I actually think you're being quite fair here - it's not to say that the car is "expensive;" rather, marketing shows that you can have the car for $9,988 in a trim that literally nobody will buy. It's not to say that Nissan is lying - of course, you can option the car thusly - but whereas the general buying public in Canada (since we're only concerned about our home market, unlike Nissan) will almost never option a car without an auto tranny, making it available only in a package on the base model means that if you don't want to drive manual, you're buying a $13,300 car, +++.
One cannot complain about tax, freight, or PDI as they're standard costs, but one can most certainly complain that he/she came into a Nissan dealership expecting to buy cheap transport for their university kid, at $9,988, and accepts that it's $1,000 for an auto tranny for safety (as most parents would gander), just to find out that, in fact, their acceptable $10,988 car is now about $13,300 and you're in 1 year used territory for pretty much any C-segment car.
It's all to say that Nissan's entire marketing strategy is get people into the dealership first, force them to spend more when they get there because "hey, what's a few thousand dollars between friends?"
