Great post, I think this is another symptom of a larger issues which is a continuing failure by general brand leadership in Canada to innovate on any front weather they have the authority to or not. As Andrew said, ecommerce came out of the gate slow, even in-spite of the astounding number of successful examples from markets around the world. And even more concerning retailers such as Canadian Tire, The Bay and others have recently abandoned their ecommerce programs rather than transform their organizations to embrace it.

I also agree with Brian in that many of these decision makers are only interested in “buying” message through channels they've used over and over for decades and are failing to recognize let alone accept that the priority and nature of societies communications channels have changed and are no longer for sale.

The risk here is not only the delayed adoption of social media in Canada, but a continuing pattern of innovation malnutrition caused by the bottle neck of outdated brand management executives who threaten our economies ability to compete on a global scale. In a rapidly shrinking world we can't hope for future Canadian generations to enjoy the prosperity we have when they are half a decade behind the rest of the world in sociotechnical innovation.