OTTAWA - It's still early as cash registers cool from Boxing Day sales, but analysts estimate Canadian holiday spending was up five per cent over last year -- a little less than last December's year-over-year gain.
Statistics Canada reported earlier this month that, excluding the automotive sector, shoppers spent nearly $28.7 billion in retail stores in December 2006 -- 6.2 per cent growth over the previous year.
While it's too soon for official data on 2007's holiday retail sales and merchants declined to provide numbers, some analysts suggest this season's tempered gains could have resulted from more Canadians shopping south of the border with a higher-value currency.
Canadians flooded the border this fall after the loonie reached parity with the American dollar in September en route to a record high of 110 cents US in early November.
But the loonie has subsided in recent weeks and, on Friday afternoon, it was trading near 102 cents US.
Retail analyst John Winter says a slight increase in cross-border shopping "obviously had an effect (on spending in Canada), leading up to Christmas.''
In response to what some shoppers saw as better deals in the U.S., many retailers -- including Wal-Mart Canada, Sears Canada, Shoppers Drug Mart and Rexall -- cut prices on selected goods in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
"You're not just seeing the sales during Boxing week, you're seeing many of the sales roll out earlier pre-Christmas,'' said Derek Nighbor of the Retail Council of Canada.
Two surveys this month had suggested Canada's strong dollar and robust economy would lead to higher holiday spending.
Scotiabank pegged holiday spending at an average of $907 this year, up from last year's $822, while Visa Canada expected Canadians to spend $23 billion overall.
That's in contrast to sluggish sales in the United States, where the International Council of Shopping Centers said this week its index of retail chain store sales rose 2.8 per cent to round out a sluggish December performance. The merchants' sales gain is less than the trade group originally expected.
Anecdotally, retailers and analysts say baby boomers largely wrote the Christmas list this year, their stockings overflowing with home "nesting'' items such as flat-screen televisions, computers, home entertainment systems and other gadgets.
"You always watch where the baby boomer is going in the market, and the baby boomer is looking at what we call nesting, I guess, they're feathering their own nest,'' said Richard Talbot of Toronto-area market research firm Talbot Consultants International.
Best Buy, which also owns Canada's Future Shop chain, said some stores reported one-day sales on Boxing Day in excess of $1 million, with online traffic between Dec. 24 and 26 jumping 45 per cent from the same period last year.
Best Buy spokesman Scott Morris wouldn't provide sales figures, and would only say the company was "very pleased'' with the numbers.
Online sales will likely show gains as baby boomers spurn the hustle and bustle of malls to do their shopping on the Internet, Talbot said.
Canada's booming housing market, particularly in oil-rich Alberta and sleeping giant Saskatchewan, may have partly drove holiday sales of around-the-home items, Winter said.
"When you move into a new house, you usually are increasing your space, so you need to fill it up with some type of furnishings or furniture,'' he said.
Meanwhile, apparel retailers, including The Gap, Lululemon and West 49, were tight-lipped when asked how they fared over the holiday shopping period.
Asked why apparel retailers were mum while electronics retailers touted their holiday sales, Gap Inc. spokesman Greg Rossiter denied it had anything to do with the performance of the company's clothing stores, which include Old Navy and Banana Republic.
Talbot speculated baby boomers aren't as likely to buy new clothes, which could lead to lower retail sales of apparel.
Meanwhile, independent retailers are also expected to show holiday sales growth over last year, said Ross Moyal of the Ontario branch of the Retail Merchants' Association of Canada.
"We still think they'll do well. They should be able to do better than last year,'' he said.
