Cashiers anticipate Kelly Lang's arrival. Maybe it's the 20-pound coupon binder or the fist full of flyers. Whatever it is, her reputation precedes her.

"My local Wal-Mart actually shuts the lane down and turns the little light off," she says. "They even put that big folding sign at the end of the till that says ‘lane closed.'"

Lang is one of the few, the proud, the thrifty. She represents an elite class of prudent shoppers whose intense deal-clipping habits have been rendered infamous on the documentary-style show "Extreme Couponing."

But there's a small detail that separates Lang from the stockpiling caricatures seen on reality television: she's Canadian.

Extreme couponing, as it's come to be known, isn't as extreme in Canada as it is in the United States. Thanks to a less competitive retail landscape and stricter coupon policies, the rules of the game are different.

As veteran discount-hunter Deanna Marcy explains, couponing is not a blood sport in Canada – it's more like a gentleman's game.

"We don't have nearly as many coupons here as they do in the States," she says. "So you get creative, researching deals and trading with friends and family."

In the U.S., shoppers can order wads of vouchers from specialized coupon-clipping services that will mail the deals to their doorsteps. There are somewhat comparable websites in Canada that allow coupon enthusiasts to print vouchers at home or mail them to themselves. These include:

• GoCoupons.ca
  
• WebSaver.ca
  
• CouponsCanadaGuide.ca

Still, Canadian bargain hunters typically aren't able to use their coupons as liberally as U.S. shoppers.

For one thing, most Canadian retailers don't allow shoppers to "stack" or use more than one coupon on one item. That means dumpster diving for discarded flyers as many have done on TLC's "Extreme Couponing" isn't likely to help a Canadian shopper's grand total at the cash register.

There are some exceptions to the rule. British Columbia-based retailer London Drugs is famous in thrifty circles for allowing coupon stacking, but even they have a careful set of guidelines around the practice.

For instance, the total value of the stacked coupons can't exceed the value of the product. That means London Drugs won't be paying you to take a bottle of aspirin off their hands, regardless of how many coupons you've stacked.

Opportunities to double coupons, in which a store will double the face value of a coupon, are also few and far between for Canadian shoppers.

In the past, retailers such as K-Mart and Pharmasave have held promotional double coupon weekends but the practice isn't commonplace. That means a $1 coupon on ketchup chips is rarely going to amount to anything more than a $1 discount.

Canada's coupon culture

Over in Cambridge, Ont., Marcy, a blogger for MoneySavingMomCanada.com, scours her local newspaper before she hits the grocery store. She slips vouchers into a royal-blue binder complete with plastic sheets typically used to display baseball cards.

As her husband pushes the shopping cart, she combs the aisles with her binder full of coupons and a single goal: "to try to get things as cheap as possible."

Inquiring minds may be interested to know that her proudest dollar-stretching moment happened at Shoppers Drug Mart, where Marcy walked away with $246.71 worth of product for only $5.73. Optimum card, indeed.

Now, with the Canadian debut of the website SmartSource.ca, Marcy is certain that she'll be able to further streamline her discount-hunting efforts.

SmartSource.ca is an initiative of News America Marketing, a subsidiary of the U.S.-based mega-corporation News America. The takeaway is that if the service has the ease of American coupon culture, it's likely because it comes from a U.S. conglomerate.

Steve Tissenbaum, a strategic management instructor at Ryerson University, has a few ideas as to why Canadians haven't embraced the coupon to the same extent as our neighbours to the south.

He points out that Canada's retail landscape is less competitive than that of the U.S. Here, retail giants such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy still rule the roost and manage to stay on top with price-match guarantees and ordinary discounts.

"I think that geographically we're more dispersed and the competition is spread out so there's less of a need for a local coupon war," says Tissenbaum, who teaches at the Ted Rogers School of Management.

Plus, he adds, generous coupon policies don't always benefit the retailer. Businesses hope that vouchers will draw in new customers but it's typically regulars who take advantage of the deals, Tissenbaum notes.

"My take on coupons has always been that it benefits the consumers but it doesn't necessarily benefit the business in the long run," he says.

Extreme, not excessive

Back in Simcoe, Ont., Lang does much of her couponing the old-fashioned way, hacking up colourful newspaper inserts and zipping the deals into her mammoth coupon binder.

"Sometimes I even play ‘coupon fairy,'" she says. "I'll walk around the store, profile other people's carts and give them coupons for their items."

A few weeks ago, Lang says she helped a stranger save up to $11 on items he already planned to buy.

She even leads coupon-clipping classes in her small Ontario community. For a $25 fee, her pupils receive a discount-hunting lesson from Lang and a zippered binder with vouchers worth at least $25 -- allowing students to break even.

Lang, who only started couponing in June, has now turned her eye towards extreme couponing for charity.

On Dec. 16, she plans to donate $3,000 worth of home and personal care products to a service that supports abused women in Simcoe.

"None of this is my own money," she says. "I'm using my skills to reach out, collect donations and turn them into something good for the community."

Further east, a multi-coloured mound of groceries sits in the middle of Jen Bromley's Oakville, Ont. living room. Cereal boxes, peanut butter jars, canned tuna and soup mixes disappear into a consumer collage.

She and her husband Darren are also extreme couponers gone altruistic. This Christmas, they're using their coupon-clipping habit to build the "Bromley Family Food Bank Mountain" -- a massive bounty that will be delivered to the Salvation Army this Sunday.

"We weren't able to go out and actively volunteer at a food bank," she says. "But we wanted to use the skills we did have to give back somehow."

The Bromley family started couponing about a year ago, around the same time they enrolled their two-year-old daughter in daycare. With daycare costs cutting into their budget, coupon clipping became a way for the family to maintain a comfortable lifestyle.

"We spend at least three hours a week looking for coupons," says Jen. "We try not to buy anything at full price ever; we always buy things at the bottom price."

She estimates that the young family of three only spends maximum $150 a week on groceries, toiletries and other household items.

Along the way, Jen and Darren have picked up a few key couponing tricks. The couple typically starts hunting for deals on "Flyer Thursdays" -- that magical day of the week when promotional flyers hit mailboxes with weekend deals.

There's a deep freeze in their basement which allows them to keep a reasonable stock of discounted meat instead of running out for full-price cuts every few days.

The Bromleys also say they're careful not to buy more than three to four months worth of a product. As Jen points out, not only would it be tough to get through an excessive amount of groceries but items usually go on sale again four months later.

"Buying 50 jars of peanut butter doesn't make sense, even though my daughter loves it," says Jen.

"Sure, we have a stockpile of goods, but not to the dramatic extent you see on reality TV. It would defeat the purpose of couponing which is to save money."