Thanks so much for your responses, 'ricarmic' . I always appreciate your thoughtful replies.
The way I see it, staying on .ca and switching to listing in $Cdn is the easiest thing to do, but it's a band-aid measure with its own inherent issues. It doesn't solve the cart problem, in the sense that it still doesn't permit my almost exclusively U.S. buyers to use their cart for multiple purchases. It just forces them to use the old style checkout system.
I benefit from a number of cost-saving strategies by listing on .ca, as I've said, but it's conceivable that some of those may be discontinued by eBay in the not-too-distant future (including the ability to list in $US on .ca and the free subtitles on .cafr).
On the other hand, listing on .com will solve the cart problem completely, but it will increase my costs. Actually, when I think about it, the cost increases will be doubled, because not only will I be paying FVFs on everything I ship, but I will be losing the FVF savings I now get on .ca on everything I ship to the U.S. and elsewhere (which has helped me to continue to offer subsidized shipping to my U.S. customers).
If I were to implement free shipping to the U.S. on all items, I'd lose even more money which I would have to hope would be recouped through better sales due to the free shipping offer alone, not due to better visibility. Visibility in searches has never been an issue for me, because I have relatively few competitors. It seems at least one of my items is always near the top of page 1 on keyword searches. The reason may be at least partly connected with the fact that I offer free domestic shipping on a great many items, which I'd lose on .com unless I listed with free shipping there (Catch-22 in action!).
So the trade-off of offering free shipping to the U.S. on everything for the sake of better search placement is a dubious equation for me. None of my most important competitors offers free shipping across the board; it seems that people who sew don't object to paying reasonable shipping.
However, sewing patterns are very price-sensitive. Attempting to roll shipping into the price may not work as well as it does with other types of items. In other words, to remain truly competitive in my particular area, I would probably have to pay for the free shipping out of my own pocket.
If I list on .com and were to roll shipping into the item pricing, I'd have to balance off the very real potential loss of sales due to higher prices, against the potential gains due to offering free shipping across the board. In my categories, I don't think I'd come out ahead.
Of course, in the meantime, while I gnaw my fingernails, I suppose I could just stipulate IPR on all my listings (which are all currently listed in $US), in order to prevent U.S. buyers from being able to use the cart at all. If I'm not mistaken, IPR applies on .com to all items under a certain value anyway (is it $100 or $1000, can't recall). Perhaps the days of "payment accommodation" and layaway arrangements are gone in any event.
I dislike making radical changes that have uncertain outcomes. I prefer to make adaptations in small steps, then adjust further, or retreat to safer ground if things don't pan out. This is a real d----d if you do, d----d if you don't scenario, and I do resent the fact that eBay created this situation in the first place.
The more I consider this, the more I think that the smartest and least time-consuming "experiment" initially would be to specify IPR on every listing. It will have essentially the same effect on checkout for my U.S. buyers as switching to listing in $Cdn would have, without the potential misunderstandings around currency display and -- more importantly to me -- the price monitoring/adjusting issues and loss of FVF savings.
At some point I'm expecting we'll all be obligated to list exclusively in $Cdn on .ca, and those of us who have been happily listing in $US on .ca for years, will be forced to make a choice whether we like it or not.
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