to low-value shipment thresholds and other changes — Canada Border Services Agency
- Made in Canada claims - Competition Bureau Canada — Competition Bureau Canada
- Statement from the Acting Commissioner of Competition on appeal court's ruling in Cineplex deceptive marketing — Competition Bureau Canada
- When to register for and start charging the GST/HST — Canada Revenue Agency
- How to make websites accessible — Government of Ontario
Sources checked September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
- What blended MER should a Canadian store hit before it scales ad spend?
- Work from contribution margin, not revenue. Break-even MER is the inverse of your contribution margin rate, so a store keeping 35 cents on the dollar after product cost, duty, shipping and payment fees breaks even near 2.9x and needs roughly 3.5x to cover overhead. Judge blended CAC the same way: first-order CAC should clear first-order gross margin, or be recovered by a second purchase within 90 days.
- Do I need to charge GST/HST on online sales across Canada?
- Register for GST/HST once worldwide taxable sales pass $30,000 over four consecutive quarters, then charge based on your customer's province: 13% HST in Ontario, 14% in Nova Scotia, 15% in New Brunswick, PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador, and 5% GST elsewhere. Quebec QST, BC PST, Saskatchewan PST and Manitoba RST need separate provincial registrations. Marketplaces like Amazon generally collect on your behalf, but sales through your own store are your responsibility.
- Which Quebec rules apply if we ship into the province from Ontario or BC?
- Three regimes, and none of them turn on where you are located. Bill 96 requires a French site, checkout and order emails at least equivalent to the English. Law 25 requires profiling and advertising technology to stay off until the visitor consents. Quebec's Consumer Protection Act sets what a distance contract must disclose before the customer is bound, and Bill 10 now requires an online cancellation button for subscriptions.
- Which carriers should we configure as a Canada Post backup before Q4?
- Configure the second carrier in September, not during a strike. Purolator, UPS and FedEx handle national volume, Canpar and GLS Canada compete on ground cost, and Intelcom, UniUni and Nationex carry heavy direct-to-consumer volume, while aggregators such as Stallion Express and Freightcom make switching quick. Keep delivery promises accurate, because a guaranteed-by-Christmas claim you cannot meet is a misleading representation under the federal Competition Act.
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