MINISTRY OF THE SOLICITOR GENERAL
KEW BEACH RESIDENTS' ASSOCIATION
CHINESE CANADIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL
RETAIL, WHOLESALE AND DEPARTMENT STORE UNION, LOCAL 414
CONTENTS
Thursday 15 August 1991
Retail Business Establishments Statute Law Amendment Act, 1991, Bill 115 / Loi de 1991 modifiant des lois en ce qui concerne les établissements de commerce de détail, projet de loi 115
Ministry of the Solicitor General
City of Toronto
Club Monaco
Kew Beach Residents' Association
Carmine Fiore
Fairweather
Chinese Canadian National Council
Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Local 414
Brenda Stinson
Herbie's Drug Warehouse
Mike Anderman
Marathon Realty Company Ltd
Adjourned
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Chair: White, Drummond (Durham Centre NDP)
Vice-Chair: Morrow, Mark (Wentworth East NDP)
Carr, Gary (Oakville South PC)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West L)
Fletcher, Derek (Guelph NDP)
Gigantes, Evelyn (Ottawa Centre NDP)
Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
Mathyssen, Irene (Middlesex NDP)
Mills, Gordon (Durham East NDP)
Poirier, Jean (Prescott and Russell L)
Sorbara, Gregory S. (York Centre L)
Winninger, David (London South NDP)
Substitutions:
Jordan, Leo (Lanark-Renfrew PC) for Mr Harnick
Klopp, Paul (Huron NDP) for Ms Gigantes
Kormos, Peter (Welland-Thorold NDP) for Mr Winninger
Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville NDP) for Mrs Mathyssen
Clerk: Freedman, Lisa
Staff: Fenson, Avrum, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
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The committee met at 0933 in committee room 1.
RETAIL BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENTS STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 MODIFIANT DES LOIS EN CE QUI CONCERNE LES ÉTABLISSEMENTS DE COMMERCE DE DÉTAIL
Resuming consideration of Bill 115, An Act to amend the Retail Business Holidays Act and the Employment Standards Act in respect of the opening of retail business establishments and employment in them.
Reprise de l'étude du projet de loi 115, Loi modifiant la Loi sur les jours fériés dans le commerce de détail et la Loi sur les normes d'emploi en ce qui concerne l'ouverture des établissements de commerce de détail et l'emploi dans ces établissements.
MINISTRY OF THE SOLICITOR GENERAL
The Chair: Good morning. I would like to call the meeting of the standing committee on administration of justice to order. We are having hearings regarding Bill 115, and our first witness and presenter this morning is the Honourable Allan Pilkey, the Solicitor General. Thank you. If you could join us, please, sir. We have about half an hour with the minister, which I think was arranged at the last minute about a week or so ago. I am sure the minister will have some comments and we will have the opportunity to pose questions to him.
Mr Elston: Mr Chair, is he here in his capacity as Minister of Correctional Services?
The Chair: No, he is here in his capacity as Solicitor General --
Hon Mr Pilkey: I could be, with questions like that, Mr Chairman.
The Chair: -- and the minister responsible for this legislation, Mr Elston.
If you could, as well, introduce your colleagues. Ms Scarfone has been with us before, but your other colleague we do not know.
Hon Mr Pilkey: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman, first of all, for your kind introduction. It is a pleasure to be here before the committee this morning. Joining me this morning is Jill Hutcheon, the director of the policy branch of the Solicitor General's department, and Janet Scarfone, legal counsel to the ministry. As you can see, I have just had the opportunity to meet my colleagues very recently as well, because of the new position, but I certainly welcome their support and I think they may be able to assist in some greater detail beyond that which I am able to bring you here this morning, particularly in the technical area.
Members of the committee, as the new Solicitor General I appreciate the opportunity, as I said, of appearing here this morning on your public hearings with respect to Bill 115. I want to say at the beginning that I fully support this bill, which amends the Retail Business Holidays Act and the Employment Standards Act.
Common pause day legislation is fundamentally about enriching the community life of all Ontarians and ensuring that as many people as practically possible can take advantage of the benefits of a common pause day to pursue individual and family activities. A common pause day for Ontario has long been the subject of debate. As this committee has heard in thoughtful presentations all across this province, there will always be a strong divergence of opinion on this particular issue. You have heard presentations from both sides and from those who desire compromise. Many of these presentations, I understand, have gone well beyond the comments on Bill 115 itself.
I think it is important to remember that the province has already held hearings on the Retail Business Holidays Act and that the constitutional validity of this act has recently been confirmed. It has been confirmed by the highest court in this province. What these hearings are about is Bill 115. Bill 115 contains amendments to the Retail Business Holidays Act and to the Employment Standards Act.
At the time of the Court of Appeal decision in March of this year, which reinstated the Retail Business Holidays Act as the law of the land, we pledged to present amendments to existing legislation to improve its effectiveness in the provision of a common pause day for Ontario. We believe that Bill 115 affirms and strengthens our commitment as stated in the throne speech last November. We welcome and encourage public discussion on how to best bring this about, but the principle of a common pause day, in my view, is not up for negotiation.
There are two other principles essential to the intent of Bill 115. One is that the tourism industry must be protected and, as well, promoted. The other is that retail workers must be protected against being forced to work on Sundays or other statutory holidays. These principles, rather, underscore this government's concern for balancing economic interests on the one hand with the rights and needs of individual workers on the other.
The tourism provision is a key component of Bill 115 and the tourism industry is a cornerstone of our provincial economy. Tourism supports the common pause day principle by encouraging recreational pursuits that help improve the quality of life in this province. The provincial tourism criteria are reinforced through the municipalities' vital role in this process. This ensures that the tourism exemptions will be applied with consistency and fairness while meeting the needs of individual communities.
As a former mayor, I say very proudly, of the city of Oshawa I understand the value of provincial standards. They assure all municipalities that they are operating on a level playing field. At the same time, however, each municipality has the power to meet its own needs for the promotion of tourism within the overall criteria.
The labour-related aspects of Bill 115 indicate clearly that the bill is about Sunday working, not Sunday shopping. I would remind the committee that Sunday shopping requires people to work, yet a good many of those same people who want unrestricted Sunday shopping would strongly resist any suggestion that they themselves work on Sunday. The provisions of Bill 115 that improve the rights of retail workers require our support because many of those who work in our retail establishments are unorganized and unprotected.
Bill 115 is designed to strengthen existing legislation and help make it more effective in achieving the primary goal, that of providing Ontarians with a weekly common pause day. We recognize that Ontario is still suffering from the effects of the recession; however, unrestricted days of operation for retail stores, in my view, is not a cure-all for this broader concern and situation.
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The principle of a common pause day is of long-term importance and, just like the hard-working people of Ontario, it will survive these economic difficulties. One might attempt to demonstrate with numbers that impulse spending increases when shopping opportunities increase. You can also show with other numbers that in a recession the total number of consumer dollars spent decreases. However, the principles upon which a common pause day are based do not ebb and flow. They remain constant in any economic climate. They are key components in our society, and they are worth protecting, they are worth promoting and they are worth holding.
As I said at the beginning, this is an issue that has proven to be difficult and challenging and I suspect it will always be so, but our government is dealing with it in as fair and open a manner as possible. By taking a balanced approach, we believe we have demonstrated leadership on this particular issue. While the principles of the legislation -- a common pause day, support for the tourism industry and improved worker protection -- will remain intact, I know that you are receiving a lot of valuable and insightful input from the public on how we can best bring thse principles into effect.
I would like to remind you that retail workers in Ontario are not second-class citizens. They should not be subject to pressures to work while others enjoy time with their families or pursue personal interests. They certainly should not be required to give up their day of rest to provide others with unrestricted shopping opportunities.
This bill improves and reinforces the Retail Business Holidays Act and the Employment Standards Act to promote a common pause day that Ontarians can share in. This cuts across aspects of income and geography and is therefore important to all Ontarians. Our commitment to a common pause day is long-standing and it is a commitment that as a government we are proud to make good on.
I would like to thank all of the committee members for the opportunity of being here today. I know that you have spent a tremendous number of hours in your consultative process. It has been, I am sure, a very arduous task for all of you individually and collectively, but on behalf of the government we want to indicate our appreciation for everyone's involvement, regardless of his or her particular stance on the position.
As I indicated before, a very important matter in the view of our party and of the Ontario government is that Ontarians collectively enjoy this very meaningful circumstance of at least one common pause day out of this otherwise very difficult and busy lifestyle that we all lead.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister. We have approximately five minutes per caucus for questions. Mr Daigeler.
Mr Elston: That should help us all understand this better.
Mr Daigeler: Thank you very much, Mr Chairman, and welcome, Minister, in your new position as Solicitor General. Quite frankly, I would have hoped for a very different response from you that would have, in my opinion, augured better in your new responsibility, because I am not sure why we held these hearings when I now hear your response, which seems to indicate a very closed mind. At every step of the hearings your parliamentary assistant said, "We're here to listen, and be assured that your presentation and your thoughts will be taken into careful consideration." When I hear your words, Minister, I do not know whether you have been briefed at all on what was presented to us, because there has been a very large movement out there saying: "Leave the legislation the way it is. The municipal option really is working well. There are many areas in the province that want to stay closed and they should have that right, and there are many areas in the province that want to stay open and they should have that right as well."
Moreover, there has been rather strong discussion about this idea of a common pause day. While there has been support for a day of rest, there was also a very clear indication that the common pause day is being challenged because of the work that is being done in many other sectors of the Ontario economy, and that if we are really keen on the common pause day, then we should at least work on expanding that common pause day into other sectors, not just the retail sector.
I would then have expected, since you make that strong commitment towards a common pause day, some indication from you that you will also work with, let's say, industry, with commerce and so on, with the hospitality sector, to broaden the availability of a common pause day there.
Finally, also, many of the municipalities clearly said that this process of the establishment of the tourism exemption is a very cumbersome one and they would much prefer the general approach that was provided in the Liberal legislation, and therefore again, it should be left alone as it is. So I am really wondering whether you have been briefed and I certainly hope, if we do continue the hearings, that you pay closer attention to what is being said by the witnesses.
Hon Mr Pilkey: I appreciate the question and the comments. I think I would answer you in this way, that I am rather unyielding on the principle that is involved here; but what I am very open to are presentations and suggestions of how Bill 115 can perhaps be improved. We have, as a government, no monopoly on all the bright ideas that are available throughout this province. I think the work that you yourself and your colleagues and the other committee members have done has in fact been very valuable.
I have been briefed with respect to what you have been hearing, and all of that is going to be considered, and there may well be alterations to this bill as a result of your work. But where you are correct, if there is a suggestion that the principle will be altered from this particular chair, that is not likely to be the case.
The Chair: Thank you, Minister. Mr Elston.
Mr Elston: I want to be a little more basic with the minister and to congratulate him publicly and personally on his ascendancy to the new role of Solicitor General and Minister of Correctional Services. But I wonder if he could tell us what he means by "common pause day." Some of us on the street would say "common" means "the same." "Pause day," I think we can understand: "Step back, sit down, rest, relax." What day do you find in Ontario is the common pause day? What is the common pause day for Ontario that you said you were establishing by this act? Which day?
Hon Mr Pilkey: Sunday.
Mr Elston: There are only seven.
Hon Mr Pilkey: There are only seven. Traditionally, I think if you asked that question of any Ontarian who grew up in Ontario or came to Ontario in the last couple of decades, they would respond to you that, generally speaking, that day would be Sunday.
Mr Elston: In the act itself where does it indicate that Sunday is the common pause day for Ontario. Because that is not enumerated. If that is the principle of the act, I do not know that it is enumerated in any particular place.
Hon Mr Pilkey: There are certain other possibilities with respect to the common pause day which you are probably more familiar with than I.
Mr Elston: So in fact, we do not have a common pause day, but you, as a government, have noted that Sunday is your preferred common pause day. Is that what you are saying, minister?
Hon Mr Pilkey: Sunday apparently is enumerated and that would be consistent with the answer that I gave.
Mr Elston: But it is not the only possibility, you just said. Is that not true?
Hon Mr Pilkey: You asked me, as I understood it --
Mr Elston: What is the common pause day? If the principle of this legislation is one common pause day, I am asking you what is that one day and you are saying, "It is Sunday only."
Hon Mr Pilkey: Yes.
Mr Elston: Exclusively. So under this act there will only be Sunday as a common pause day in Ontario.
Hon Mr Pilkey: There may be --
Mr Elston: For retail workers. I understand the principle that this is applying mostly to retail and tourism, but it is only Sunday you say?
Hon Mr Pilkey: I responded to your primary question when you asked my opinion as to what that day would be perceived to be by most Ontarians, I believe, and I indicated it was Sunday.
Mr Elston: No, I asked you what the act is saying is the common pause day. You said the principle is a common pause day, so what is it?
Hon Mr Pilkey: Perhaps I have not understood your question. I will ask Janet to comment.
Mr Elston: Sure, Janet, if you would. I would be pleased to see what the act says is the only pause day in Ontario.
Ms Scarfone: The Retail Business Holidays Act lists or enumerates a number of holidays in the act to which the closing provisions apply, and enumerated in section 1 of "holiday" is Sunday. A holiday includes Sunday.
Mr Elston: But it is not exclusive. Can I, as a retail business person, have a day other than Sunday, during the week, as my pause day, for business purposes?
Ms Scarfone: There is a provision in the legislation that accommodates those who have other religious beliefs, and that is section 5.
Mr Elston: So in fact, although you speak about the issue of one day when there is a pause for retail workers around the province, with the exception of tourism activities, there are many possibilities. There really is no one common pause day in Ontario, is there, in this act?
Hon Mr Pilkey: I would say that generally there is.
Mr Elston: Well, generally there is not.
Hon Mr Pilkey: Traditionally, that day has been Sunday. I gather the only exemption to it is on certain religious grounds which you are well familiar with.
Mr Elston: And for tourism as well.
Hon Mr Pilkey: I believe that was part of the legislation that your government brought forward and it recognized that circumstance. That is where that came from.
Mr Elston: Fair enough. So how is this more effective than the last? If that is the case, if this is the same as the one before, how is this more effective?
Hon Mr Pilkey: I am simply saying that in this respective particular instance, on the singular question that you raise out of this bill, the exemption to the traditional day, which would be Sunday, would be only on religious grounds. I do not think we are in any disagreement on that point.
Mr Elston: One final question, which will deal with the fact that you have talked about this as improving the effectiveness. When I was going through the briefings -- I actually attended and met your policy adviser I guess on a couple of occasions, and others from labour and from tourism, I think it was; and there may have been somebody else -- we talked about the effectiveness of enforcing the retail workers' right to refuse. I was asking them how the provisions in this bill were going to be better than the ones before, because your organization in opposition had said that our means of enforcement were going to be totally ineffective. In fact, all you have done is just build on the same procedure that we had put in place. Can you tell us how this is an improvement?
Hon Mr Pilkey: I just think it reinforces and strengthens it. The principle of worker protection was there before. We are simply adding to it.
Mr Elston: So you really believe you have just strengthened it, but you have not changed the manner in which you are prepared to proceed.
Hon Mr Pilkey: There is an absolute right to refuse under this bill, which I think is an improvement. It enhances it.
Mr Elston: But may not be enforceable.
Hon Mr Pilkey: We believe it will be enforced.
Mr Carr: I also want to congratulate you and I look forward to working with you, as the critic for the Solicitor General. We all work together in a non-partisan manner all the time, of course.
Having travelled around the province, notwithstanding your statement, it is very clear that we will be having Sunday shopping in this province. Collingwood will be open, they tell us, Thunder Bay, Kenora, Sault Ste Marie, parts of Kingston, although North Bay and Sudbury, if my recollection serves me right, said they will not. Notwithstanding what the Premier has said about not being able to take the tourism exemptions, municipalities we have heard from have said, "Thank you very much, we interpret it this way and we are going to be open." As you know, places like Windsor have said, "We are going to take the whole, entire area."
As a result, some of the people we have heard, for example, the United Food and Commercial Workers as recently as yesterday said that your tourism exemptions are a joke, and I am quoting, "makes a joke of the tourism exemptions. I would be very surprised if you can find one municipality in Ontario that does not qualify." In their presentation, Clifford Evans said the same thing: This bill would lead to wide-open Sunday shopping, and as a result, would fail to enshrine the common pause day as intended.
So in spite of your statement here this morning that you are going to have a common pause day, the only question is, is 60% of the province going to be open, 70%, 50%? Very clearly, there will be Sunday shopping. I wanted to see what your thoughts were, what changes you are going to make to ensure that there is a common pause day in this province.
Hon Mr Pilkey: I want to respond to that question basically in a couple of ways. The tourism regulations are set out, and they are intended to be meaningful. When we draw up the regulation with respect to that, I do not believe there will be loopholes present at all, and I think they will be rather clear. They will be rather concise, and they will be enforced.
The question of tourism and how that leads to a percentage of Ontario opening or being open is true, but I believe if we are to maintain tourism as an economic factor, it needs to have that kind of enhanced hours of operation. Second, it builds a bridge to the common pause day in that it provides a wide variety of activities for families and for individuals to enjoy on that common pause day. I do not know if that answers your question completely, but those are --
Mr Carr: The problem is, as you know, that the municipalities are the ones that get to interpret it, and with nobody else to oversee them, what really counts is how they interpret it.
Hon Mr Pilkey: But municipalities will be overseeing. Their input is seen as extremely valuable. We will be providing the provincial regulation, which will be the rule book for them to proceed by. As they, with their own local knowledge, assess the application before them and mirror it against the very concise provincial guidelines, they will make the appropriate decision. But I do not believe the regulations will allow them in any way to be footloose and fancy-free with respect to the interpretation. It would be my hope that they would look at those regulations and apply them in the spirit in which they were intended. If they do not, I think we would we talking to them about that.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much, but since they have handed the ball to us, we are going to be the ones to interpret them. You may lay out the regulations, but you have said we can interpret them, and we will interpret them the way we will. You may have heard the chairman in Toronto, Mr Tonks, saying, "We'll use whatever loopholes we can." He believes there are some in the biggest municipality in this province.
It really does come down to the tourism exemptions. The question I was going to ask is whether you think they are tough enough now or not tough enough or just right. Do you see changing the regulations with the tourism exemption in mind at all?
Hon Mr Pilkey: We are certainly prepared, as a result of the information and the presentations that have been made to the committee, to continue to review the tourism criteria so that when the regulation is ultimately written, it in fact does the job it was originally intended to do. It is my hope and my belief that it will not be in that kind of loose circumstance that one might drive trucks through it, but rather that it will be clear, concise, enforced, and that we will in fact achieve the goal of the common pause day for the vast majority of Ontarians, save and except those in the tourism industry, and save and except those municipalities that have a uniqueness about them, so that, as I indicated, the balance of Ontarians can enjoy the value of that day and the particular benefits of those municipalities.
Mr Carr: As a municipal politician, I know you would never drive a truck through regulations. You know better than that.
Hon Mr Pilkey: Maybe once.
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Mr Lessard: I, too, would like to congratulate you on taking on what is turning out to be a very challenging position. We have been receiving quite a bit of valuable input as to the legislation and the draft regulations as we travelled around the province. Most notably, we have heard quite a bit from chambers of commerce who have told us that they were not really too happy about the role that was intended for them in the draft regulations. They wanted to know whether we were going to be prepared to remove them, because they said they were not regulatory bodies. They did not have any accountability except to their own members, and it was voluntary membership.
One of the suggestions we received yesterday was to consider as an alternative the model that is used to incorporate business improvement areas, where there has to be approval of a certain number of businesses in a specific area before the business improvement area would be established. I just want to know whether you have any thoughts with respect to that or whether there had been any consideration of that issue.
Hon Mr Pilkey: I think the work of the committee on that particular point has been very valuable in that it has flushed out the concern that the Ontario Chamber of Commerce has. I think it is one that we have to pay very careful attention to.
I think, understandably, the government, or its staff people, may have quite naturally assumed that the Ontario Chamber of Commerce would wish to be very directly involved in these business matters at a provincial level and at a local level, because all of our experience, I am sure, to a person, has always been involved in the chamber, has always heard it said, "We want to be involved in the consultations, we would like to be involved in the discussion." I believe they would ultimately like to be part of the decision-making process.
So there was an assumption here that, given that this was a business matter to deal with tourism and so on, they would welcome this opportunity. They have been heard to say in recent times that perhaps they have not been consulted enough. So irony of ironies on this particular issue, we find that because of a division in their membership, it may not be an item that they would voluntarily wish to receive, this power of regulation.
That point has been made, I understand, before you. I understand the question. I understand their position, and it is certainly therefore a view, in review of your findings of this committee, we are going to have another look at.
The Chair: Mr Fletcher.
Mr Fletcher: Thank you for appearing before us this morning on such short notice, Minister. It is always nice to see your smiling face.
Mr Daigeler: Short? He had three weeks.
Mr Fletcher: Well, that is short notice when you take over a new portfolio.
Travelling around the province, I am not subject to selective hearing, and I tried to hear what everyone was saying. There are a few people who have problems with this piece of legislation, but they came forward with some good ideas. I think there are some definite, positive ideas coming from many of the stakeholders. The chambers of commerce were not only upset with the lack of consultation, but they had some positive suggestions, as my colleague has said, and also the unions and many small retailers who were saying: "We like it. You're in the right direction. A few changes here and there, a little fine-tuning, and this is a great piece of legislation." That is what this committee is for, as you know. It is to listen to what people are saying and to make sure that we do listen to what every person is saying and not just be selective.
I listened to some of the retailers, and one of the things that seems to get in the way is the 7,500-square-foot criterion as far as the opening of the store. Some people are saying we have these massive drugstores that can sell everything under the sun; they have 7,500 square feet or more. But I know from a survey done of Metropolitan Toronto area drugstores that about 75% of the drugstores fall within the 2,500-square-foot to 5,000-square-foot range, so they would be exempt under this piece of legislation.
I know the unions have been asking us to knock down the square footage. I am just wondering, on the square footage -- and this may not be a fair question because I know you were not there in the actual drafting of the bill -- how did we get to the 7,500-square-foot criterion? It was not just grabbed out of the air, was it?
Hon Mr Pilkey: I guess I could blame some other people for that.
Mr Elston: It is up to you guys to change it. This is your problem. This is your baby.
Hon Mr Pilkey: Yes, and thank you for the problem.
This is not the first time we have heard this concern, which emanated out of legislation brought forward by a previous government. I will be quite interested, in fact, to read the transcripts and to hear in explanatory detail the concerns revolving around that particular issue. I would also be interested in hearing what the committee's view of that issue is after hearing from all of those representations. I think that is about all I can offer you this morning, a commitment to look at those recommendations, to look at those transcripts and those points and to try to assess whether the existing legislation is appropriate or whether it is ready for some amendment. I certainly can pledge to you to review that particular circumstance and to see whether our position will alter on that 7,500-square-foot matter previously adopted by the former government.
Mr Fletcher: Also, this committee will probably be making recommendations.
Just one quick point before I pass on to my colleague Mr Morrow. As we went around the province, we heard about the many flaws in the previous legislation and that this is a step in the right direction, so I am proud of what we are trying to do.
Mr Elston: Mr Chair, I would be prepared to have Mr Morrow ask his question. I do not think there is any reason why we cannot be a little flexible when the minister himself is here.
The Chair: Agreed? Fine. Mr Morrow.
Mr Morrow: I actually have just one really quick question. We were in Ottawa on Monday and heard from a Monsignor Schonenbach about what he believed this legislation is. He made a very good comment that Sunday is for the people. It is showing up that this is obviously a quality-of-life issue for an awful lot of groups. Do you see this as being a family time or being a really family problem, so to speak?
Hon Mr Pilkey: It just seems to me that all of us live very busy lives. There is a variety of interests that one needs to address in establishing or achieving something called quality of life. There is no doubt that economics are a very key ingredient in our cornerstone of establishing that quality of life. Of course, all of us have continued to pursue trying to enrich the economic circumstance for all people of Ontario.
But there is another side to the ledger. There are always debits and there are always credits. The other side of that ledger, as you indicated, speaks to some period in time when there is a common pause, that individuals or families can do those kinds of things that are of another nature and another element. It appears to me that in this society and in our particular province, that is important. Others may argue it is not important at all. I just happen to think that it is, and this particular legislation provides that. I believe that it will provide for us a better circumstance and a more rounded and balanced situation for the province of Ontario and the people who make it up.
The Chair: Thank you. I think the committee members are very appreciative of your being willing to come and put your own unique stamp on this process.
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CITY OF TORONTO
The Chair: We now have a presentation from the city of Toronto, Dennis Perlin, the city solicitor, and Greg Levine. We have approximately half an hour for your presentation, which can be divided between your presentation and questions from the committee members, which I am sure will be many. Please feel free to start when you are comfortable in doing so, and would you please identify yourselves for the purposes of our recording.
Mr Perlin: My name is Dennis Perlin and with me is Greg Levine. I am the city solicitor for Toronto and Greg is the research solicitor in the legal department of the city.
First, let me thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you. I believe you previously received a copy of the submission from the city. That was the first part. On Monday evening city council asked me to convey to you a further point that it wished the committee to be aware of and I believe it has been handed out to you. That was that city council was endorsing a particular section of the brief of the Labour Council of Metropolitan Toronto and York Region that was previously presented to you. That was in relation to the criteria and the suggestion that prior to a regulation being passed designating the tourism criteria, a special group of interested parties as set out in the labour council brief be brought together as an advisory committee to try to come forward with criteria that would make the ability of a municipality, at whatever level the municipality passes the bylaw, more restrictive than the present criteria do. That is the first point.
The main thrust of the submission that was sent to you was one that dealt really with the part of the bill that designated the delegation power with respect to the passage of a tourism bylaw to local municipalities in part of the province but not to local municipalities in other parts of the province. This of course, as you know, began with the 1975 legislation. At that time the power to delegate in terms of passing tourism bylaws was given to the regional or metropolitan levels. So those local municipalities within those levels could not pass bylaws, while local municipalities elsewhere in the province could.
Let me stress, however, very quickly that while the city is asking you to consider, as you now amend the bill this time, changing that and allowing all local municipalities in the province, whatever form of governmental structure they happen to be in, be they in a regional district or the county of Oxford or be they in another county form of government in this province, if you are going to have tourism bylaw designation, that it be handled by local municipalities and not split between regional governments in some parts of the province and local municipalities in the others.
In doing that, we are not saying there is no role for metropolitan or regional or district municipalities or the county of Oxford in the matter of bylaws related to tourism. I will indicate to you a little bit further on where I believe the power already exists for that to happen, regardless of what is done with the Retail Business Holidays Act. If you change the act for all local municipalities, there is still a place and an ability of a regional government to involve itself. We are here because of the confusion and the duplication in process when you start to split that responsibility between the local and regional areas.
You will see in Bill 115, as you well know, that there is a recognition, indeed even in regional setups, that the local municipalities are going to play a role because local municipalities themselves are given the power within the regions to make application to the metropolitan government to have a bylaw passed. So because everyone recognizes that if one applies the criteria with the intent I believe the criteria were put forward, that is, for specific geographic areas, those are going to be within certain areas of the local municipalities.
What is going to happen is that to have those particular geographic areas designated, it will start at the local level; people will come to the local level first. They will make application to the local level and will indeed try to get the local level, if I was representing them, to try to make sure the local level makes application to the regional level and try to get the local council on side. In many parts of this province where regional governments do not have direct election or even in those where they do, it would be wise, I would think, for a particular group of businesses in a particular geographic area to try to get the local government on side.
The city believes there should always be some attempt to try to rationalize these functions and try to make it easy for people to understand what is being done in terms of process. If you leave Bill 115 as it is, then the local level, before a local government itself, will make an application on behalf of a particular area. It will have its own set of hearings, its own set of debates, and then the matter will go to the metropolitan, regional or district level for another set. There could be different decisions. It is very difficult in the municipal area to try to explain to people how one municipal government is doing this and another municipal government, which supposedly is representing the same group, is doing another. It is making it much more complex than it need be.
One wonders why in Guelph the Guelph city council can make the designation, but in Toronto the Toronto city council cannot. There is no way of really explaining that, frankly. They are both two-tier governments. One is in Wentworth county and the other one happens to be in the Metropolitan region.
Interjection.
Mr Perlin: That is right, Guelph is a separated city, but I still make the point there is no way of really explaining to people in the city of Toronto; or if you are in Oakville, why Guelph city council can pass it or London city council can, but Oakville cannot, nor the city of Toronto.
The other area we think will be more consistent, if you could consider having all local municipalities and not just in those parts of the province without regional government, is when you look at what the local municipalities have to do in regional governments in terms of other analogous situations, such as the Planning Act situation. In the Planning Act it is the local municipality within the regions, and I appreciate Sudbury and Haldimand-Norfolk are two separate issue areas. In all the other areas, the site plan bylaws, community improvement bylaws, which are other areas of planning and development, they are all done at the area municipality. They are not done by the metropolitan or regional government.
It is confusing to have people wondering why certain types of what are really locally oriented types of bylaws have to be done like a tourism bylaw at the regional level and not at the local level. When you get into site plan or community improvement of an urban renewal nature, zoning bylaws themselves, the designation of institutional areas or residential areas, that is done at the local level and not at the regional level.
When I started the presentation, I stressed this is not an attempt to eliminate the role for regional or metropolitan governments. Regional and metropolitan district governments are entitled to have, and do have in most places in this province, official plans. Under Bill 115, even if you were to change it to local municipalities, when you look at section 24 of the Planning Act, there will still be a requirement for bylaws passed by local municipalities to be in conformity with official plans.
If there is a macrotourism issue that is in keeping with the criteria of the government with respect to tourism designation, which is still unique to a particular regional county or district level, the regional level can pass requirements in its official plan and the bylaws at the local level will have to be in conformity. A bylaw passed under this bill would still have to be in conformity with that official plan at the regional level.
So there is an opportunity for the regional government, and what is considered to be an appropriate approach is the macro level of planning. If there is a need for something of a macro level to provide for that in the official plan, any local bylaw would then be passed. That will then allow a business or geographic area to make its application to the local level, have the bylaw designated, if it is in accordance with the tourism criteria and, as always, if it is in conformity with the regional plan.
If there is some doubt as to that -- I do not think there is even if you were just to change the local municipalities in Bill 115 -- the bill could be amended to provide that, subject to section 24 of the Planning Act, all bylaws shall be passed by local municipalities, if there is a need for that clarification.
We say to you that there still is a positive role for the metropolitan, regional or district levels in the county of Oxford, but that when it gets down to the actual passage of the bylaw there would be a lot less duplication and confusion if it is left to the local municipalities to actually do the passage of the bylaw.
Experience in the city of Toronto, for example, with respect to tourism designations in the past like Harbourfront, Markham Street Village, the shops of the CN Tower -- all of those were initiated at the city of Toronto. They did not start at the Metro level. So I say to you this will happen again. There is a way of protecting the regional interest that does not have to be at the basic level of passing a bylaw. Basically, that is one small point among many I know you have to consider.
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The Chair: Thank you, Mr Perlin. We have approximately four minutes per caucus. Mr Poirier.
Mr Poirier: Mr Perlin, I am a logical person and a Capricorn so I can understand you, although I am not a lawyer. There is very much logic to what you are saying, I can understand that, but I remember when we changed the previous law. I will take the example of Ottawa-Carleton, and I would like your feedback on that also. Ottawa-Carleton is an area larger than the GTA; 11 municipalities. I remember, for example, some of the people who would offer services on days where a lot more of the businesses would be open contrary to tradition; for example, in this particular case, if it is going to be tourist areas and tourist businesses.
If a tourist comes to Ottawa-Carleton, Toronto or whatever, that tourist expects to be able to have tourism service wherever. He does not just draw a line because a certain municipality stops here, "I will just limit myself to that side of the street." A tourist from somewhere else does not give a damn about that.
The perfect example is where OC Transpo -- the transport bus service in all of Ottawa-Carleton -- said, "Would you please get us to meet with the [previous] Solicitor General so we can sit down and explain to her that it would be a lot better if the regional government made the decision to decide what was open or not, and what was touristic or not in this particular case, so we could make the bus service more uniform, for example, or police, or whatever?"
How would you combine both considerations so that to me it seems a lot more logical? We had changed the law to give the regional government, whether it was open or not on Sunday, for example -- how do you combine both of these advantages in the points that you make?
Mr Perlin: The question you are asking gets us into a very fundamental discussion of municipal government in the province and perhaps that should be looked at at this point. But the structure is such right now -- having been in Halton, and at one time the chief administrative officer for Halton -- that we could argue that for almost every service in this province. When I was at the regional level there were studies about how we could do everything better at the regional level.
Interjection.
Mr Perlin: No, I have seen the light since, having gone back to the local level.
You can say that for a lot of functions in terms of how you designate land. It would be much better if it was just one zoning bylaw and all the designations were done by the regional government instead of the local government.
In terms of building bylaws, it would be much better if every building bylaw -- that is one viewpoint. I do not any longer share that viewpoint, having had the experience at both levels. People still look to their local level, they still consider their local level as the form they wish in terms of their government and they really see that, if that is the community they are in, as the government they look to in terms of exercising their local powers.
I do not see why it cannot be done by co-operation, frankly. I do not know if you have to have it imposed on high by a regional council. It seems to me the area municipality should make that determination. That is really part of a local function. We are talking about local geographic areas and if there is a need to achieve, for example, bus service, then leave it to local municipalities through discussions; perhaps indications by the regional service that a regional service can only be provided if certain criteria are met that make it worth while. That is something the local municipalities would have to take into account in each of those municipalities in determining whether they want to designate that day or not. But if they do not, if that is the will of that particular community, then so be it. Other communities that want a different approach will have to work harder on their colleagues in the other local municipalities to see if some change can be made.
I think it can be done through co-operation, but in the end, while we have this form of local government, we are talking about a local matter. It really is a designation of a local area. That, as I understand it, was the intent of the criteria. If you change the whole approach to criteria there might be a different answer, but I am talking about the way the bill is proposed, the intent of the bill when the bill was presented. It is supposed to be geographic areas within municipalities. They will look to the local level.
Mr Poirier: I do not think you and I would want to sit on a co-ordination committee for regional transportation if you have a checkerboard pattern from municipality to municipality within one region. You and I will abstain from sitting on that committee, right?
Mr Perlin: Okay. I agree.
Mr Carr: Good morning. Thank you for the excellent presentation. One of the questions I have is on the tourism criteria. You may have been here when the Solicitor General was here and said that -- he was very specific -- there are criteria they expect the municipalities to follow. We have also heard municipalities say, as you may have heard me say: "Thank you very much, but we are going to decide. You have given us the power and we are going to interpret the way we want. You have given us carte blanche so keep your nose out of it now." We have heard a lot of them, at least 50%, maybe even more, say, "We are going to use the tourism criteria." You may have heard the chairman in Toronto say, "We will interpret it the way we want and use all the loopholes."
As a lawyer looking at the tourism criteria, how do you see it? Is it too broad; not broad enough; just right? What are your thoughts on that? I know it is difficult as the solicitor, you cannot talk for yourself.
Mr Perlin: Let me start by saying that the city council's position in Toronto is that the tourism criteria should be made more restrictive in terms of the intention of doing it by geographic area. I have given my opinion to the city, and my opinion is that the way the criteria are now I believe that, yes, Metro itself and any of the area municipalities or local municipalities in this province can, by use of the criteria, pass a bylaw that allows for the opening, for example, of stores on holidays throughout the municipalities. It can do it by just designating the municipalities and areas.
If that is not the intention of the government and this committee, then I would urge you to look very carefully at those criteria -- at least the government, I guess, because the government would be the one that would pass the regulation. But right now our opinion is that we could pass a bylaw in the city of Toronto and it designates the entire city.
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Mr Carr: That is the problem we have. You have heard the Solicitor General say very clearly one thing and your opinion the other. The only thing I would point out to the parliamentary assistant is that he should maybe make these inconsistencies known to the minister. I know he is new, but he comes in here and says that he thinks they will not be interpreted and we heard very clearly at every stop that they are going to interpret it that way. I guess the only thing I am concerned about is, let's be honest. If your intent is to close down, then let's make it so that is the case, and if it is not, let's come out and tell people.
Mr Perlin: I just want to add that I say my opinion with great trepidation when I come and the Solicitor General has given his opinion, but if it is of any help to him, this one simple lawyer here -- he might want to look at it.
Mr Carr: He has lots of legal staff who are very competent. Actually, they travelled with us, and he does have excellent legal opinion. I am sure they will be presenting it, but I just thought also the parliamentary assistant could press it to him that in fact that is not what we have been hearing. They have travelled, so they have heard it as well.
That leads me to the second point that the city of Toronto put down, the recommendation it made about having the new tourism criteria and that the committee of stakeholders be set up. I guess that gets back to one of the other problems I have had, that here we have a provincial government that said: "This is a hot issue. We don't want to touch it; give it off to the municipalities." Then municipalities say: "It's a hot issue, so you know what? We don't want to have the final decision, so we'll send it off, and then when we say to somebody, `Sorry, you can or you can't have it,' don't worry, there's still going to be this committee that you can go to." Being a new politician, it just seems that what we have is nothing but a handoff to the next guy and the next guy down the street has to make the decision.
I know it is difficult as a solicitor, because you cannot interpret why the city would pass this, but what is your feeling? Why are we in the situation where the city of Toronto now feels that we have to have another committee that is going to review a decision that the province would not make, which the city may have made, that we want to have checked?
Mr Perlin: I did not interpret the recommendation of the labour council that way. The submission of the labour council, as I am sure you will remember, was that the exemptions were so broad as to effectively restrict no one. To make those criteria more effective, as I understood it before the regulation was passed by the government, they were suggesting that that a group of affected stakeholders, including representatives of retailers' unions and government, come together and make suggestions to the provincial government as to what those criteria would be. I did not see an ongoing committee. I did not hear the actual brief, but when you read their brief, I just saw it as -- and that is not an unusual exercise for governments, having some groups come together and make a submission to the government as to what it might want to do when it is enacting regulations.
Mr Carr: We have heard they have had broad consultation with Tourism Ontario and they have already done the consulting, although that flies in the face of the chamber, which says it was not consulted. That is what this whole process is about, to consult, and I just wondered why the city felt that way.
My feeling is that the big problem is that we sometimes use consultation as an excuse for not making a decision on something. I just wondered what your thoughts were, but I know it is difficult as the solicitor, because of course you cannot interpret it and have to work with these people afterwards. I appreciate your help here this morning; you did an excellent job.
Mr Perlin: Thank you very much. I will just say yes.
Mr Fletcher: Thank you for appearing this morning. As far as this piece of legislation is concerned, it is in draft form; we are listening, we know there are some changes that have to be made. Also, the intent of the legislation is twofold: one, it is to provide a common pause day for working people in the retail sector; two, it is to enhance and try to encourage tourism throughout the province.
When I read the motion that city council endorsed, that government must establish a committee of the affected stakeholders, "a new set of viable tourist criteria" is the part I come up with. Is every piece of the tourism criteria flawed, or is some of it good, some of it bad, some of it needs fine-tuning?
Mr Perlin: From just listening to the debate, of course it is always hard to interpret what people actually mean, but when one listens to what was said at council, again, the majority of council were concerned about the criteria not achieving the objectives that you just enunciated. For example, the majority would not want to see a bylaw passed that designated all of the city of Toronto as a tourism area per se and therefore made the city, to use the colloquial expression, wide open.
However, if that was not the objective, it could be more helpful by making the criteria, or the number of criteria that have to be obtained, more restrictive than they are at present. You only have to achieve so many of those criteria, two or more, and if you look at the criteria in the draft regulation, it is very easy for a municipality to meet two of those criteria.
I think council was trying to say, try and make it more clear as to what certain things might mean. In this way it makes it more difficult if one is trying to pass a bylaw to designate.
Obviously, the more restrictive you make the expression in terms of trying to define -- and I know sometimes it is very hard to define terms -- the more difficult it is for people to simply pass a bylaw in a way that was not the intention, that is, let's say, to provide for a wide-open situation throughout the entire municipality.
Mr Fletcher: The intent of the legislation is not to create a situation where cities can be wide open. In fact, when we were in some cities, they were saying, "No, we don't want Sunday shopping, we're not going to enact Sunday shopping." And again, others were saying, "With these criteria, we can open as much as we want."
As I said, this committee is here to hear some suggestions, and so far the suggestion of a committee to set up the criteria is nice, but does the city have suggestions other than tighten it up? Are there specifics that the city has come up with at all?
Mr Perlin: No. City council has not come forward with any particular criteria.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Perlin, Mr Levine.
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CLUB MONACO
The Chair: We now have a presentation from Club Monaco. Sol Nayman is making that presentation. Mr Nayman, we have approximately half an hour. Please divide that time between your presentation and the time for the committee members to pose questions. As I can see, you are making yourself comfortable, getting a glass of water all ready. Please feel free to start when you want to, sir.
Mr Nayman: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sol Nayman. I am the executive vice-president of Club Monaco, a group of concept retail stores serving primarily young men and women with quality casual apparel. I am one of a small group of enterprising Canadians who helped to establish this business some six years ago. From the first store at 401 Queen Street, between Peter and Spadina, we will have grown to 60 stores in Canada, six in the US and five in Japan as well as one in Hong Kong by the end of this year.
Virtually all of our operations are integrated in-house in our Richmond Street premises in the heart of what was once a thriving and proud fashion district. It no longer is so. We do our own design, our own fabric sourcing, our own quality control, pattern-making and product development, with a large segment of our production being handled in Ontario, particularly in Toronto.
I represent this morning, and I am pleased to do so, about 350 employees from our head office and 28 Ontario stores who sincerely trust that you will listen to them and resolve an issue that is unacceptable to them and, I dare say, to so many of your constituents.
I speak to you from an experience base of 35 years in this business, during which time I have witnessed, participated in and at times influenced many evolutionary issues and changes. When I started in retailing, there was little or no evening shopping. During the summer months, for example, stores would open for half a day on Saturdays. There was no shopping on civic holidays and certainly unheard of on Sundays.
What changed that? Very simply, the dynamics of a free market, consumer-driven economy -- consumer demand, not legislation. What the consumer wants, the consumer must ultimately get.
Throughout my career, I have based my views, actions and decisions on how they would impact three elements: (1) the consumer; (2) the employee; and (3) the business. Needless to say, all my decisions and activities were carried out in the context of good corporate citizenship and the prevailing laws. When I did not agree with the law, I would do my utmost to influence its change, but never its transgression.
My comments will focus on influencing you to change the law that hundreds of our employees, I, and many others consider to be unfair as well as wrong in the context of the three criteria I named. Permit me to expand.
First, the consumer: There can be absolutely no doubt that in the vast majority of Ontario markets, the majority of people want to, have and will shop on Sundays, as they did over a period of 30 weeks or some seven months last year. They continue to in many markets in Canada, the US and globally.
I can tell you that some of the biggest shopping days ever were recorded on Sundays. Our brief experience in Ontario resulted in about 7 1/2% of total volume being generated on Sundays, even though not all stores were open. In the west, for example, where Sunday shopping has prevailed for many years, the ratio is about 10%.
Many have said that Sunday's volume is simply a transfer of sales from Saturday or other days. This simply is not so. There is a real increment, as our experience in other markets supports. Let me record that when you are not open on Sundays, the other days do not make up for the potential. This is clearly evident now, during the past six weeks, when we were open a year ago. Not one week has exceeded previous years' business in our Ontario stores.
The consumers, young and old, single or in a family unit, poor or affluent, male or female, religious or agnostic, want to shop on Sundays. Many consider shopping a family activity. In our stores on Queen Street or in the Beaches when Sundays were open, we saw many situations where families would attend services in the morning, have a brunch at 11 o'clock and shop in the afternoon. That is a very wholesome lifestyle activity. They want to exercise their free enterprise choice to consume the myriad goods and services that retailers are able to provide. These goods and services are over and above those provided on Sundays by restaurants, amusement parks, taverns, ballparks and some retail stores which happen to be located in designated tourist areas.
My main focus, obviously, is on the Ontario resident consumer, but we attract numerous visitors from across Canada, the US and other countries who are familiar with our product and who seek our stores on Sundays, only to find them closed. Just walk along Queen Street at Spadina or in the Beaches and you will see scores of Torontonians as well as tourists who cannot exercise their choice to shop in our stores, yet they can buy apparel in the SkyDome, at the CN Tower, at the waterfront and at the hotels near our stores.
How do we exclude the south of Queen Street from tourist designation while across on the north or just a few metres away on Spadina, stores are permitted to be open? How do we exclude the Eaton Centre, where we operate our biggest store, from tourist designation, a centre which in survey after survey has been identified as one of the top tourist attractions of this province?
You will not find a Club Monaco in Buffalo, but if the current situation is not changed, I can assure you that there are scores of landlords who would welcome us with open arms and open Sundays, as we have experienced in California.
I would like to focus on the second aspect, the employee. We employ about 350 people in Ontario, of whom about 70% are female and of whom about 85% are teens to under-30s. A large number of our staff are desperate for every available dollar of income to supplement their cost of living and schooling in the most expensive areas in Canada. For many it is a first-time employment opportunity. For many it is the first entry into the labour force. We train them; we show them how to develop their skills. Some 24 of our 28 stores are situated in Toronto, Ottawa and London, the biggest and costliest student markets in Ontario.
When we opened on Sundays, we had no difficulty whatsoever in attracting staff and supervisors for the extra work. We employed on average about 100 people, which would equate to about 500 working hours each Sunday on average. Sunday closings have unfairly and in our view arbitrarily cut off this critical income for scores of young Canadians, which cannot be replaced with other work because there are simply not enough jobs.
My views represent the consensus of hundreds of employees who have even signed petitions to the Premier to allow Sunday shopping and to provide them with an extra opportunity for work at fair pay without compelling anyone to do so unless they wish to. No one at Club Monaco has ever had to refer to an Employment Standards Act, which we clearly endorse and support, because we have always done more for our employees than any legislation has ever provided in terms of premium wages, in terms of incentives and in terms of staff discounts among other benefits.
Let me comment on our business. Retailing in Ontario is a disaster. Retailers are not bleeding, they are haemorrhaging. We need a tourniquet, not salt on our open wounds. In our fiercely competitive environment, our business cannot survive without every viable avenue for marketing our goods and services. Some 7% to 10% is the proved volume that is generated on Sundays. It could be more if Sunday convenience becomes a constant alternative to cross-border, mail order, flea markets, street vending and other retail formats which prevail, none of which contribute to your sales tax base, nor are they governed, in many instances, by any acceptable employment standards.
If Sunday shopping restrictions prevail, we are saying no to over 25,000 hours of extra work for young Ontarians and wages and benefits of up to $250,000 annually. Additionally, we are turning away a capital investment potential of up to $1 million annually, with virtually the total component of labour and materials impacting Ontario building trades and services. We want to grow, but we will not in this environment. The law in our view is bad, unfair and discriminatory and goes against every progressive direction of a free enterprise society. Let the consumer decide to shop or not to shop. Last year not every store was open, nor would we open every store this Sunday if the law permitted us to, any more than every store is open in the west. If there is enough traffic and demand, we open; if not, we close. We do not decide, the consumer compels our decision.
Permit me a word about a common pause day. I find it totally inconsistent that the province wishes to impose a common pause day on shoppers and retailers, among others, yet is one of the biggest employers of Sunday workers -- the police, firefighters, TTC and nurses among others. A common pause day simply cannot exist except in a totalitarian or fundamentalist religious environment. Ontario certainly is not that.
This government said it wants to listen. Please do, and act accordingly, for the only road to economic recovery is through the votes of the consumer. In this case, the votes that they cast in the province's retail stores, hopefully every day, including Sunday. Thank you for your attention. I would be pleased to respond to any questions.
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The Chair: We have approximately four minutes per caucus. Mr Daigeler and then Mr Poirier.
Mr Daigeler: Yesterday in Peterborough we heard from the chamber of commerce there that it was opposed to openings on Sunday. I think it accepted the tourism exemptions. We heard the same thing from the chamber in Sudbury. Other chambers, the one in Kingston and in North Bay and in Thunder Bay, were arguing to be open on Sundays. Would you object to that local variation, which could be responded to by what we have now as a law, that is, the municipal option; that if Peterborough wants to stay closed, that is fine, if Kingston wants to be open, that is fine as well? As you can appreciate, at several stops a sort of uniform solution for the province was termed the TBS solution, the Toronto-based solution. I am just wondering how you would react to that and what your view is with regard to the Liberal legislation.
Mr Nayman: My view, Mr Daigeler, is that the market should decide. The market, being the consumer, should decide whether a particular store is open or not. My view is clearly that there should be a level field for all and opportunity to open if business is there. The only entity that can decide that is the consumer. I would have no quarrel with a store in Peterborough being closed if there is insufficient demand for its goods and services, or a store in Sudbury being opened or closed. Again, it is a market-based decision, not one that should be legislated, because I frankly do not see how fair legislation can emanate when there are so many possible variations. Each community can take on its own stripe and do essentially as it pleases, which may or may not work to the benefit of the consumer. So it is again a marketing-based decision, not one that I feel can be fairly legislated.
Mr Poirier: I think it is impossible to do better to describe the economic situation that we are going through right now. We have been torn because there is no grey zone on this particular dossier, nor have I in my seven years seen too many grey zones about bills and what people feel and think across Ontario. You really see that without Sunday openings, where you think you can increase your markets, the Americans will come in and take benefit of the retail situation here?
Mr Nayman: Absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind, and they will take benefit of it physically, as well as through other channels. We do not have a sense as yet of the scope of mail order business such as Land's End or J. Crew or L. L. Bean, the amount of product that is being shipped into Ontario from mail order operators south of the border. My view simply is, if there is an alternative to that, then the need for that diminishes. We know what is happening in Buffalo. As I said, we could open a dozen stores in Buffalo within a month. That would obviously increase our market share globally, but we have to look at our market share in Ontario, and it is just being decimated.
Mr Poirier: And you have always had a long list of students and people willing to work?
Mr Nayman: Absolutely.
Mr Poirier: Any opposition, any reluctance?
Mr Nayman: Where there is reluctance, it is the individual's prerogative and we certainly would not ever compel anyone to work on a Sunday or a religious holiday or whatever. There is enough of a field available.
Mr Poirier: Have you heard from your other friends, competitors in the market, that it has been a problem with Sunday opening, a resistance, employees whose rights have been affected by store owners pushing it upon them? Have you heard about that from your fellow retailers?
Mr Nayman: I would say that I have heard as much as has been said or written and I can very clearly sympathize with any abuses and I would be totally opposed to any abuses of the employee. There are certainly abusive employers. That is not our position. We have grown because we are a very, very good company to work for and we have always overshot the expectations. To us, minimum wage is not an issue because we have always paid a premium wage, plus premium benefits, plus incentives, plus discounts, etc. There would be a lineup a mile long if we put a sign up, "Sunday work available."
Mr Carr: Thank you for your presentation. As I was sitting here reflecting on it, there is good and bad news from your standpoint. The good news is that the decision really will rest with municipalities and you have another shot at being open, depending on where your stores are. The bad news, as I read the statement that the minister made not more than half an hour ago or whatever, he says, "One might attempt to demonstrate with numbers" that spending increases "when shopping opportunities increase." He says numbers say that they do not. Then further on, "However, unrestricted days of operation for retail stores is not a cure-all." So, in other words, what he is saying is, he does not believe your statistics that there is economic benefit.
What do you say to the Solicitor General, who says to you, a man who is running a business operation, that he does not believe there is any economic benefit? What do you say to him?
Mr Nayman: What do I say to the minister? What I say to anyone. Count the number of bankruptcies. Just walk up and down any shopping centre, walk up and down any retail street and count the casualties. They are there for many reasons, I dare say. It is not just Sunday shopping exclusively, but we must provide the marketer, regardless of what one's marketing field is, with the opportunity to market its goods and services based on the demand of the market. If the minister wishes any elaboration on the numbers presented I would be more than delighted to do so, but our numbers speak for themselves and I can assure Mr Carr that the numbers can be verified quite easily.
Mr Carr: I do not know if Gord wants to have them for the Solicitor General or not.
Mr Mills: On a point of order, Mr Chairman: I do not think it is quite fair to say that the minister, who was here, did not believe your figures, when in fact he never had a chance to see the figures.
The Chair: That is not a point of order, Mr Mills.
Mr Daigeler: Nice try. You are doing your job, Gord. That is what you are supposed to do.
Mr Carr: They are outside, if you would like to read it, Gord. That is what he says in the statement and anybody who wants to read it, it is there.
The next question I have is this. The situation is such that the tourist exemptions are going to allow the municipalities to open up, and you may be familiar with that.
Mr Nayman: Yes.
Mr Carr: The fight has really moved from here. The fight has now gone to the local level, for whatever reason. What is your feeling about that? I guess from your standpoint, since you want to be open, at least it gives you another shot, but what is your assessment of what will happen in the province? Do you think you will be able to open in most of the areas where you operate now?
Mr Nayman: In my own judgement, it will not make a significant change. The tourist who comes to Ontario does not come with a map of all the open municipalities or all the open streets or why they are open or why they are closed. The tourist clearly comes with a global perspective of wanting to do what a tourist would want to do. My view very simply is, bring down the barriers and let's make it an open market so that the tourist can decide without having guideposts or signposts to determine which side of the street is tourist and which side is not. There just is not a logical and, in my view, fair base for making those decisions.
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Mr Fletcher: Just reading the brief, you have already lost me, because I am not between the ages of 16 and 35. Up until yesterday --
Mr Nayman: I was lost a long time ago, Mr Fletcher.
Mr Poirier: Below that or above that?
Mr Fletcher: A little below the 16 point. In terms of your investment in Ontario, you opened up three new stores. When did you open those up in 1990, do you remember?
Mr Nayman: Yes, clearly, August and October.
Mr Fletcher: Where?
Mr Nayman: One is in Markville Shopping Centre in Markham, one is in Square One in Mississauga and one is in Place d'Orleans in Ottawa.
Mr Fletcher: As far as the old legislation is concerned, Ottawa does not want Sunday shopping and the old legislation that was in place. They could have said no to the Sunday shopping. Would you have kept your store in Ottawa?
Mr Nayman: We opened our stores in Ottawa before there was any Sunday shopping debate. Would we open stores in the future in certain markets where Sunday shopping will not be available? The answer is clearly, yes, we would not.
Mr Fletcher: Again, you are talking about the American intervention into Canadian retailing, the increased pressure from American-owned companies. Whether a city has or has no Sunday shopping, is the competition not the same? Do we not play under the same rules? The American-based, if they go to Ottawa and Ottawa is closed down for Sunday shopping, have to play under the same rules. So there is a level playing field for both you and the American-based corporations.
Mr Nayman: That is a view of reverse thrust marketing. If one stands still I think one simply withers in this business. We are a very high performer, consequently we need more and more opportunities to expand our high level of performance. If those opportunities are diminished then we might stay on par with the marketplace but that is not really our objective. That is why we put more effort into our design, our quality and our product, so we can grow. We do not want to play on a level field in terms of our own initiatives and our own energy, so I do not see that as being a criterion. Marketing has to find its own level. If Ottawa is restricted then a good marketer will determine whether the next opportunity will be in Ottawa or in market B, C or D, where the opportunities might be different.
Mr Fletcher: I grasp what you are saying in a way. What I am getting at is that if Americans move into our marketplace they have to play under the same rules. I am just trying to see where you get the competitive edge for the American companies that invest here, that come here. If they see a market they are going to move into that market; that is the marketplace and it is dictated by the marketplace. They will have to play by the same rules.
Mr Nayman: Clearly so, but as I say, they will try to find the level where they can use their advantages.
Mr Fletcher: And you would also do the same?
Mr Nayman: Precisely.
Mr Fletcher: Right, so as long as it is a level playing field you have no problem with it.
Mr Nayman: However, I would respectfully say that the level playing field is one which generates diminishing returns over time. Costs escalate; costs of supply, distribution, wages, etc, escalate and the marketing thrust has to enable any business to overcome the cost escalation. You cannot just confine everything to a neat, tidy box and say everything is going to remain static, because it will not. There are just too many external pressures.
KEW BEACH RESIDENTS' ASSOCIATION
The Chair: We now have a presentation from the Kew Beach Residents' Association; Ms Karey Shinn. As you have observed, we have about half an hour, probably divided between your presentation and some opportunity for the committee members to pose questions. Please feel free to start when you are comfortable.
Ms Shinn: Hello. My name is Karey Shinn. I am the president of the Kew Beach Residents' Association. I sit on a number of different public organizations. I am a director for a public committee for the greenway from Newcastle to Burlington, and I worked on several other public groups dealing with local and water-based Lake Ontario issues. Our neighbourhood definitely is influenced by what happens on the waterfront. The Kew Beach Residents' Association represents members living in the area between Lake Ontario and Kingston Road, from Woodbine Avenue to Lee Avenue in Toronto's Beach area. The group was founded in 1985 in response to the negative impact of overcommercialization of Queen Street on the community.
Scanning the list of deputants, it looks as if our association is the only local group representing a neighbourhood impacted by this legislation to appear in front of your committee. We also note that of the 18 retail businesses appearing at the Toronto hearings, 6 have stores in our community -- this is 30% of the total. Of the two Toronto business improvement areas appearing, one is the Beaches. Furthermore, one person appearing seemingly as an individual, John Winter, is the vice-chairman of the Beaches Business Association, the owner of a firm that by his own recognition helps developers. In his line of work, he actually puts together the complement of businesses to compose retail shopping malls and is a leading proponent of securing tourism designation for the Beach area.
As an organization that is waging an ongoing, uphill struggle to protect our community from rampant commercialization/exploitation and thus ensure it remains a viable, caring and involved neighbourhood, we are telling you at the outset that the regulations made under the Retail Business Holidays Act respecting tourism criteria are threatening the viability and quality of life in many urban residential communities. We are also telling you that these regulations are putting park land in jeopardy, particularly in urban areas. It is a mistake to think this legislation will not have impacts on planning and development. When Mr Perlin spoke he also appended that at a local level we have official plans and zoning in this. This is going to change what happens, and I am telling you from our experience this is not going to help people living near these type, of places.
As you are probably aware, the Beach has traditionally attracted many visitors from other parts of Toronto, particularly in warm weather, to enjoy its park land, beaches and other free recreation amenities as well as its small-town character within a large metropolis. By and large the community has coped with the considerable stresses brought by the influx of park visitors, including problems associated with crowding, parking, traffic and noise. Believe me, I could go on. However, commercial interests have been exploiting these features and have attempted to turn the area into a year-round, seven-days-a-week shopping destination, claiming that park users are tourists and that they are there because they want to shop. Well, I am sorry.
For a number of years, many stores have been open on Sundays, some illegally and others legally, under the loopholes and exemptions in the previous legislation. As an example, one business that owns four stores in Toronto has declared itself agnostic, with Monday as its religious closing day. This is fine. He does not work on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, possibly Saturday. Taking Monday off for him is to enjoy our neighbourhood when it is quiet. We think we also have the same ability anybody in the province has to enjoy our own homes and our community with some type of peace if there is going to be a common pause day.
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Businesses cashing in on Sunday has led to a shift in the economics, types and ownership of stores on Queen Street, the local commercial street bisecting the community. Rents have skyrocketed. Locally owned, independent shops selling everyday goods and services to the local community have been displaced by a proliferation of gift, novelty, accessory and casual clothing stores, several under chain or similar operation ownership. People from all over the city and Metropolitan Toronto are now coming to the area for the sole purpose of shopping on Sundays.
I do not believe you need three pairs of earrings and a pair of venetian blinds to jog, hike and swim. So you have a retail business strip developing very much on the model of a mall. I do not know how many handcrafted, Canadian tourist objects you need to go swimming at Summerville pool either, but they do not have any connection with the park. The city parks department does a very good job of providing the rental of sailboards for sailboarding and the things we need for the park.
When commercial interests on Queen Street started lobbying for tourist designations, supporting their demand with the claim that more than 80 shops had gone out of business on Queen Street, the community became quite concerned, as the influx of shoppers on Sundays was putting a serious additional stress on the neighbourhood.
At a public meeting held this spring, which was packed, it was apparent that the vast majority of residents who had no commercial interests on Queen Street were totally opposed to a tourist designation for our area. There was no question about it. It was also pointed out by a member of the audience that whoever had compiled the list of purported 80 bankrupt businesses did not know the neighbourhood. Some of these things were laughable. The butcher -- we would like to see a butcher in our neighbourhood -- could not find someone to cut meat for him. He retired. Some of the other places had no interest in being open on Sunday and many of the businesses were restaurants who could be open on Sunday. Once you have five bazillion restaurants competing with each other, there is going to be a limit to how many can survive. On that list was a rather long section of vacant, for-lease and for-rent on one block. This was a new development that was built empty. I am sorry, but no one was ever there, so we cannot say they have gone out of business. That was actually just a speculative thing, and they took down two large chestnut trees to produce the excess condos in the unit, and then they wondered why they had not sold. The majority of those businesses would be occupied again in a few weeks, and what we saw in the early spring in the papers -- if you had taken photographs a few weeks later you would have realized that a lot of new businesses are now in those empty spaces.
I would also mention, however, that it appeared a large number of the same people opposing tourist designation were strongly in favour of province-wide Sunday shopping. So we definitely have a strong interest in the Beach area in wide-open Sunday shopping, but it is extremely different and separate from a residential neighbourhood becoming a tourist designation. Unlike the CN Tower or some of the other conventional tourist sights, we live there. It is very different when you happen to live between the retail strip and the park.
In view of the community concerns and of the aggressive, misleading and slick representations of commercial interests, our association presented a brief to the Solicitor General of Ontario. This was done prior to the issuance of the legislation under consideration by the committee. Our paper, A Residential Neighbourhood Should Not Be a Tourist Designation, made the following points:
A residential community is also entitled to enjoy the common pause day, which means being free from the stresses brought by commercial activity on that day;
In the case of an area located near or within park land, such as the Beach, Sunday tourist shopping would seriously degrade the park experience, that is, the enjoyment of outdoor activities by the thousands of people from all over the city and Metro who rely on our parks for recreation;
Sunday exemption granted to some specific areas or area within a municipality would be detrimental to other shopping districts within that municipality by shifting a significant proportion of local weekday purchases to the areas open on Sundays.
What I find interesting in this is that in a small town they have a particular tax base and when someone called a tourist comes from another tax base to their tax base, it makes an economic difference. But when we have a large agglomeration of municipalities and Metro is our tax base, it makes no economic difference if there is Sally Blow's shop down in the Beach; she is going to get the business that Joe Doe does not get in another corner of the city. That to me is less fair than having these little target areas. You are giving the business to special people, basically, not creating a level playing field.
The tourist exemption will not protect small, independent businesses in a large urban area. Instead, large concerns would drive them out through a variety of means, such as the ability to finance higher rents with creative accounting.
We also are faced with chain stores which will have an operating outlet in the Beach. Perhaps they even work at a loss, but it gives them advertising. It is store frontage in a place where there are a lot of people going by, to the park usually.
Our recommendations were: that tourist exemptions should not be granted to retail zones in residential neighbourhoods; that the number of people coming to an area should not be a justifying factor for shopping exemptions; that servicing of tourists, if deemed desirable, should be planned so as not to impact on residential neighbourhoods -- we of course have no parking available; the tightening of loopholes regarding size, selling of crafts and religion, so as to prevent abuse.
Something has to be done to tighten up the loopholes if this legislation is going to hold water. We find that the park users who come by bicycle or who stay in the park area do not have the same impact on our residential community. When we had wide-open Sunday shopping, it was mostly used by locals and we did not have the parking problem that we had when people came to our area as one of the few places where many shops opened illegally to encourage people to come on Sundays. So we did notice it made a difference.
It is evident that none of these recommendations was given any consideration in this new legislation.
The regulations regarding tourist areas: These regulations are so vague, so general and so open to interpretation that they will enable practically any city, town, village and hamlet to declare itself a tourist area -- and that was what Mr Perlin was saying -- therefore effectively implementing province-wide open Sunday shopping, notwithstanding part I, subsection 4(2): "The council in passing a bylaw under subsection (1) shall take into account the principle that holidays should be maintained as common pause days."
The fact is, one is hard put to name one agglomeration that would be unable to meet the two criteria required or rapidly create such conditions by organizing a festival, for instance. They continually do this in the Beach and they know that it is going to have some effect on the outcome.
As you know, a few days ago the mayor of Toronto and the Metro chairman raised that very possibility -- they were going to put it on the ballot -- and at least to our understanding this would be entirely possible since Toronto as a whole can be considered a geographic area and would easily meet five of the criteria, maybe even all six.
However, considering individual Toronto neighbourhoods or places as geographic areas, also a possibility due to the absence of definition, would generate some interesting issues. For instance, Queen's Park can be a tourist area. I am sure you would love commercialization here. It meets four criteria: It is historical; it has cultural attractions, of course; if you consider the debate, it certainly provides access to outdoor recreational pursuits and I frequently see the joggers here; and it is certainly the site of numerous special events.
You know, it is very interesting, but under the regulations SkyDome would have a hard time getting an exemption. It is not historical, not natural, not cultural or ethnic, unless American ball players count as ethnic, nor does it provide access to outdoor recreation. Likewise, the CN Tower and even Pearson International Airport may not qualify.
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Just to point out how this actually influences things that are happening, I got a letter in the mail the other day from city services, and the CN Tower is on the list for heritage protection. These are criteria. People are going to take them seriously. It was completed in 1974, I believe, when they helicoptered in the top for that thing. It is going to distort a lot of perceptions people have. I find it really quite amazing.
What is very disturbing is that every park in Metropolitan Toronto, from the car-free Leslie Street Spit to High Park to the Rouge Valley to the waterfront greenway that citizens are establishing from Burlington to Newcastle, is endangered by the regulations. I must point out, as one of the directors of this public group we formed, a lot of the greenway area across Metropolitan Toronto, especially the city of Toronto, is a blank, open book right now, and the very last intent of that greenway, from my understanding from the Minister of the Environment, is to put in a strip mall. This is something we have to look at in terms of the use of green space in large urban centres.
All these areas of green space meet the natural attraction and access to outdoor recreation criteria -- hiking, biking, all those ones -- and it does not take a genius to figure out that commerce will find ways to exploit them. For instance, municipal zoning permitting retail stores is already in place on Leslie Street within a stone's throw of the spit. Park land is already facing enough challenges as it is; adding even the possibility of further exploitation is very irresponsible.
The whole approach of these regulations is flawed. In their intent to recognize that tourist dollars are a very significant contribution to provincial revenues, and in many instances the major or even only source of revenues for some communities, they have overlooked the fact that there is not one but several Ontarios, each with its own circumstances, economics and needs. I would certainly think that Metro is not the same as some small towns.
For instance, it is unlikely that a tourist area in a village in Haliburton will bring significant negative socioeconomic changes, particularly since it is probable that every other village in the area, and in the province, would also pass an exempting bylaw. It is also very unlikely that the outfitter store in Algonquin Park would ever attract enough trade to warrant its transformation into a mall competing with Huntsville Shopping Centre.
I find it interesting too because in the small towns it is the city centre that would become the main tourism area, whereas with the Beach area, this is a small community and it has been a smaller business strip that ran through the centre servicing local interests. It was never designed as a tourist centre for Metropolitan Toronto or the city of Toronto. We cannot handle it.
On the other hand, in large urban municipalities an exempting bylaw applied to only some retail areas would severely distort economic patterns, with detrimental effects on the remaining commercial districts. Mr Christie, our local Metro councillor, has pointed out that if you tourist-designate Queen Street, the people on Kingston Road are going to be furious. They deal with exactly the same people. Furthermore, due to the large number of Sunday shoppers -- meaning big dollars year-round -- it is very likely that large concerns would rapidly take over, openly or by other means such as spinoff subsidiaries.
Of course, Bill 115 and the regulations put the ball in the court of municipalities. Having dealt extensively with our municipal government and with judicial bodies, the requirement under part I, subsection 4(6) of the act, "The council shall hold a public hearing before passing the bylaw," does little to make us feel hopeful. The wording is so vague as to be meaningless, and we have experienced several times in the past that any process can be, and often is, subverted.
What happens too many times is that we go out to these meetings, we have done our research, we have done everything and it turns out to be an open house -- it is built already. We can go and look at the rooms, maybe we can choose the colour of the wall, but that is it. It does not work. I think it is significant that we are the only resident group that is here, because this will impact on our planning and development. We are the people who live with that planning and development, and this is not a venue that the public has been able to respond to on a purely non-commercial, residential level. I am not part of any religious group or anything like that. This is just the average person going about her average day of life who would like to see her children playing on the front lawn too. This is not that type of thing.
We hope that sharing with you our experience as members of an involved, caring community and as people who take stewardship of park land very seriously has provided you with different valuable insights into the problems Bill 115 and its regulations respecting tourist criteria are likely to create for residents of large urban centres.
We also hope that you will afford serious consideration to our brief and to the following recommendations pertaining to the regulations:
1. That no exemption be granted to business establishments located within one kilometre of park land -- defined as any area designated by any government primarily for outdoor leisure and recreation. That would be nearest point to nearest point.
2. Businesses applying for tourist exemptions should have to prove that they indeed service tourists, and "tourist" should be defined. To be eligible for exemptions, business establishments should provide audited evidence that they derive no less than 50% of their total gross incomes from sales to tourists as defined below. This is one of the definitions: The Ministry of Tourism and Recreation definition of "tourist" as a visitor from out of the province or out of the country, or a person who travels 40 kilometres or more, one way from permanent residence, for any period of time -- excluding commuting to work, school, moving to new residence, making sales calls or deliveries, belonging to a work crew and travelling within Metro Toronto -- should be used as criteria for all business establishments.
I thank you for listening to our deputation. If you have any questions or if you have any interest in speaking to our group -- and there are several of us who have been working on this and our brief, which was quite lengthy, which we documented and sent to Mike Farnan concerning our interests in this from the residents' view and the implications in large urban centres -- we would be very interested to speak to people about that. Thank you very much for hearing us.
The Chair: We do not have much time for questions. However, the next group has yet to appear. Given that, perhaps we could have three minutes per caucus. Mr Daigeler and Mr Poirier.
Mr Daigeler: Thank you for appearing before us and for your efforts at the local level to protect what you consider an important quality-of-life issue.
You stated in your brief, and there I certainly agree with you -- in fact, I repeated that several times during the hearings -- these tourism "regulations are so vague, so general and so open to interpretation that they will enable practically any city, town, village and hamlet to declare itself a tourist area." I quite agree with you there. The only remark I have there is, it would be perhaps more honest on the part of the government just to leave the legislation alone the way it is now, because it will come to the same effect that each municipality or region can decide whether it wants to stay open. I was not sure whether you read that into the record.
In your brief on page 3, however, you point to the ambiguity of this problem and to the difficulty that we are experiencing as legislators. On the top of page 3 you say, "I should mention, however, that it appeared that a large number of the same people opposing tourist designation" -- when your group made representation to the city -- also "were strongly in favour of `province-wide Sunday shopping.'"
I think this is the dilemma that we are facing. On the one hand we seem to have the desire of people to live and be in peace and quiet, and at the same time the same people want the privilege to be able to shop on Sunday. How do you explain this and what is your reaction to that decision to which reference was made by the earlier presenter? He said, "Well, let the consumer decide."
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Ms Shinn: I disagree with the man before me; I forget his name at the moment. I think Canada has a mixed economy, not a market-driven economy. I think in a way we are different from the States in that, and the protection that we might offer businesses may be slightly different. But I do not see there being a difference there. People who want to shop on Sunday are people like everybody who is working flat out, and they maybe have some time on Sunday to shop. However, a residential community is not the place to put your Sunday shopping venues. If you have everything open on Sunday, then you have this dispersion of the impact of Sunday shopping, and it invites people to be able to walk to local stores.
Mr Daigeler: So you would be in favour of what?
Ms Shinn: Wide-open Sunday shopping. Personally, and I have discussed this too, if the city of Toronto were to designate itself a tourist area, it would also benefit the way -- the regulations do not work in terms of park land. The city designs park land to work as a system, and the more we crowd people into high-rise buildings, the more we depend on our urban park land to service urban users. So to say that our best-used local parks are going to be targetted for tourist areas for people who are so far away that they are tourists is, I think, wrong.
Mr Daigeler: I do want to put this on the record again, because I think this is very important, what your position is on the overall purpose of this legislation. You would argue for a general permission to stay open for any storekeeper if he or she wants to?
Mr Fletcher: No matter where; wide-open Sunday shopping.
Ms Shinn: Province-wide, wide-open Sunday shopping. Or, if it came down to it, the city of Toronto at any rate.
Mr Daigeler: You would also support the municipal option, that if a certain city wants to stay closed, they should have that right?
Ms Shinn: Yes. I think it may be a mistake for Metro to designate itself a tourist area in that the kinds of people who live in the city of Toronto may turn out to be very different from the kinds of people who have chosen to live out in the suburbs. We tend to live and work close together and we often tend to work at home, so we are perhaps in a position where we are integrating our lives and our work to a greater extent than the people who have chosen to move out to the suburbs. So there may be a different type of demographic.
Perhaps designating Metro is a different issue than designating the city of Toronto, which is a natural centre. The city of Toronto is the capital of the province. It is the home of our Parliament buildings, our city hall, our main universities. It is a natural centre, and the people who live in that natural centre are doing it for a reason. I do not think the little communities that make that city work are the ones to be hit by being localized and exploited as tourist areas, but that the centre should be kept as the centre. The community should be respected as being part of the city, to stay safe and community-minded.
The Chair: Thank you. I think we will want to give the Conservatives a chance.
Ms Shinn: I am sorry. I tend to go on.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much. You did a good job.
Mr Daigeler: You see, the way the system works, each caucus gets a chance: the Liberals, the Conservatives and the NDP.
Mr Carr: You are going to get a chance to do it again. You have done a good job, and I guess when it comes up before council municipally, you will get a chance. But you certainly did a very good job.
I had one question, though, relating to page 7. You talked about how "businesses applying for tourist exemptions should have to prove that they indeed service `tourists,'" and that to be eligible for exemptions, businesses should provide audited evidence. I do not know if you are familiar -- the number one problem that business sees is of course taxes, whether they be federal, provincial or municipal, but the second biggest problem that they see is government regulation. I am just wondering how you would answer somebody who is saying, here we are making another regulation in an already overregulated province. Did you have any comments on that?
Ms Shinn: I do not see that as a regulation. I see that if they are really going to claim to be a tourist area, servicing tourists' needs, they have to prove that they are. In our area, they have a captive audience with their stores, and they get people to come in and sign petitions. Well, we do not have the ability to sit in a piece of commercial space that is well patronized by the locals and collect petitions. Unless you can find a third-party way of actually finding out if they are servicing the interests of tourists, they should not be able to claim, on their own behalf, that they are servicing the interests of tourists. This is the problem.
The people who come to the Beach area come every weekend. In many cases they come every day of the week. They live in the city. If they say, "Well, who are all these people? These are tourists," they are wrong. They are not tourists. They are people who live in the same tax base, and they are coming down to their local park. I object to these people being called tourists, and that they then use that term to look for tourist designation.
They have to prove they are servicing the interests of tourists. That is not a regulation; that is something that says, how can you tell me that you are servicing the interests of tourists? If they cannot prove that, they do not have a leg to stand on. That is one of the fundamental things they would have to prove. If it is no "economic tourist" difference to them -- I am sorry, but if I am on holiday and I cannot afford to leave the city of Toronto, I can choose to go to the beach on every day of the week but Sunday, unless I wanted to see the crowds. I can choose what day I go. On Sundays, it is packed. So you have a choice when you are on holiday. I do not agree with the argument the BIA proposed that, "Oh, they cannot afford to go on holidays far away." Well, that is perfect; they can come six days a week when it is not crowded.
Mr Carr: Thank you. Good luck.
Mr Fletcher: Good presentation. I agree with a lot of what you have said and your recommendations.
Let me just ask you if you agree with the previous legislation, the Liberal legislation. Do you like that legislation and municipal option? I know in your brief you said that for a number of years many stores have been open on Sunday, some illegally and others legally under the loopholes and exemptions in the previous legislation.
Ms Shinn: It has the same failures that this one does. It has left it up to the municipalities, the guidelines are vague and the criteria have huge loopholes.
Mr Fletcher: I just wanted to clear that up. When Mr Daigeler asked you, you said that you agreed with that legislation.
Ms Shinn: Do you see what is happening with this legislation? You have put a square footage on the size of the store that is allowed to be open. Now the developers in the Beach are going to build empty retail space that is that size. It is ridiculous. They target areas, and that is the size that commercial buildings become. So you have to seriously consider exactly what your loopholes are.
To my way of thinking, the mistake is that venetian blinds and business suits are not applicable to people who are coming to a park to jog. If they do not have some -- and I would not even say "something"; they all carry earrings and bangles and stuff and body lotions, it seems -- it has to be not just something they can stick in their store to make them look like they are a tourist interest, but what their store sells as the majority of its income. They have to prove they are servicing the interests of tourists.
Mr Fletcher: Do you know that under this proposed amendment, the municipality is not required to pass a bylaw, even if the criteria are met?
Ms Shinn: That is all very nice, but the BIA has recommended that they use section 217 of the Municipal Act to allow them to request tourist designation.
Mr Fletcher: But the municipal government is not there just for business interests. It is there for the people who live there also.
Ms Shinn: That is a mistake, because the BIA is only composed of people who pay retail taxes in a commercial area. I am not allowed to vote, and I certainly do not remember electing any BIA executive to plan the future of my community. I object to them being able to conduct some survey by their own vice-president, saying that these are tourists. I would say that I could have my own consultant do a survey that proved completely the opposite.
Mr Fletcher: But as far as the municipal government is concerned, they are not there -- and this is what Mr Tonks had to say, that we are going to go through every loophole and everything else to open wide open. Why would someone say something like that, a politician who is there to represent the people, not just the business interests? That is what I have a problem with.
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Ms Shinn: My problem that I have experienced is this: You get a squeaky door, and I have noticed in these hearings you have got a lot of proportion of squeaky doors from the Beach, but that is not the most useful door to put in your building. You have to have something that is a rational, intelligent decision. What they are making as a judgement on the Metro level, I do not know that Mr Tonks would have the support of Metro like Mr Eggleton would have for the city of Toronto. If it had to go to a plebiscite to establish whether Metro wanted to be wide open, maybe it should do that. I have some problems with plebiscites --
Mr Fletcher: Me too.
Ms Shinn: -- the way those are done as well, but I do not know what other way you can do it. I hesitate to allow BIAs to use that piece of municipal legislation. I have problems with the Municipal Act allowing BIAs to simply establish themselves and conquer. I would seriously change that if they are proposing using that to put tourist designations in effect.
Mr Fletcher: Right. Thank you very much.
Ms Shinn: Sorry.
Mr Fletcher: That is okay.
Mr Klopp: It was brought up that a lot of your group were thinking, "Open up province-wide Sunday shopping, at least in Toronto." My interpretation of that frustration, which I think I was getting from your program -- you can say yes or no if I am wrong -- I felt that you probably thought that if all of Toronto was designated open Sunday shopping, then the other stores would open and those people who wanted to shop on Sunday would not come down to your area but would actually stay in their area and shop.
But it was pointed out by the people who really want wide-open Sunday shopping that if their store is not busy, they will shut that store down. So unfortunately, in your area, and there are always cracks in these things, you could have wide-open Sunday shopping in the city, but a store on Spadina and whatever little corner is not going to open because everybody is down at the beach or at the park and it is those stores that will stay open, or as you pointed out, the big companies just come in and move in and destroy your stores anyway. So I think when Mr Daigeler was trying to get you to say you support province-wide Sunday shopping, I assume you would hope it would spread the whole thing out and take the pressure off, and I am saying to you that it will not, unfortunately.
Ms Shinn: I disagree with you, and I think the reason is that if people are coming to the park, if that is really what our neighbourhood can possibly service, and we have limited resources for parking cars, and park users do not use cars like shoppers do, the Cotton Ginny and all the serial stores we have in our neighbourhood are the same as every other mall. If somebody wants to go to a Cotton Ginny store or whatever to buy a shirt, they have now got the possibility of walking to their local store or they have a possibility of driving their car to a mall that has parking. I think that is the aspect of it that we would like to see.
You have to remember the Beach is a mall. It has the same complement of shops as the Eaton Centre, and if the Eaton Centre was a designated tourist area, it would take the burden off our neighbourhood to accommodate people who have come solely for the purpose of shopping. It is not the little stores and the one-store shop owners, who seriously need the help, who benefit from that in a big way. When we had wide-open Sunday shopping, there were more local people shopping, and like the man said, they went to church and then they shopped. So I think you have more local shoppers in local areas putting money in local people's pockets when you have something in a large urban centre open on a larger scale.
I would say yes, for the city of Toronto it would certainly, to my way of thinking about the city of Toronto, be the sensible, logical, intelligent way to look at the way the system in Toronto works, the park system and the way the retail system has set up with all this franchising. To argue that there are not enough people in some places does not say that once they are open on Sunday on a regular basis they would not have people realizing, "Oh, I don't have to go to the Beach to shop at" -- whatever that chain store is -- "I can now go just down here," and their local merchants are going to benefit.
Mr Klopp: It is an interesting point. I think one of the things that helped with the tourism exemption is your idea, you know, force them to be honest if you are going to have tourist exemptions, which I think is one of the problems you have had with the last legislation. They designated your area tourist and you have had these problems --
Ms Shinn: But they did not designate us tourist. They just opened illegally and said they were. We are not a designated tourist area. That is the misconception that they are telling us, and they are not tourists. They come from the city of Toronto and, by definition, they are not tourists. They are people who come to lie on the beach, 20,000 or 30,000 of them.
Mr Klopp: But they must be following the last Liberal legislation, are they not?
Ms Shinn: They are not tourists, even by the Metro definition. They do not come from 40 kilometres away.
Mr Klopp: So if we have a tourist exemption here but we tighten up these rules, then that would effectively help you out, right?
Ms Shinn: It would effectively leave the park for park users or people who live in cities who need recreational opportunities for their families on Sunday.
Mr Klopp: That is what I meant. I support that.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Shinn; a very interesting presentation. As you noted, it certainly differs and varies from the many business and other presentations we have had. Thank you.
Ms Shinn: If you do want to discuss this any more, there are other associations in the Beach and there are other associations across the waterfront which have views on this but are meetinged-out at this point in time, I assure you.
The Chair: I can understand it. Thank you very much. We are adjourned until 1:30, as our 11:30 presenter did not show.
The committee recessed at 1146.
AFTERNOON SITTING
The committee resumed at 1337.
The Chair: I would like to call this afternoon's sitting of the standing committee on administration of justice to order. There is a bit of a change in our scheduling. Mr Fred Koobs was to have been presenting. He does not appear to be here. Mr Dan Taylor, at 1:45, has cancelled.
CARMINE FIORE
The Chair: Mr Carmine Fiore will present if he is ready to do so. We have about a quarter of an hour. Please divide that between your presentation, and if you can, allow some time for the committee members to pose questions to you. Please proceed when you are comfortable.
Mr Fiore: Please excuse me. I am a bit nervous, so bear with me if I make some kind of mistake. My name is Carmine Fiore. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to appear before the standing committee on administration of justice. I am here today to present my views on Sunday shopping. I prefer calling it Sunday working. I have worked in the retail industry for over 20 years, both on a part-time and a full-time basis.
First of all, I would like to commend the government on its efforts to establish a common pause day in Ontario. Bill 115 has a direct impact on myself, my family and my life. In addressing this issue, I am sure I speak for thousands of fellow workers in the retail industry. Let me briefly describe to you a bit about myself. I am married with two children. My wife and I work and both my children attend school and day care. I own a house and of course a mortgage attached to it.
The nature of my employment requires me to work almost every Saturday, with a day off during the week. My wife works Monday to Friday. My children are at school Monday to Friday. Also most of my friends and relatives. Presently I am enjoying my common pause day, a day on which I may have breakfast with my family and plan activities with my family and where the whole family is able to visit friends and relatives.
In today's society with its fast-moving pace, social problems, work-related stress, high crime rate and economic pressures, we cannot let the family as we know it today deteriorate. We must not be led to believe that Sunday working is voluntary, because you and I both know the pressures which await us from all levels of management. Management, with its ways, powers and means, can coerce its employees to work on Sunday.
Recently there was talk about a public referendum on Sunday shopping in the November 12 municipal election. I would like to see that referendum changed from, "Who would like to shop on Sundays?" to, "Who would like to work on Sundays?"
I also wonder who will pay for the extra public services that are going to be needed: full TTC service, full police service, increased traffic and maintenance, and the list goes on and on. Where does the extra income come from? From a possible new tax to be introduced, ie, SST, a Sunday shopping tax, along with the existing taxes, the goods and services tax and the provincial sales tax?
To summarize, the objective here is to avoid Sunday working and retain our common pause day. We, the working people in the retail industry, stand to lose the most. Therefore we must continue to practise what we believe and not what we are led to believe.
Again, I would like to thank the government for all its efforts in introducing Bill 115 and the importance of the common pause day. If the proposed bill is passed, large corporations have lobbied and threatened the government with legal action. We should not lose sight of thousands and thousands of individual retail workers who are going to be directly affected if the common pause day is not retained.
I am here to appeal to you to support the retail people. We need a common pause day. We need to maintain a family-style society. I would like to thank the ladies and gentlemen of the committee.
Mr Poirier: Thank you for the presentation. We often hear people who are in your position say: "Why should I come forward and make a presentation? Because it's probably been said before, they won't listen." I think we get the message of what you are saying. It makes a lot of sense and we respect that position. We hear both sides. There is no grey zone. People are very much for it or very much against it. We will see what we can do with that. Obviously you really fear you are going to be pressured to work whether you want to or not. Even if you say no, you are afraid of pressure from management if widespread Sunday shopping comes along, right?
Mr Fiore: Yes. Within the past nine months that we were open on Sundays, there was all kinds of pressure being put on the worker, and I know of instances where there is pressure being put on.
Mr Poirier: Did you personally suffer through that pressure?
Mr Fiore: No, because I refused to work from day one. I belong to a union. Within our agreement we have that right. I am also a produce manager. Yes, there is pressure and I can give you all the instances you want.
Mr Poirier: Have you have seen that personally?
Mr Fiore: Yes.
Mr Poirier: Have you known about it in other stores also? Have you heard of it elsewhere?
Mr Fiore: Yes, I have.
Mr Poirier: So you believe that even though a worker has the right to refuse, that is a nice theory, but in practice something else happens.
Mr Fiore: I can see avoiding it in all instances with unionized labour. I do not see it at any other level where they do not enjoy that protection and a working agreement.
Mr Poirier: Are you are afraid management would take advantage of that?
Mr Fiore: I have seen it done, yes.
Mr Poirier: I thank you for bringing those concerns forward.
Mr Daigeler: I would like to pursue that line of questioning. Could you be more specific? What were those pressures? How did they happen? Also, by the way, that protection is there not just for union workers but for any workers, both under the current legislation and under the projected legislation.
Mr Fiore: I realize that. Let me give you an instance, if I may, about a meat manager. On Sunday morning the person is supposed to be working and does not show up. Whom do you phone to go in and work? The manager. The supervision phones any level of management and says: "We have nobody in your department. We have a business to run." What do you do? That is pressure.
Mr Daigeler: Have you had fellow employees who complain to you about these pressures?
Mr Fiore: Yes, I have. I am also a union steward, and I have a little more support. It is pretty difficult saying no to your boss. You can do it once or twice but guilt and everything else is going to settle in sooner or later.
Mr Daigeler: Do you object to what is in place presently, that regions or municipalities that want to stay open have the right to do that and areas that want to stay closed also have the right to do that? When we went to Collingwood, they very strongly argued that because of tourism and everything else, they should stay open. In Kenora it was the same thing; they argued for that and other places were strongly arguing for that. Kingston was arguing for that. Should they have that right, or do you feel that is not the way to go?
Mr Fiore: If properly controlled as a tourist industry with proper enforcement, yes, we should definitely have some of that. In the industry for family entertainment I would say yes, but wide open, no.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your fine presentation. I noticed on page 2 you said you were married with two children. I certainly see what that is like. I appreciate you want to spend some time with your children. Those three young darlings back there are my children; three tiny toys sitting in the back. Mr Kormos will be over lobbying them later. You have to start young.
I want to get specific about this legislation. I was wondering whether you had a chance to read through it and whether you think that as a result of this legislation there will be protection for yourself, or whether you would like to see certain areas strengthened.
Mr Fiore: I would like to see perhaps a little more restriction, as I said earlier, on giving them a wide-open Sunday. Obviously we cannot say it to a police officer or necessary services.
Mr Carr: That is without the tourist exemption. You would not like to have some areas tourist, or are there some cases where you think it should be open for a tourist area, in selective cases?
Mr Fiore: In selective cases that are determined to be a tourist area, yes. However, we must put in place controls over it. We cannot leave this to a municipality, as I read earlier in the Toronto Star, to Mr Eggleton saying, "We'll put it on the referendum and we'll declare Toronto as an all-tourist area." That is wrong.
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Mr Fletcher: Thank you for your presentation. As far as you have heard, in different jurisdictions, in Kingston, people are coming -- when I say the people are coming I am not saying the retailers and the downtown business people are coming -- and saying: "We have to be open. My workers want to work. We have no problem. They keep saying, `I want to work for you,' as if it's a flock of people going in and saying, `Come on, open up so I can work.'" Yet I am hearing from you that perhaps this is not the case. As far as your experience and everything you have been doing are concerned, is it the case that people are flocking to work?
Mr Fiore: Not in my experience, no. Perhaps we could put out the word, instead of calling it "Sunday shopping," let's call it "Sunday working." Not many people are willing to do that. I am sure you are going to get people saying "Sure, I'll go shopping Sunday," but is that a fair statement? Would you like to go to work Sunday?
Mr Fletcher: No.
Mr Fiore: As I said in my opening statement, call it "Sunday working."
Mr Fletcher: I think you are right on.
Mr Kormos: I want to say hello to the Carr kids who are visiting here. You guys do not know this, but when your dad is finished here today, he is taking you all to the Eaton Centre. You can buy anything you want.
Interjection: And supper is on Gary, on your dad.
Mr Kormos: Eat anything you want for supper and then maybe the Ex till as late as you want. It is really nice to see you here and your dad is a good MPP from Oakville. You know that, right?
Mr Lessard: He is kind of old though.
Mr Kormos: He is older than he was a couple of days ago. Sorry, Mr Fiore, but it is kind of nice to have some people here who really have no axe to grind except to see their dad work a little.
In any event, boy, as you can well imaging, we have had developers and retailers and chambers of commerce and BIAs. We have had big charts and pictures and people talking about employment and jobs, and people talking about the recession and how this economy needs Sunday shopping.
But nobody, other than workers like you, and family people and mothers and fathers and the clergy, has been talking about people and quality of life. Just as it is nice for a family with three kids, to have those kids able to come and see their dad work, it is also nice for a family -- parents and children, or grandchildren and grandparents, or neighbours -- to spend some time just enjoying each others' company without the pressures of work. So nobody has to sit and wait until somebody is finished his workday. The day is free. It belongs to you, rather than to your boss. It belongs to you, rather than to profits. I have a feeling that is what you are saying here.
Mr Fiore: That is exactly what I am saying here.
Mr Kormos: If we really care about the kind of society we live in, if we really care about our children and the kind of cities we want them to grow up in and live in and raise their children in, then we are going to do what we have to do to make sure people have a common pause day. Sunday, as we all know, is the traditional one. It is the Christian one. Granted, there are a lot more people who live in this society now who are not Christians than ever before, but the fact remains that it is the most convenient way possible to make sure people spend more time simply caring about each other. Is that a fair way to put it?
Mr Fiore: Definitely. If I can reiterate what you just said, I do not think we were concerned here with any religion or creed or anything like that. What we are saying is that we have to have a day when the whole family is there. The reason I enjoy getting up Sunday mornings -- they happen to be Sunday mornings -- is that I have a two-year-old girl and a four-year-old son. I love getting up on Sunday morning and having breakfast with them. On Saturday I am working. I get up at 7 o'clock to go to work.
Mr Kormos: Gotcha. Thanks for being here today.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Fiore. Certainly, as Mr Kormos suggests, it is very valuable to have someone who is actually involved take that time out of his busy day. As you were saying, you have not a lot of experience in doing this kind of thing, but we really very much appreciate it.
FAIRWEATHER
The Chair: We now have a presentation from Mr Phillip Stark, representing Fairweather stores. Mr Stark, we have approximately half an hour. Please leave some time for the committee members who, I am sure, will have a lot of questions for you.
Mr Stark: I am Phillip Stark, market manager of Fairweather at the Eaton Centre. As a representative of Dylex Ltd, I am appearing today to communicate what we consider the serious impact of Bill 115 from my own and my employees' perspective.
Fairweather is a ladies' clothing chain operating 64 locations in Ontario. Sales revenues in Ontario for 1990 were $98 million. We employ 1,300 Ontarians, with store personnel at an average age of 24 years. Ninety per cent of our employees are women.
Our customer is the adult baby boomer, now between the ages of 25 to 45. She is most often married with young children. Both she and her husband are mostly employed, and thus time-starved. Their total family income tends to be better or the same than the average for the community.
Like all Canadian retailers, we are faced with many changes going into the 1990s, and we are also searching for answers. The proposed Bill 115 prohibits Ontarians from choosing their own shopping hours and shopping days and discourages new employment. Because my job in Dylex is at store level and front-line, so to speak, I was responsible for co-ordinating Sunday shopping of stores in my market last year. I personally communicated with all my store managers and employees in ascertaining how we would deal with the logistics of Sunday openings.
First, management considered Sunday shopping an opportunity to increase their own location sales and build the customer base further. They also saw this as a chance to be more successful in their own jobs. Employees' reactions to Sunday shopping were extremely favourable, particularly in the case of part-time students. Previously these students had the option of working some nights during the week and Saturdays. However, the demands on a student working during the week are and were extremely high. Pressure to reach work on time for their shift after school hours and completing their shift late at night proved to be extremely stressful and tiring for them. Attending school the next morning and dealing with the disruption of their studies at night and weekdays was frustrating to these employees and counterproductive to us, the employer. However, with the advent of Sunday shopping, many of these students gave up their weekday hours and worked Saturdays and Sundays. This allowed them to concentrate effectively on studies Monday to Friday.
Some of Fairweather's full-time employees also opted to work some occasional Sundays. This gave them the flexibility where they may have needed an extra full day off during the week to catch up on personal tasks and chores.
All Fairweather's employees who worked on Sundays were totally voluntary. In retrospect, we experience more and more employees coming forward and requesting extra hours since this was an opportunity of earning extra dollars in an already expensive economy, which was not offering the choice of too many jobs. We even received applications for Sunday work only from outside people who had other full-time jobs with other companies, but needed supplementary income due to spouse's loss of job or not being able to meet payment of personal bills. We hired these people wherever we had openings, and in doing so did our part in creating new jobs and serving our community.
Our employees who worked on Sundays were extremely satisfied with the scheduled hours, ie, noon to 5, as they were not occupied working the entire day. In discussion with my peers, it was evident that our management and employees favoured Sunday openings across the board. We also agreed that Sunday shopping in Ontario could help to offset some of the exodus on Sundays across the border.
Fairweather's estimated lost revenue, by the way, due to lack of Sunday shopping, is $3.9 million, and $25 million due to cross-border shopping.
Fairweather's western Canadian region, where stores have been able to open on Sundays since approximately six years ago, has experienced significant better overall sales growth since this was introduced. With this still ongoing, it is noteworthy that this was Fairweather's better-performing region country-wide for the last 12 months.
In speaking to my peers in western Canada, it is also evident that Sunday shopping is now an accepted way of life and has in no way changed family unity but rather has helped the economy.
From our customers' perspective, career people who are pushed for time during the week were able to shop at leisure on Sundays. Saturdays had become for some a day to unwind and catch up on home issues rather than frequent the malls.
Having worked in the malls on Sundays myself, it was very evident that the majority of the shoppers came as a family unit. These families were able to shop at their leisure, breaking for lunch at mall restaurants and food courts and enjoyed their visit to the mall as a day of relaxation. Families that did not participate in winter sports or recreation also used Sunday openings as an alternative to get together with family and friends in the malls.
Personally I am extremely concerned, as the leader of our flagship store at the Eaton Centre downtown, that I am unable to open this location on Sundays. This is a lost opportunity for my store to capture tourist business and an earning loss for my employees. With American competitors such as Victoria's Secret, the Limited, the Gap and others entering our market, Canadian retailers have to remain competitive and capture the sale first.
Sunday shopping could play a small part in stimulating the retail industry in Ontario again, and it is what Ontarians want. We have to face the demands of our consumer and our employees and meet their needs on all fronts, from service and value for the customer to our employees' right to work whenever and how often they wish.
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Mr Poirier: Interesting presentation, Mr Stark. What I want to know is, you have had no problems finding people to work. You have had to do no intimidation, and correct me if I am wrong, about forcing them to work on Sunday?
Mr Stark: Absolutely not.
Mr Poirier: Have you heard about other problems like that elsewhere in other of your competitors or friends or neighbours or whatever?
Mr Stark: Personally not at all. For example, in one other company where I have a friend working, that company basically took the same stance as us. It was totally voluntary. We did not break out Sunday shopping to our employees as, "This is something you have to do." It was totally a discussion. We dealt with it with a lot of empathy. We dealt very carefully with it, and we made it very clear up front that if anybody did not want to work, he was under absolutely no pressure to work whatsoever.
Mr Poirier: Did you pay a premium to work on Sunday, or was it just regular time?
Mr Stark: At that time, because it was regular hours and they were working a regular work week, we paid regular pay.
Mr Poirier: Do your employees have a choice to take pay for working on Sunday or change it for another day of the week?
Mr Stark: Yes, absolutely.
Mr Poirier: So they have a choice.
Mr Stark: They have a choice, yes.
Mr Poirier: Were you forced to cut back the number of hours during the week when you opened on a Sunday? Did your regular staff end up having fewer hours?
Mr Stark: Absolutely not. Legally we are not allowed to cut back on full-time hours anyway. We did not cut back. In fact, we increased hours. It was at an increased cost to us, but the increased business offset it.
Mr Poirier: From what I can gather in your presentation, opening on Sunday is not shifting what you made before in six days. Sunday is an added sum of money that would not be there over the six days if you were closed on Sunday.
Mr Stark: Absolutely. We were very careful in establishing right up front how Saturdays would be affected, and Mondays in fact. Those were some of our concerns, but we did not see any dropoff on Saturdays. We saw an increase on Sundays. We saw customers we had never seen before. Mondays absolutely continued as normal.
Mr Poirier: On Sunday, can tourists walk around inside the Eaton Centre?
Mr Stark: Yes.
Mr Poirier: They can walk around and bump their nose on your store window, right?
Mr Stark: They can.
Mr Poirier: Are there some stores open in the Eaton Centre, some tourist services or whatever?
Mr Stark: Not really.
Mr Poirier: There is nothing open.
Mr Stark: As far as I know, there is nothing open.
Mr Poirier: But they can walk in and look.
Mr Stark: They could walk in and look at windows, yes.
Mr Poirier: Fair enough.
Mr Daigeler: A little bit on the same line of questioning: You mentioned in your presentation that the estimated loss of revenue due to Bill 115 is $3.9 million in 1991. How do arrive at that?
Mr Stark: That is a purely financial figure I have received from my head office. I did not personally put it all together. That is financial information the company has.
Mr Daigeler: I am just trying to get a sense how they would be able to say something like this.
Mr Stark: I could follow up on that for you; absolutely no problem.
Mr Daigeler: Presumably it is that they have looked at the revenues from each day and asked, as Mr Poirier said, if it spread out over seven days what normally you got in six days, or was new revenue. From what you have said, it was new revenues.
Mr Stark: Yes. I am not sure how they exactly arrived at the figure, but in terms of my own personal region I was controlling, we did experience increased sales. But I could not honestly tell you if that was across the board. I could follow up on that.
Mr Daigeler: You attribute that increased income directly to the Sunday opening, or could it have been other factors?
Mr Stark: No, I think what we found in most cases was that Sundays picked up, I would say, between 10% to 15% of our week's business that we were so-called goaled for, but there was definitely an increase. We also saw that we were pulling customers from mall to mall, customers who were not also our regular customers. For example, in the Woodbine mall, where there is a fun fair for children, a lot of families that did not normally shop in that area came from other areas to shop there because they made a day of it with the children. There was a whole entire kiddie-sphere that was open. That was open every Sunday and we experienced very good business in Woodbine Centre.
Mr Daigeler: I guess you could call those "tourists" under the criteria put forward under the present legislation.
Mr Stark: I guess so, yes.
Mr Carr: My question relates to the square footage. What is your square footage? Would you fall under the 7,500?
Mr Stark: At the Eaton Centre it is just over 9,000 square feet.
Mr Carr: But most of the other ones would be under that?
Mr Stark: It varies. We have some very large stores which are approximately 9,000 and then it really moves from 9,000 down to, I would say, about 6,000 on average.
Mr Carr: As you know, with the municipal option, there is some discussion that the tourism exemption that will allow a large portion of this province to be open. Do you see that happening, or do you see that a lot of areas will not be opening and not taking the tourist exemption? What is your feel for it across the province? Do you have any idea?
Mr Stark: Not really, no. I honestly could not answer that; sorry.
Mr Carr: You mentioned the Woodbine store. I know that because that is the area I grew up in and I know the kids' fair. Presumably in the Toronto area you will be making presentations to try and get your store in areas --
Mr Stark: In Woodbine's case I would say it definitely would be to our advantage, yes.
Mr Carr: What about the other ones? Do you see doing it in all other areas too?
Mr Stark: It would depend on the mall and what tourist facilities there were in those malls. The Eaton Centre, for example, I personally believe is a strong tourist area because of Spadina and Chinatown being close by. A lot of tourists who come not only from the United States but from Europe head for downtown, because that is where the CNE is and that is where everything is. A lot of them would head for the Eaton Centre, absolutely.
Mr Carr: I guess none of us knows what the percentage is going to be until we know what happens. The Eaton Centre might be and some others might not. You obviously want wide-open, but that probably will not be the case for all areas. How will it affect you if just some of them are open? Will that create any problems or will you be happy just to get some of them open, to have Woodbine and the Eaton Centre open? What is your feeling on that?
Mr Stark: We obviously support wide-open, as you know, but certainly I would see that as a start if we had some locations open right away, absolutely. But certainly we are supporting wide-open.
Mr Carr: I notice you talked a little bit about the financial aspect and I think some of the presentations that have been made have been that the large companies that are making a great deal of money want this. If it is public knowledge, what is your particular financial statement? Are you in the red now or are you in a profit situation, your particular division?
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Mr Stark: It is confidential, but we have had a tough year.
Mr Carr: Some of them that have been here are public companies and it is open. I do not want to get information that is private.
Mr Stark: We have had a very difficult year.
Mr Carr: Good luck.
Mr Fletcher: Thank you, Mr Stark, for your presentation. It is nice to at least hear that you favour the protection of workers in having the right to refuse Sunday work. That is an important issue as far as we are concerned, and that is one of the reasons this piece of legislation is coming down.
Just a few questions. Yesterday in Peterborough we had the president of the chamber of commerce. He was saying, "Whenever you're making legislation, don't leave it up to the consumer, because the consumers will shop eight days if they have the opportunity, no matter what." He said, "Leave it up to retailers and listen to what retailers are saying."
I have to tell you right now that what we have heard from retailers is, I would not say even a 50-50 split; I would say it has been favouring more and more the side of, "We don't want Sunday openings." That is what the retailers are saying. It is the small ma-and-pa stores, the other ones, that are saying: "If you allow the big chains to open" -- Fairweather is a big chain -- "then we're going to be forced to open. We can't compete with them." There's no way that a small ma-and-pa store can compete with the big chains because of the amount of money behind them and everything else. I have to agree with them on that level, that they will not be able to compete. They are the small corner stores. They are the people who are a family business.
As far as Fairweather is concerned, you are a big conglomerate and I can understand where the pressures are coming from. As far as the pressures from the American competition is concerned, is this American competition across the border or American competition opening stores in Canada, in Ontario?
Mr Stark: Absolutely. The American competition is coming into Canada. In fact, the Gap has opened 24 stores already and they are in direct competition to us. We also have information that there are other companies coming in very shortly. These companies are definitely a concern for us and we need to be geared up to compete with them. Also, in terms of the mom-and-pop operation, they do compete with us. They have a market share and they compete with us during the week as well. I understand exactly what you are saying.
Mr Fletcher: I know they have the market share, they just do not want to see that market share decrease. As far as competition from the United States moving into Ontario is concerned, if they have to play by the same rules and they cannot open on a Sunday, they can only open at the same times you can, and they can only have the same square footage and everything else. It is the same rules, a level playing field, and the competition is going to be in marketing, not so much in price because they will be paying the same taxes, unless we get those discount stores. You know what they are and you know they are coming and that is something we have to watch out for, I agree. But as far as Sunday shopping is concerned, and the competition, is it not a level playing field when you come into it?
Mr Stark: My only response to that is that in terms of the American competition, we would like to get a step ahead and keep a step ahead all the way. It will take them a while to establish themselves in Canada and we want to really get ahead and get the sale first, so to speak, and really get our market share, increase it and keep it. We feel it is related in a way to Sunday shopping simply because it is an issue we have had experience with before. We know what the consumer is looking for. We know how to promote Sunday shopping. We have had some experience. We would just like to keep a jump ahead.
Mr Fletcher: It is strange, though, because with the high dollar, the GST and our taxes, they are willing to come into this market and they are going to be aggressive; you know they are. How are you going to be aggressive?
Mr Stark: How are we going to be aggressive?
Mr Fletcher: Yes. Are you going to adapt to their system? Are you going to change that much so that you can be as aggressive as they?
Mr Stark: No, our plan is to be better than they are, to be competitive with them in terms of our whole operation. We do not want our consumer to go to them and we have been doing everything in the last five years preparing for the Americans coming in.
Mr Fletcher: I am glad to hear you are prepared.
One other thing: When I look at your employees, 90% of 1,300 employees are women, full-time workers; their average age is 27, part-time is 21. The interesting part of this is that many of these women gain valuable, first-time job experience. This is not a career with them. It is their first job. They are getting the experience. They are moving on. If I were plotting my career and I came to you and I have worked part-time, my decision to work on Sunday would be on just a part-time basis; it would not be a long-term thing. You get the retail workers who are working in grocery stores who have been there 15, 20 or 25 years. This is a long-term implication for them, and their families are the people who suffer also.
I can understand part of your problem as far as competition is concerned, but when it comes to the long-term employee, the decisions we make are affecting long-term career-oriented people, not just the person who is going to be there for a short period of time. That is one of the things we have to look at on this.
Mr Stark: We hope all our employees would stay with us and create a career. In fact we have a lot of employees who joined us as part-time cashiers and today are managers. We do encourage them and we try and train everybody correctly so that they will stay with us and make a career with us.
Mr Fletcher: No doubt some of your people whom you have trained have gone on and they are your competition now. They have opened their own stores. You be careful of that.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Stark. A very interesting presentation.
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CHINESE CANADIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL
The Chair: We have with us now Mr Jonathan Leung from the Chinese Canadian National Council. Please have a seat, Mr Leung. You have approximately half an hour for your presentation, to be divided between your presentation and hopefully some time for members of the committee to ask questions of you, sir. Please feel free to start when you are ready.
Mr Leung: On behalf of the Chinese Canadian National Council we would like to take this opportunity to express our view on Bill 115 pertaining to the amendments to the existing retail business establishments statute law. As a matter of principle, the Chinese Canadian National Council is in support of the proposed bill pertaining to portions of it that protect the workers' right to refuse work on Sunday and holidays. However, the council opposes the part of the proposed bill that requires stores to close on Sunday and statutory holidays except for those located in designated tourist areas, for the following reasons. What it really boils down to, we feel, is the very strong discriminatory elements contained in the bill.
The proposed legislation protects those workers who do not wish to work on Sunday and statutory holidays for religious or other reasons. However, at the same time the council will submit that it will be injurious to those workers who, for economic reasons or any other reasons, wish to work on Sundays and statutory holidays and take their pause day on a day of their own choice -- not necessarily on Sunday; maybe Monday, Tuesday, whatever. It is those workers who are prepared, for their own reasons, to work on Sundays who are being deprived of the right to work on that day because their employer is being deprived of the opportunity to open on that day. If the reason for the bill is to protect those workers, I submit to the committee that we cannot ignore the wishes of those people who wish to take a pause day on a different day.
There are many businesses in the Chinese community which are not located in any designated tourist areas. These people are not located there because of their choice. They have been operating the business for many years and there are many strange scenarios, especially in the area where Chinatown is located, for example, where you have an arbitrary cutoff line which says so many square feet away from certain junctions is designated tourist and anything beyond that is not. You can have a situation whereby stores are right next to each other, doing the same business and one is permitted to open but the other one is not permitted to open, through some very arbitrary cutoff lines.
I submit to the committee here that the Supreme Court has determined that the Lord's Day (Ontario) Act was in contravention of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The present proposed legislation which designates Sunday as a common pause day, while its intent is not to create the same intent as the Lord's Day Act (Ontario), is, in effect, doing the same thing. In other words, we limit the freedom of religious practices. The council has actually sent a letter to Premier Rae raising this concern about a common pause day on Sunday. I would like to read to the committee the response we got back from the Premier: "Our government supports a common pause day for Ontario workers and their families. We believe that this strengthens family and community life."
Now I read that to mean that it is my understanding that part of the objective of the common pause day is to encourage the family having one day when they can get together. I speak as someone coming from another country; namely, I came from Hong Kong 20-odd years ago. The committee members here will probably all agree that families in the Orient -- in China and Japan -- are well known for closeness. They are very closely knit families, but strangely they do not have any designated day of pause by the government to encourage the family to get together.
Why? I guess what it boils down to is this: No government can legislate the family to be close together. If they are not close together, I do not care how you legislate it -- they are not going to be close. But if the family wants to develop the relationship, they will use every single opportunity they have -- after work, at night, during a day of pause. It may be on a common day; it may be different days. I submit to you that the closeness of Oriental families is way better than what I have seen in Canada, in the United States or in any of the western countries. If one of the primary objectives is to encourage families to get together to have a common pause day, I submit to the committee that this legislation fails in a most miserable way.
The council has one basic feeling on this. We support any legislation that protects people's rights but we have difficulties in accepting any legislation that, for all its good intentions tries to protect the interests of certain segments of the community and ends up doing it at the expense of other members of the community, whether knowingly or unknowingly.
I submit to you that business people, people who engage in retail business, have just as much right and should be entitled to as much protection as the workers. I cannot see this legislation providing any protection to them in terms of the basic right to do what they should be permitted to do in a legal and open fashion; namely, earn their own living on any business day. If the government feels the need for the worker to have 36 hours in terms of consecutive leave, which the bill currently has, we like to have that in place, but let it be worked out between the employer and the employees, as long as we have the protection given to the employees that they have the right to refuse work on Sunday and statutory holidays and have the entitlement to 36 hours' consecutive leave from their work to get them recharged, not so much to allow them necessarily to be closer to their family, but to let them recharge their energy so they can do their work better.
In short, the Chinese Canadian National Council would like to urge the government, through this particular committee, to reconsider the proposed legislation in question and hopefully make the necessary amendment to ensure that strong protection be given to workers but without violating people's basic rights and freedom to choose.
I can go back to the same letter we got back from the Premier. This is an interesting situation. The Premier said: "The retail holidays act recognized that not everyone worships on the same day of the week. Section 5 of the act allows retail businesses to operate on a Sunday if they are always closed to the public throughout another day of the week because of owners' religions."
While I can see that the act respects the right of people with a certain religious belief not to work on a certain day, it seems to me that in this case the act totally ignored those people who may have a religion but whose religion does not necessarily require them to rest on any specific day, but just allows them to take a day of rest any day they choose to. Does that mean people have to justify to the government that their religion must dictate that they rest on that particular day? What about the atheists who have no religion whatsoever? Does that mean their right to say, "I don't want to work on Sunday," or take a rest on Monday, is automatically gone because they have no religion? I go back to the basic principle, that people should have the right and freedom to choose to work and rest whenever they want, as long as they can do it in such a manner that would not be injurious to any other parties.
That is basically the submission the council would like to make to the honourable members on this particular committee.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, sir. Mr Elston. By the way, each caucus has five minutes.
Mr Elston: As usual, I will be short.
The presenter should know that earlier this morning we were visited by the Solicitor General, Mr Pilkey, who said that the issue of a common pause day is "not negotiable," which leaves a good portion of your presentation -- although sympathetically to be reviewed by many of us here, I do not think we are going to be able to move on it, because Mr Pilkey has delivered that message again, has reaffirmed what the Premier has written.
You brought an area of interest to me which I had not thought of personally, and that was, what happens when there is no particular day set aside for religious observance? It seems to me that is an area which we as a committee must try to come to grips with so that there is fairness in this. We may end up having to provide an amendment which would provide us with that leniency, because I think that is a part of your presentation that perhaps we can encourage the Solicitor General to make some replies to our committee on. The common pause day issue seems to be, for the government, immovable, but perhaps that portion can be dealt with. I appreciate your raising that for us today.
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Mr Daigeler: Some two weeks ago, when we were here in Toronto -- then we started travelling -- we had a representation from a member of your community and I asked him the same question. In the Chinese tradition, is there any one particular day of common rest? More specifically, even in Hong Kong today, is there a particular day where, let's say, most government offices, most schools and so on are closed? If so, which day is that?
Mr Leung: For example, I can speak about Hong Kong. Yes, the government offices always close on Sunday, and so do the offices. But what that really boils down to, to be quite honest with you, is that it goes back to the fact that Hong Kong has been a British colony for many years and a lot of the legislation in terms of dictating when a government office should be open or not open really dates back to the Lord's Day belief that people should rest on Sunday.
Mr Daigeler: Would that be the same thing in mainland China? For example, in Russia, before the changes, they too still had Sunday, obviously in a non-religious fashion, as the day when places were closed, the government and so on. What about mainland China?
Mr Leung: I go back there once every year. I can say that in mainland China, yes, government offices close on Sunday, and even some businesses are closed on Sunday, but that really probably is more reflective of the way things are worldwide. If you open your office on Sunday in China and you have to deal with offices in, say, Hong Kong or Canada for that matter, where they are closed on Sunday, you really cannot conduct your business as efficiently as you could. You will find a lot of other countries would structure their so-called day of rest, but mostly just for governments, not anything else, and say, "We'll close on that day." But you will find, for example, there is no rule that I am aware of, in China, in Hong Kong, in Taiwan and even in Japan, for that matter, that says, "Government rests on Sunday, so everybody has to rest on Sunday."
Mr Daigeler: What I am trying to get at is whether the idea of a common pause day is a western concept or whether that is also shared in the Orient, whatever that day is. It has been argued, certainly at this committee and elsewhere, that the thought and reality of some attempt at a common day of non-work are universal.
Mr Leung: Speaking from experience -- as I said, I had been in Hong Kong for many years and I was born in China -- I can say with certainty that I am not aware of any so-called common pause day per se. I remember my parents worked seven days a week when I was young, until they retired. I know every office opened at least six days. In fact, all retail businesses open every day. Whether they are there for retail or wholesale, if they have a store, they open. If there is a demand for it, if there is a need for it, let the people work out their way.
I do not think there is such thing as a common pause day being recognized as, "This is the day everybody must rest." I guess by default it happened because the government, probably being one of the biggest employers in most countries, chooses to close its offices on Sunday, so you have more people taking rest on that day. At the same time, I know for a fact that a lot of businesses, a lot of the retail trade, for example, will allow their staff to take a day of rest but work it out among themselves. They do not work seven days. They still work six days, but they have enough employees in such a way that allows them to rotate in that manner.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much for a fine presentation. I notice that point (b) talks about, "Many businesses in our community are not located in any designated tourist areas and will suffer from differential treatment." I guess a lot will depend on what the municipalities do in, for example, Toronto, whether they include Chinatown as part of the area. How much will they include and will it be this street, and so on? It is very difficult to guess what they are going to do, but I was wondering if you have any idea of what you see happening, because I think there would be a lot of pressure to have some of that area open as a tourist exemption area. Do you see that being just a certain area, or do you think it will be expanded?
Mr Leung: I am sure there will be a lot of pressure on municipal governments to designate a higher portion of Chinatowns -- when I say "Chinatowns," just as Chinatown here in Toronto -- as tourist. My concern is not so much strictly Chinatown, because really, if you look, there may be probably five different areas in Metropolitan Toronto where there is a good congregation of Chinese businesses. For example, at Broadview and Gerrard streets there is a very concentrated Chinese business area. In Scarborough they have a very high concentration around Sheppard and Brimley and Midland, in that area. For example, Mississauga also now is getting a high number of Chinese businesses located there. Again, the point is, why would the city of Toronto designate the Spadina and Dundas area as being tourist and at the same time deny the same treatment to people located at Broadview and Gerrard streets? Is it because their size is smaller or they happen to be less well known to the tourists?
Mr Carr: You do not see Toronto opening in some of these other areas then. Even though there is a high concentration, you do not feel they will designate that a tourist area.
Mr Leung: I can see difficulty in doing that, for the simple reason that basically you open a whole floodgate to everybody. I can see that, for example, at Danforth and Pape, people are going to fight for that to be a tourist area because it has a concentration of Greeks and Macedonians. You get into a whole big argument in terms of what constitutes a tourist area, because notwithstanding the attempt within the act, I think there is just too much grey area in there in terms of definitions. If you have a store that somehow displays certain sales, a certain portion of cultural souvenirs, does that make that store fall under the category of designated tourist area, because it has certain cultural elements contained in it? I think everything is too arbitrary.
To go back to the point I submit, we are just creating more headaches for ourselves. The fact of the matter is that Sunday openings have been tried for a little while. I can speak from my personal experience as a chartered accountant by profession that I have not heard any complaint from any of my clients and their workers saying that now they are open Sunday, they have problems. They all know their rights were protected, ie, that if they do not want to work on that day, they do not have to. They always have open and frank discussions with their employers and say, "Who wants to work on that day?" In particular, in light of the current economic situation, a lot of workers are fighting to work on Sunday because they get double pay for the same amount of work.
I can understand the purpose of this bill, but I think it would have been a hell of a good bill if we had stopped at the point where we say a worker has a right to refuse work and the worker is entitled to 30-odd hours of consecutive time off, and then let the employer and the employee work out their problems in terms of scheduling. That is what it all boils down to; it is just scheduling.
Mr Carr: Do you have any idea of what is happening, for example, in British Columbia, where there is open Sunday shopping and so on, what the feeling of the Chinese community is in that area? Do you have any idea whether they like it or are opposed to it out there?
Mr Leung: I cannot speak on behalf of the Chinese communities in Vancouver, but if the feeling of the Toronto Chinese communities, including Metro, including Scarborough and Mississauga, is in any way typical and reflective of those in Vancouver, which I suspect it will be, then I think most members of our communities favour opening on Sunday, because that is the way they are used to it. That is where they came from, everything basically open Sunday, with the exception of the government offices and possibly schools, and that is about it.
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Mr Fletcher: Thank you for your presentation. As I said previously, one of the main purposes of this legislation is to give workers the right to decide for themselves, to choose whether or not to work on Sunday and --
Interjection.
Mr Fletcher: It is not that good. Do not start applauding yet. It will get better.
I think one of the things is to give workers the right to refuse work on Sunday and to have that common pause day. One of the things you have said in your presentation is that the Supreme Court has decided the Lord's Day Act was in contravention of the Charter of Rights. In fact, it was in 1985 that the Lord's Day Act was struck down, but it was also in 1986, and let me just quote, "The Supreme Court of Canada decided 6 to 1 that the Retail Business Holidays Act, even if in violation of some people's freedoms, is valid legislation by virtue of section 1 of the charter."
In other words, this piece of legislation that we are amending, which went to the Supreme Court of Canada, is perfectly legal. You are right that this legislation has nothing to do with religion or anything else. It is written so that people of all stripes can have a common pause day. In fact, this piece of legislation was again upheld through an appeal to the Supreme Court of Ontario and that is why we are where we are, making amendments to it. This piece of legislation is fine as far as the Supreme Court is concerned. It is not in violation of anyone's rights under the charter.
I recognize the rights of ethnic people to their own religious beliefs and to celebrate their own religions when they have to. One thing that I think is essential is not so much to legislate that we can build up the family, but to give people the right to try to make their family life a little better. We are arguing about one day. You have six days out of the week to work, to shop, to run your business. What is an extra day for people to be at home, an extra day for people to go to a ball game, to swim, to play a sport, to be with their families? One day out of the week is all we are asking for for people, and yet we are getting so much opposition, and I have a problem with that. We are getting so much opposition from retailers who are saying, "I want that day and I want my workers on that day."
Mr Leung: If I may ask you, Mr Fletcher, one very simple question, to go back to the opening remark you made, the attempt to protect the worker's right to a day of rest, I submit to you that within this bill the fact is that the worker's right to refuse work on Sunday or a holiday is there, and the fact is that there are requirements on the employer to allow the workers 36 hours of consecutive leave. Then are the workers not being protected in that respect? Why do you feel the protection will be increased any more by designating one day as being the day they must rest, or certain businesses have to close on that date?
If you go back to the basic philosophy, as I said, the Premier has said to us that the government feels that day is essential to promote harmony within families. I would submit to you that hundreds, if not thousands, of years of history in China, in Japan or in Asian countries have proven that you do not need to have a common day of pause to promote that objective. The better way to promote it is through education among our younger people that it is important to maintain that closeness within the family. I submit to you, for example, that when you go to a ball game, we have ball games that play on any afternoon during weekdays. I think it would be much easier if we say in the legislation that a business has to close on one day of the week, any day of its choice.
If that were the case, then I can see that the resentment probably would not be as much, but I think the resentment right now is the fact that you are saying to the people, "I want to you to close on Sunday." What is so magic about Sunday? What is wrong with Wednesday? I know, for example, in my community a lot of business people said: "We are prepared to close on Wednesdays. Would you let us?" The answer right now is no because, as I read it, you have to have a religious reason to justify closing on Wednesday instead of on Sunday.
Mr Fletcher: It all depends on whether or not you meet the tourist criteria.
Mr Leung: In what way? You say "criteria." On what criteria?
Mr Fletcher: The tourism criteria.
Mr Leung: But why are you giving tourism criteria? Do tourists have more rights than us as consumers? Why should a tourist have more right to go to places? Does the fact that a certain area is visited more by tourists mean that place has more rights than a place which is less visited by tourists? What was the magic about tourists?
Mr Fletcher: Why? I think it is something the previous legislation did not have. Tourism is an integral part of this province and the economy of this province. We have recognized that.
Mr Leung: You have said that the previous legislation recognized there are certain things special about tourists. I would submit to you the government is elected to form legislation. Hopefully, it will be reflective of the realities and evolve from time to time. I am saying to you right now that we hear so much about equality in our communities from everybody. Maybe there should be equality between tourists and non-tourists. What is wrong with that?
Mr Fletcher: One more comment?
The Vice-Chair: No, that is it.
Mr Poirier: I would like to continue with this gentleman.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, sir, for that fine presentation.
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RETAIL, WHOLESALE AND DEPARTMENT STORE UNION, LOCAL 414
The Vice-Chair: Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, please, David McCormick. David, I would like to welcome you here. You have one half-hour to present. You can split that up any way you want, but I am sure the fine gentlemen here would like to ask you some questions when you are done. When you are ready, you can begin.
Mr McCormick: The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union is one of the major unions in the retail field. Local 414 has approximately 10,000 members, the majority of whom are directly affected by the Retail Business Holidays Act. We appear before you today to express our concerns about establishing legislation that protects the right of retail workers to the traditional day of pause and promotes stability within the retail sector of the economy.
Since the passage of Bill 113, when the responsibility of regulating Sunday openings was forced upon municipalities by the previous government, our union has made numerous presentations across the province. Our position has been consistent in reflecting our members' desire to retain Sunday as the traditional day of pause. Our position is supported by the Ontario Federation of Labour, small business, the majority of religious affiliations and many responsible employers. Furthermore, we have reason to believe that the many thousands of workers in the retail field, who are as yet unorganized, share our views in this matter.
In our submission to the committee, we have outlined a number of reasons why we believe that Sunday should remain the common pause day. Rather than dwelling upon these arguments, we would ask this committee to accept our submission to read at your leisure. We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to address those sections of the act which we believe must be altered in order to safeguard Sunday as the traditional day of pause.
We believe the intent of Bill 115 is to address the problems created by the current legislation, and we believe the government to be sincere in its commitment to a common pause day. However, it is our opinion that the proposed changes to the Retail Business Holidays Act tend to be limited to the issues of tourism and cross-border shopping. We believe that the purpose of the legislation is to benefit retail workers by making available to them a weekly holiday which coincides with that enjoyed by most of the community. Further changes to the act are required to prevent establishments such as price clubs from having an unfair advantage over their competitors by being permitted to operate seven days a week.
Clauses 1(1)(b) and 1(1)(c) of the present act must be amended to reflect the following:
"`Retail business' means the selling of goods or services by retail or wholesale to any member of the public, including a member of a club or co-operative or any other group of consumers.
"`Retail business establishment' means the premises where a retail or wholesale business is carried on; any space or stall in markets, particularly in covered markets and flea markets is considered to be a retail business.
"`Principal business' means that portion of the business which accounts for 80% of the business is gross sales."
During the past few years, the once-held concept of pharmacies has changed rapidly. In many instances, the primary source of income for these establishments is no longer limited to the health care field. They have expanded not only in their selection of merchandise and services but also square footage, encroaching into the area previously provided by supermarkets and convenience stores. Although we have no desire to limit their direction of growth, we do, however, believe that if they intend to compete in the same market as supermarkets and convenience stores, these establishments should be restricted by the same legislation.
We would recommend that clause 3(2)(c) of the present act be revised from 7,500 square feet to 2,400 square feet; and add a new clause 3(2)(d), "The number of persons engaged in the service of the public and the establishment does not at any time exceed four, including the pharmacist, who must be present in the establishment during business hours."
We feel that should an emergency arise where a person is in need of pharmaceutical products, a limitation of 2,400 square feet and a limitation on the number of persons to four would provide ample opportunity in every community in the province of Ontario for the population to receive needed prescriptions or medication.
In deputations before the standing committee on administration of justice dealing with Bill 113, our union, along with others, forewarned the government of the day of the problems that would be created with the municipal option. We expressed our belief that only a province-wide uniform law administered by the provincial government could guarantee a uniform day of pause and safeguard retail workers' rights. It is the position which we hold today.
We do, however, recognize the financial cost associated with transferring the responsibility for regulating the traditional day of pause back to the province. Thus, we would ask this committee to recommend that the new subsection 4(8) be modified to state, "The council's decision may be appealed by any interested party to the tourist exemption board."
In our opinion, the reference to "tourist areas" in the current legislation has lent itself to too wide an application. It has created confusion, inequities and an unfair application of the law. If the government had heeded our warnings in 1975 when the original legislation was enacted and had used the term "resort areas," many of the problems we are now facing would not have materialized.
We believe that in many instances the designation of tourist areas has been done without appropriate consideration of the impact it will have on the retail sector; that these exemptions have created an unfair playing field with one retailer having an advantage over his competitors strictly because of geographic location. We believe that until this problem is corrected, the right of all retail workers to a common day of pause will be jeopardized.
In our opinion, the proposed tourist criteria are far too broad in scope. We would recommend that the government establish a committee consisting of representatives of the affected groups, including employees, in an attempt to reach a consensus document on a new set of viable regulations.
In our opinion, the current legislation has failed to differentiate between the maintenance and development of tourism for the recreational and buying needs of the tourist and the promotion of shopping as a recreational activity for the community. Thus, we would recommend the new subsection 4(1) to read:
"Despite section 2 and subject to clauses 4(1)(a) and (b) below, the council of a municipality may by bylaw permit retail business establishments in the municipalities to be open on holidays where it is essential for the maintenance or development of a tourist industry and where it is essential to meet the educational, cultural, leisure and recreational needs of the tourist; and
"(a) only retail business establishments that have a total area used for serving the public or for selling or displaying to the public in the establishment less than 4,000 square feet; and
"(b) the number of persons engaged in the service of the public in the establishment does not at any time exceed four."
By allowing only stores that are under 4,000 square feet with four persons employed to remain open in tourist exempt areas, this may ensure that the above principle is adhered to.
During the past two years, local councils across the province have been besieged by requests for Sunday openings. The current legislation has forced these councils to deal with an issue they did not ask for and do not want. In order to alleviate the pressure brought upon these councils and to protect retail workers' rights to the traditional day of pause, it is in our opinion essential for the common pause day principle to be contained within the legislation. Therefore, we recommend that the new subsection 4(2) read:
"The council, in passing a bylaw under subsection 1, must maintain the principle that holidays are to remain as a common pause day to ensure that they remain: days on which most businesses are not open; days on which most persons do not have to work."
It is our opinion that the government's new amendments do not adequately address the question of enforcement. As retail workers and taxpayers, we believe it necessary to provide a means to enforce the legislation both efficiently and effectively and would recommend that subsection 8(1) be amended to reflect the following,
"Upon the application to the Supreme Court by any affected or interested party, the court may order that a retail business establishment close on a holiday to ensure compliance with this act or regulation under this act."
In our opinion, amendments made to the Employment Standards Act will not protect retail workers who would wish to refuse to work on the day of pause or statutory holidays. Evidence given before the select committee hearings dealing with Bill 113 and Bill 114 supports this belief. A manager of Canadian Tire stated: "You can pass any legislation you want, but the mere coercion of a promise of promotion is enough to force an employee to work on Sunday whether he or she wishes to or not. Indeed, there are ways of getting rid of an employee who one does not wish to have along or who is unco-operative, simply by scheduling him or her on a Thursday night when that person has classes or some other time that is very inconvenient."
If nothing else, the recent escapade with Sunday shopping has proven the truth of his forecast. Many employees who did not want to work on Sunday, particularly in the unorganized sector of the economy, were persuaded to see the corporate light. Employees were informed that if they did not want to be a team player, then perhaps they had chosen the wrong career. To small businesses, particularly in malls, the relationship between lease renewal and Sunday openings was described.
These are the realities of Sunday shopping. The only effective protection retail workers have is the Retail Business Holidays Act. The only way to ensure that most retail workers are entitled to a common pause day is to ensure that most retail establishments are closed.
In closing, we would refer to the majority decision written by Chief Justice Brian Dickson in the Supreme Court of Canada ruling on Sunday shopping. In interpreting and applying the Charter of Rights he said, "I believe that the courts must be cautious to ensure that it does not simply become an instrument of better situated individuals to roll back legislation which has as its objects the improvement of less advantaged persons."
We would hope this committee shares the opinions of Chief Justice Dickson, that it too believes the object of the legislation is to benefit retail employees by making available to them a common day of pause. We would hope this committee believes that our laws must reflect not only the needs of society, but also the values; that they must be designed to respect the rights of all our citizens; that traditional family values should be entrenched rather than eroded; and we would hope that your recommendations will reflect this concept. Thank you.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, Mr McCormick. I have to apologize. Can you please state who you are and where you are from, just for the record, if you do not mind.
Mr McCormick: David McCormick, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Local 414. I am a grocery clerk with A&P Food Stores.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, David. Each caucus has five minutes.
Mr Elston: I wonder, Mr McCormick, if you heard our previous presenter talk about the traditional family structure in his community, the oriental community, and can advise us how we are to balance his traditional family structure with the new act and the things you have asked us to include in the bill.
Mr McCormick: I think when you are looking at traditional structures or whichever way you want to look at it, you are not going to turn around and say to one individual or another, "Your family is going to do this; he's right and he's wrong," but the time must be provided for them to do it. As a retail worker, we work probably five out of six Saturdays to start off with. The only time we can make plans together as a family is on Sunday. When you turn around and take that element of not being able to make plans on a Sunday maybe one week or one month or even one year ahead of time, then you are throwing your whole structure out. For a lot of the married women I have worked with over the years, and particularly in cases of single women, they are turning around and saying to their children, "Okay, we're going to send you to a baby-sitter," or, "Our family is going to look after you." It has a negative impact on the stability within the unit itself. It does not have a positive impact.
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Mr Elston: I think we have heard from you that financial imperatives are compelling some people to work on Sundays and that is one of the reasons you want to have tougher enforcement provisions in here. Is it your view that if there are six days available and one common pause day, the six days available should be enough for any of the people to make a reasonable return in work? In your union, that is; you represent them.
Mr McCormick: What you are looking at right now is that within our union itself, most of our contracts call for double time on Sunday. What will happen with Sunday shopping is that over the years that will be eroded until you will be looking at a shift premium, probably somewhere in the neighbourhood of a dollar an hour. I will use part-time employees, because full-time have 37 hours. Part-time employees, instead of working 20 hours during the week, are going to work 20 hours, but it is going to be eight hours Saturday and eight hours Sunday. The actual additional money will not be there in the long run.
Mr Elston: I was thinking in terms of, if you look at it, a person has six days out of the seven to be available for work. It is the position of your local and your union that basically that should be enough for the employer to ask you to work?
Mr McCormick: Yes.
Mr Elston: What happens if traditionally my religious day is not Sunday but is in fact Saturday, and as an adherent, on Saturday I cannot perform duties in the retail business community? Would you say it is a penalty then to the members of your union to be unable to accept work on Sunday because they choose Saturday as their holiday?
Mr McCormick: Under the full-time collective agreement, you are still working five days. If that impediment came up, then they would be working Monday to Friday with Saturday as a day off.
Mr Daigeler: We have not mentioned this yet, but we have had many representations from the unions and we have also had many representations from the retailers, and they seem to be contradictory -- not seem to be; they are. Many retailers, say for business reasons and for creating employment and everything else, want to be open, and the unions are saying, the workers are saying, "No, we want to have the day of rest."
Is there any attempt between the unions and these employers to get together and work something out? Really, I have a hard time coming to grips with this confrontational and adversarial orientation that seems to be there. I will say the same thing to the employers. I really think that perhaps it is time for you who are most affected by this to sit down and work something out, rather than asking government to enforce the solution. I do not know whether you have a comment to that.
Mr McCormick: I guess the comment I would have to look at is the fact that you are always going to have some form of adversarial role between employees and employers. Quite often we can look to the government to facilitate in finding some sort of means of accomplishing it.
To throw Sunday on to the table is going to be an extra confrontation at every set of negotiations that ever comes along between an employer and an employee. Sunday will be an issue. Employers will continually turn around and try to get you to work for less. It has happened out west. I believe in BC now your premiums run around $1.50 an hour for Sunday work, whereas in Ontario, within the organized sector, most of it is running around double time. That is something that will happen. You are going to have that sort of an erosion and it is going to be an additional confrontation on the table.
If you go back to the select committee hearings during Bill 113 and Bill 114, the Committee for Fair Shopping at that time turned around and said, "Don't put it under the municipal option." That committee was on side at the time. It has only been since you have had the municipal option that they have turned around and gone away from what used to be the same group we belong to, in a commitment to keeping Sunday as a common day of pause.
Mr Carr: Thank you for your presentation. This week the Premier said he feels the government has achieved its objective of creating a common pause day, as did the Solicitor General in his opening statement in this morning's press release.
You say on page 9, "These exemptions have created an unfair playing field, with one retailer having an advantage over his competitor strictly because of geographic location; and we believe until this problem is corrected the right of all retail workers to a common day of pause will be jeopardized." Do you think the Premier is wrong, then, when he says he has succeeded in creating a common pause day with this legislation?
Mr McCormick: I think the Premier is probably looking for some guidance from this committee as to exactly what he is looking for. Out of that I think you have an original package coming in. Perhaps when this committee comes back it will be modified. We are hoping to see our proposals put into it. I would not say the Premier is wrong. I believe he is committed to a common day of pause.
Mr Carr: But if the legislation is the same then he will be wrong, presumably.
McCormick: If the package I was presented with originally goes through, there are going to be as many problems with the legislation as there are now.
Mr Carr: What about your experience with some of the other situations? I think you mentioned BC where instead of time and a half they are getting $1.50 an hour or whatever. Is your union out in that area fighting to repeal Sunday shopping? What have their activities been out there now since they have it?
Mr McCormick: Unfortunately, what has happened there is that Sunday shopping has basically become entrenched. When you deal with a municipal option as they have in BC, once one area opens up other areas are forced to open up for economic reasons alone. Unfortunately the reverse does not apply. Once the consumers become accustomed to the seventh day of shopping, they expect it.
Mr Carr: One of the chaps from North Bay said the same thing, that right now they are getting double time for the union up there and that they are lining up to work on Sundays because of the good premium. He said they have enough workers because of that incentive, but he said the same thing, that if Sunday shopping becomes acceptable this will be eroded and will not become a premium over time. That will be just another day and you will not get the premium. For your union, in your estimation, does it really come down to an economic question that you are looking at?
Mr McCormick: It is not just economic, I would say. Originally, when they started opening up on Sunday there was a lineup of people to basically work for double time, but as that process continued month in, month out, all of a sudden it was trying to find someone, so even the money aspect of it was not enough.
Slightly before this last ruling came out there were cases of one store having to call another store, particularly in areas like your bakery or your meat department where you require qualified people and where you would not get anyone in the store to work. They simply said: "No, the money isn't worth it. I want some time with my family." That was the pattern that started to happen after a few months. Originally they did not have a problem getting people to work for double time, but even that turned around and people started to say no near the end.
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Mr Kormos: I want to talk about the adjudication on applications for exemption. You raised that as an important area and one which obviously generated some concern in your union. I am familiar with the concern it has caused in a whole lot of other places, and that is to say that municipal councils, as the deciding body, maybe are not the most appropriate organ or institution to use. Again, you indicate your long-held position is that there should be a provincial body which would ensure uniformity from municipality to municipality.
My problem is that there are city councils and then there are city councils, and there are councillors and then there are councillors, and to call upon a city councillor or a city council to perform a judicial or quasi-judicial function is contrary to what they are supposed to be doing. They are there to make political decisions, just like legislators are sitting to make political decisions, with the responsibility that attaches to that. This is just a very general statement. I am not singling out any particular council, least of all the good people in Welland and Thorold who are dedicated, ethical and outstanding people. I am hard pressed to feel confidence. I have real problems, and I think you do too, with the fact that city council is going to be called upon to do that. Let's face it, there are all sorts of forces working to influence that council and hopefully will be dealing with regulations that will set standards that will be somewhat more forceful than the standards that are here.
You say you recognize the associated financial costs. Some of the critics have said: "Yes, but those costs similarly are going to be borne by city councils. As it is now, with the present legislation, there are still going to be costs. Councils have to hold hearings. They're going to have to spend time dealing with the matter. They may have to retain consultants or certainly these are the legal costs."
What did you have in mind when you thought, as you clearly did, of a provincial body? I am very much inclined to agree with that proposition. I think that is the smart way to go. Not to go that way is not a very smart way to go and it is going blow up in our faces. What did you have in mind when you were talking about provincial bodies?
Mr McCormick: I guess the easiest way of putting that is by being quite frank. If this committee turns around and says, "We're going to forget about the municipal option and throw it out the window and we're going back to the provincial board," we are not going to say, "Oh no, don't do that." We are not opposed to turning around and taking it right out of the hands of the municipal option, just getting rid of that municipal option, at all. We do not have a problem with that. But we do say if you are going to have a municipal option in there, at least have a form of an appeal procedure, and it cannot be just that one aspect.
There is a common pause day principle, that we are asking to be written right into the legislation, that turns around and says: "Okay, you're a council. You're going to have to recognize these factors within the legislation first." In other words, if you are not going to go on the common pause day principle, a day when most businesses are going to remain closed, you are going to be in violation of the act. It has to be a total package.
Mr Kormos: But if you had your druthers, would you rather have a provincial body than local? We dumped all over the Liberals, rightly so, when they invented municipal options when we were in opposition. It was not perceived by us as being an effective way of dealing with the issue and I have the same feelings about it now as I did 12 months ago. If you had your druthers, would you rather have a provincial body or would you rather have it dealt with by municipalities?
Mr McCormick: We would much rather have it as a provincial body. There is not a question in our mind that we would sooner have a provincial body and not bother with the municipalities at all. Unfortunately, we do not think we are going to get it.
Mr Kormos: Why do you say you recognize the financial costs associated with transferring the responsibility? Have you assessed the cost factor in that?
Mr McCormick: What we have been told is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $6 million. I personally have not talked to someone who is going to say, "That's your cost of switching it back." That is the information I have been given.
Mr Kormos: Have you or your people considered the prospect of recouping whatever costs are involved by virtue of licensing fees or application fees similar to how the Ontario Municipal Board, for instance, charges? I think OMB has a fee structure; if not, certainly local boards have fee structures. Would that not be an alternative or a means of removing that cost burden?
Mr McCormick: I am really not in the position of knowing that much about the financial aspect of it to comment a lot on it. I can just refer to what I have been told about that, what they assumed the cost would be to switch it back. If it comes down to the fact that it can be feasibly done we would much sooner have it back in the hands of a provincial body and forget about the municipal option completely. But again, that is something that would have to be worked out at a level higher than ours.
Mr Kormos: Well, here you are.
Mr McCormick: A higher level.
Mr Kormos: I am not sure of the higher level, but certainly you came in the front door and not the tradesmen's entrance, no two ways about it. I have some real concerns about the municipal option.
BRENDA STINSON
The Vice-Chair: The next presenter, please. Good afternoon, Mrs Stinson. You have 15 minutes. You can use that however you want, but I am sure these gentlemen would like to ask you a question or two. Just be comfortable and begin when you want to.
Mrs Stinson: My name is Brenda Stinson. I have a small retail outlet of children's clothing in the Beach called Kit and Kaboodle. I believe you had one of my neighbours in here this morning, Karey Shinn. We are neighbours, but we are of opposing views.
I have attended many meetings on Sunday shopping, the most recent being in May, attended by our local MPP, Frances Lankin, and councillors Tom Jakobek and Paul Christie. They have all been very interesting meetings. It is quite interesting to hear what everybody has to say. Just being a small business merchant and a citizen of the city of Toronto, I have come away with one very strong conclusion from all this, that this whole thing has gotten bogged down in legislation and definition. I believe it is time we sat down and just had a little bit of common sense applied.
People in our area have demonstrated and verbalized, especially at the last meeting, that they want Sunday shopping, they enjoy Sunday shopping. A Sunday in my store services the people in my community; 70% to 75% of the people who come into our store are local residents. There are families in my store making a major purchase of snowsuits or a back-to-school wardrobe and they need the time and the input from all members of their family. There are families that have found evenings and Saturdays too busy.
These same families are annoyed when my store, Kit and Kaboodle, is closed on Sundays. They are also confused, which is another issue, as some stores are allowed to stay open and others are forced to close. Some feel the stores that are closed are too prosperous and do not wish to be open and therefore take their business elsewhere. Others respond by putting off their purchases for Sundays to weekends or vacations in the United States, all of which is supported in government-published statistics on travel and purchases in the States, customer feedback in my store and my own personal statistics.
Basically, when I was forced to close in July 1989 and then allowed to open in July 1990, my net income was up by 8.9%. This July it was back down by 9%. Further, as a result of Sunday closing I was unable to afford to hire another student for the summer. This was the general response of merchants on our street, that they were unable to hire anybody else to work in their stores for the summer. We offer employment to the people who live in our area. This was shown in a survey done by John Winters and Associates this spring, showing that 40% to 50% of the stores are owned and managed by Beach residents and 50% to 60% of the part-time are Beach residents. Our community and our retailers need Sunday shopping in order to survive.
As reported on the news today, we do not believe Sunday shopping will "jump-start" the recession. We want Sunday shopping. Customers want Sunday shopping. We are not greedy. We will not exploit our workers. We are trying our best to serve our customers' needs and make a living. We do not believe that this committee considers retailers second-class citizens. All we are doing is asking you to acknowledge that times have changed. Employees want to work on Sundays, customers want to shop on Sundays and retailers need to stay open on Sundays in order to remain competitive. Short and brief, that is it.
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Mr Daigeler: Thank you very much for coming before the committee. You indicated you were a neighbour. Are you just a business neighbour or do you also live in the Beach?
Mrs Stinson: An actual neighbour, yes, one street over. Our children go to the same school and play together.
Mr Daigeler: Is your store where you live as well?
Mrs Stinson: Yes.
Mr Daigeler: I see. That is a good concept; that is perhaps the best concept.
Mrs Stinson: So I have it from all directions.
Mr Daigeler: You indicated you were on opposing sides of the coin. I am not sure, because Ms Shinn actually indicated she is in favour of wide-open Sunday shopping. She is just opposed to designating the Beaches, I guess, as a tourist area because that would bring too much traffic there. She has nothing against the idea of wide-open Sunday shopping. Do you share that view as well?
Mrs Stinson: I share that view, yes.
Mr Daigeler: So you are not really that opposed.
Mrs Stinson: Actually, that is interesting because the other meetings I have attended over the last two years have been opposition to Sunday shopping. One was held, I believe, a year ago April or May, which was when we were discussing Sunday shopping, and then this May again, of course, there was opposition to a tourist designation. So it is refreshing to hear that. I did not realize she had had a little bit of an about-turn.
Mr Daigeler: Actually, I was surprised as well to hear her say that, but she was very firm on that.
Mrs Stinson: Good, because our area does want it.
Mr Daigeler: She thought if all the stores were open then there would be less pressure on the Beaches, and then she would not have any objection.
Mrs Stinson: That is it exactly. I agree.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much for your presentation. My question relates to what you see happening with the battles that will happen internally, literally pitting neighbour against neighbour, although, as you say, it sounds like you are almost on the same side. How do you see that happening? Do you think that will be divisive? Presumably both sides will go before council for the tourism area. Do you see that creating a problem in your neighbourhood?
Mrs Stinson: The tourist designation might. I agree that our dichotomy cannot support a tourist designation. We do not have the parking, we do not have the facilities to accommodate that. As a business person, to swing it around -- I am not sure if I am answering your question -- we opened our store to service our area. A lot of the stores, I would say a good 50% or 60%, open their stores to service the area. So as far as the tourist designation goes, that is a little bit of a bonus. People come to our area just because it is so unique.
As far as pitting neighbour against neighbour, I think we are all in support of the fact that we would like to preserve our community. We really enjoy living in our community. People are welcome to come to our community but we do not want there to be an influx of people on one particular day of the week because that is the only area east of the Don Valley Parkway that is open.
The general feeling in our area is people do not mind working Sunday. We are a real mix of people who are entertainers, broadcasters, politicians, retailers, whatever. My husband travels Sundays. We all realize it is just the way of the world now that some people have to work on Sundays. But as far as designating our area a tourist area, I think we are all in support of the fact that we would like it maintained; we would like wide-open Sunday shopping.
Mr Carr: I take it then, because that is not an option on the table now, that you will be attempting to go before council to get the tourism exemption?
Mrs Stinson: That has been put forth. I was explaining why our area does well on Sunday. That is our cloak. That is our way of trying to survive. A lot of the businesses down there are independently owned and that was our survival. This is a little bit of a tough economic time. We are all having a tough time and the Sundays were able to help us get through it. They certainly did when we were allowed to open for those nine months, and it really hurt this spring.
Mr Carr: How will they do it? How will they decide whether you are going to take a tourist exemption? Will there be some type of vote from the businesses, or how do you see it working?
Mrs Stinson: From what I heard going on here, people want people to communicate. If we as the Beach retailers communicate with the Beach residents, most of us, 40% to 50% of us being residents in the area, I think the communication will be fairly good. So as a tourist-designated area, we will not exploit the area.
Mr Fletcher: This goes back to this morning's testimony or brief by Ms Shinn. You are saying most of the people you service are people who live in the area, yet this morning Ms Shinn was saying this is true, but a lot of the people who were coming into the area were from outside the area. It created traffic jams or more traffic, more people on the streets and that is what she was opposed to. Is that what you see or is it just people who live in your area? It is not from 40 kilometres away, it is not from elsewhere in Toronto, it is just your area that you service.
Mrs Stinson: You have asked a number of questions. I will try to sort them out. Number one, our area is a tourist attraction. There is no getting away from that. It is a unique part of our city. People come to it whether it is designated a tourist area or not. Sundays and Saturdays are very busy and people come from out of the area.
As a retailer -- and I can only speak from what happens in my store -- on Sundays 70% or 75% of people who come through the store, who make major purchases, are people who live in the area. The tourists who come through the area on a Sunday are often lookers and they are often down there to enjoy something other than the actual retail outlets on the street.
Mr Fletcher: You also said that during the time when we had wide-open Sunday shopping it was great, because the amount of traffic went down, the number of people in the area went down.
Mrs Stinson: It was consistent. It was not that it went up or down, it was just a lovely consistency.
Mr Fletcher: Do you believe in the concept of a common pause day?
Mrs Stinson: I do not know if it is applicable to the 1990s. I believe in a common pause day but I think it is more individual. I do not think it can be province-wide.
Mr Fletcher: Common pause, common sense; it is all common.
Mrs Stinson: Maybe that is it.
The Vice-Chair: I would like to thank you very much for taking the time to come and talk to us today.
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HERBIE'S DRUG WAREHOUSE
The Vice-Chair: Next we have Herbie's Drug Warehouse, Herbert Title. I would like to welcome you today. You have 15 minutes. You can divide that however you want, but I am sure the people up here would like to ask you questions. Can you please tell us who you are and where you are from for the record before you start?
Mr Title: My name is Herbert Title. I reside in Mississauga and my stores are scattered around Ontario. You probably know my stores more commonly as Herbie's Drug Warehouse. You have probably been supplied with a six-page submission of what we have prepared but I will not read you the six-page submission.
I would like to tell you a little bit about myself, my growth and the reason for Herbie's Drug Warehouse. I am a pharmacist. I am probably one of the few druggists operating chains of stores. I graduated way back in 1949, but as soon as I graduated I spent the next five years working for others, 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. When I had saved up enough money I opened up my first drugstore back in 1954. I did not realize what work was until I opened that store. Then I spent 15 hours, 7 days a week.
I got involved in discounting a long time ago. I am the individual who created the initial concept of the Bi-Way Stores and I opened and operated that first Bi-Way store. We were small in those days. Today, in my Herbie's stores, I now employ 487 people.
We object to stores being forced to close by virtue of the size. The Liberals introduced what we, within our profession, laughingly refer to as the Shoppers Drug Mart bill. It is rather laughable, because 7,500 feet suited Shoppers Drug Mart, but it has never suited us. We object to being stifled in our ability to grow and to compete. We need a larger store. I recognize this is difficult for some to understand, but 45 years ago when I entered this business, the drugstores then were 900 and 1,000 square feet, no larger. The largest grocery store was about 3,000 square feet. In this morning's Globe and Mail, Knob Hill advises that they are opening their 340,000-square-foot store.
What is so terrible about a drugstore that is less than 10% the size of one of your larger drugstores? It is a reflection of today. It is today. This is what the people want. There is a misconception that we can legislate what the people need. That is a fallacy, because in retail we learn there is an axiom: Provide the people with what they want if you want to succeed.
Today, every business encroaches upon other businesses. We do not balk when we see Canadian Tire run sales on Band-Aids or on school supplies. That does not negate the fact that they are a hardware and automotive supply store. We do not balk when we see Shoppers Drug Mart operating stores under the name of Shoppers Drug Mart Food Baskets. They compete with the food stores and that is okay. That is the way it should be. This is a free democracy and we should be allowed to compete in our own way.
The core business of Canadian Tire is automotive, the core business of Shoppers Drug Mart is the drug business and the core business of Herbie's is the drug business, always has been and always will be. With perhaps the exclusion of one of my larger stores where it is 57%, that core business is 75% drugstore-oriented and the products revolve around those drugstores.
The Shoppers Drug Mart people found it very convenient to have their stores set at 7,500 feet because it meant at that time, with Bill 113 coming in, that stores like Herbie's would have to close and therefore they would not have my kind of competition. They are high priced relative to our type of structure. We save our consumers between 12% and 20% certainly at least 20%, on the dispensing fee.
Seven-day service is critical to my survival inside the drug business. I operate small drugstores as well as my large drugstores, but it is all really the same. You need the seven days. We have a right to be there -- it is a historical right -- and we certainly have a responsibility to be there for our patients.
It is important that you understand. Too often I am told, "If they can't shop your store on a Sunday they'll shop your store on a Monday." That is wrong. Aches and pains do not wait. Why should people who get ill on a Sunday be forced to pay more at a store not of their choosing? It does not make sense.
It is also equally important that you very much understand this: By closing me on Sundays and on statutory holidays you close me 60 days a year. That is two months out of every year. How many of you can afford to have your income cut off for two solid months? I cannot. I cannot afford it, my staff cannot afford it. It is not right, it is not fair and it certainly is not necessary.
I have to compete with not only Shoppers Drug Mart, which is open 12 months of the year, I have to compete with the Americans. It is foolish for us to stick our heads in the sand and ignore the fact that the Americans are there. Anybody who lives within three hours of the United States is going over to the United States to shop. They are shopping at American drugstores, and I have to compete with them. Why force me to close? Why not allow me the opportunity of being able to compete with those Americans? If I am closed they are just going to get over there and shop there.
Closing us on a Sunday may be acceptable to those who are affluent: They can afford to drive to the next store; they can afford to go over to the Shoppers Drug Marts and the Pharma Plus stores, which charge more; they can afford to get in their cars and cross over the border. That is okay for the affluent, but those who cannot afford it cannot do it.
Bill 115 did not exist when I committed myself to all of our existing leases, my existing contracts, my legal obligations and expenses. I cannot afford to have that cut back. Sundays represent 17% of my company's business.
It is unfair to force high prices on the individual. I would like to read from page 5 of my report, paragraphs 4 and 5, if I may.
By causing our large drugstores to close, Bill 115 will force the prices of prescriptions and other health needs to rise at a time when both the provincial and federal governments are trying to contain high health costs.
It is imperative that you understand all the fine nuances that separate the drugstores, large or small, from all other retailers regardless of the crossover of products. We are pharmacists first, responsible to our governing bodies and controlled by a code of professional ethics not imposed upon other retailers.
There is another strong difference that all of you must understand, because too often we are compared to other types of stores. I am a drugstore, and by being a drugstore and being accredited by the Ontario College of Pharmacists I must have a pharmacist present, because if my pharmacist is not present I am not allowed to open my doors. I am not allowed to continue with my retail operation if my pharmacist is not present. That does not apply to supermarkets with pharmacies and others.
We cater to the poor. Certainly we cater to the unemployed. We cater to the single parents and to all those who need drugs and drug products at lower prices. I will read from page 3, paragraph 5 of my submission.
Our Sunday customers include those individuals this government wishes to protect: people on fixed incomes, single parents and low wage earners, all people badly in need of an alternative to the higher-priced traditional drugstores.
I concur with this government's ruling that nobody should be forced to work on a Sunday. I always have; I always will. Nobody in my company has ever been forced to work on a Sunday. That has always been our practice. Working shifts, a shift-type structure, is consistent with the drugstore business. Closing two days in a row, by being forced to be closed on that holiday Monday in addition to the Sunday, has been brought to the attention of the Ontario College of Pharmacists, and they are concerned that our patients will not have access to our files. Having access to our files is critically important. God help the individual who gets stuck with his physician or his hospital and does not have access to my computerized files. Certainly, you can fill a new prescription elsewhere at a higher price, but if you need the information about the drugs that an individual is on, you need access to my files, and my files are very confidential. As this government knows, confidentiality of drug files is critically important.
We were very successful recently by gaining the support of the physicians in the community of St Catharines. A bylaw has just been passed in that community specifically to allow Herbie's Drug Warehouse to be open on Sundays and holidays, and we are very proud of ourselves and we are very proud of the politicians who recognized their responsibility. The mayor of St Catharines put it very well. He said, "Although I am personally opposed to Sunday shopping, I am far more opposed to unemployment, and therefore I support Herbie in his bid to keep his drugstore open."
I will sum all of this up with just one short sentence. I hope you do not find it necessary to witness our death to realize that this patient was critically ill. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, sir. Each caucus will have four minutes. Go ahead, yes.
Mr Poirier: Interesting presentation, the whole question of size and the whole question of rights and the whole question of charting the whole thing, competition, free enterprise. It is rather interesting. I am glad you came forward with that. It offers an interesting perspective on that.
So you have never had a problem trying to get people to work on a Sunday.
Mr Title: No, sir. In all my years in business, I have always had a respect for the people's right not to work on holidays that are important to them, religious or otherwise.
Mr Poirier: I presume you have a list of people interested to work on Sundays?
Mr Title: We have an abundant list. There is an overflow of application for Sunday employment. There is such a fallacy out there that there is a shortage of people. There are part-timers, there are single parents, there are students. There is a massive lineup. We cannot possibly employ the overabundance of people waiting for Sunday employment.
Mr Poirier: So you think that barrier for the square footage limitation is a hindrance to you.
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Mr Title: It is terrible. It removes us from all forms of competition. You frustrate the ability of any entrepreneurial pharmacist to grow and expand in the real world of today. We compete with everybody, whether it be the Canadian Tire which sells our Band-Aids or whether it be the grocery store which sells our health and beauty aids, or the Americans who promote so aggressively into Ontario. We compete with everybody. We must be there. There are thousands, thousands, of items that exist today that were not even conceived of 45 years ago. We need that shelf space to accommodate these items.
Mr Poirier: I will not hide the fact that we have heard a lot of presentations from people who want to even keep it to extremely small pharmacies to open, like under 2,400 square feet. What would you have to say about that?
Mr Title: I am a discounter. I have been a discounter pretty well all of my retail life, and there is no secret to discounting. You must sell in quantity to be able to keep your prices low. I sell everything in my front shop. All of my over-the-counter drugs, all my health and beauty aids are sold at deep discount prices. If I cannot sell in volume, how can I maintain my deep discount prices and compete? I must sell in volume. To sell in volume, I must have space. I cannot display a dozen; I must display 50 dozen. Imperative.
Mr Carr: Thank you very much -- a very interesting presentation. One of the groups that I am concerned about is the seniors. I in my riding have formed a seniors' advisory council to advise me on issues of importance to seniors, whatever they may be. I understand from some of the polling data that some of the seniors are the ones who are most opposed to Sunday shopping.
I was wondering if you could comment -- because you are a discounter and, of course, seniors have a higher need for prescription drugs -- how you see the seniors. Is it a big part of your market, how much, and how would it impact on them with the difference in prices?
Mr Title: Seniors are critical. The price of drugs is not important to them, because it is carried by the government. Therefore, they are not out of pocket. But they do favour us because of other things. We offer things the small drugstores cannot. I have free blood pressure machines inside my store that are available to them and they use almost daily. We run clinics in our store that you cannot run inside a small drugstore. We run asthma clinics to train them in how to treat asthma. We run diabetic days to try to teach them how to recognize and how to treat diabetes. The comfort they have in having their prescriptions on our file is that they have access to it. They do not know if they are going to get ill on a Sunday or on a holiday Monday. They need access to our files.
It is interesting to me that you should say the seniors are opposed when in fact some of my strongest supporters are our seniors. We run extra discount days for our seniors. We are critically important to the seniors in each and every one of our communities.
Mr Carr: The average size of your store would be what now?
Mr Title: The average size of the store would be about, in selling area, just over 20,000 square feet. I have one very large store in Kingston that has a selling area of just over 30,000 square feet. That came about through demand in the community. We responded. It did not start at that size. We responded to the desires and the needs of the community, and we do cater to our customers. As I stated before, you give them what they want, not necessarily what others perceive that they might need.
Mr Carr: As you know, there is a lot of talk about getting tourist-exempt areas, but of course with the square footage you would have to apply individually and so on. What do you see happening in cases like that? There has been some talk that a lot of areas will be declared tourist-exempt, but when it comes to your particular field, being over 7,500, what do you see happening? Do you think most of the municipalities will opt to open your stores or not?
Mr Title: If the municipalities come into the thinking of the 1990s. It is critically important that they understand that they not interfere in the day-to-day role of business. It is the function of government to administer the spending of dollars. Government does not create dollars; business creates dollars, and we certainly create dollars for each and every one of our municipalities. I can see our municipalities, hopefully, as each and every one of them bend, supporting us in our desire. But that is a slow process. I am hoping that the province itself will see that justice is done and that we are all opened up across the board.
Mr Mills: Thank you very much, Mr Title, for coming here today and presenting your interesting brief. As a rule, I do not say too much or ask too many questions because I am the parliamentary assistant to the minister responsible for this bill you do not like. I just sit back here and listen and take notes, and we are listening and we are going to take all this information back. But curiosity has got the worst of me with your presentation.
I am no expert on marketing, but you say that you need a seven-day operating week to survive, the same seven-day week that was a factor in your decision to operate these larger stores. The biggest retail store that I can think of in Ontario is Knob Hill Farms. They take a factory or warehouse and, bingo, it is a massive grocery store. They are so big that you get lost in them, and I say to my wife, "Don't leave me because we'll get lost." Anyway, the marketing question I have is they do not open on Sunday or any other holiday; and, in fact, their motto is, "Sunday is our family day." Now, if the large stores are so critical to make it work, what are they doing that makes it work that you cannot do to make it work by closing Saturday?
Mr Title: I cannot speak for Mr Stavro with his large grocery stores; I can only speak for the drug business. Incidentally, I should make it clear that my request of this province is to recognize drugstores. I am not here to fight for wide-open Sunday shopping. I have my own views, but I am not expressing those. My requirement is to get the drugstores open. How Mr Stavro adjusts his working structure, Mr Mills, I truly do not know, sir. But I do know that, within the drug business, if you want to sell at low prices, you must have quantity of product, you must mass display it, you must merchandise correctly, and you must give the customers what they want. That is how my business grew. My first drugstore, sir, was 3,600 feet. It is still 3,600 feet, but that does not negate the need for the larger drugstores. We must be allowed to get up there and compete. Who is going to look after the community in the future if people like myself are put out of business? Who is going to provide the discount prices? The grocery stores with their pharmacies? I do not think so.
Mr Mills: In closing, just a quick remark: I really appreciate the services that you do for nothing for seniors -- the diabetic clinics, the high blood pressure. I have seen the folks hanging around, and I think that that is commendable in business, and thank you.
Mr Title: It may be selfish, because next month I become a senior citizen.
Mr Mills: I am pretty close to it myself.
The Vice-Chair: Thank you very much, sir, for that fine presentation. You did a good job.
Mr Title: Thank you very much.
1550
MIKE ANDERMAN
The Vice-Chair: Next up is Mike Anderman. Mr Anderman, have a seat, relax, have a glass of water if you want, take your time. You have 15 minutes. I hope you give enough time to allow each caucus at least one question. Please feel relaxed, and begin when you want, sir.
Mr Anderman: Thank you very much. My name is Mike Anderman. Rights currently available to both Jewish and Christian store owners under the Ontario Human Rights Code will effectively be taken away from Jews under Bill 115. Under the Ontario Human Rights Code, as clarified by the Supreme Court of Canada in O'Malley v Simpsons-Sears, a store owner closed Sunday and open Saturday only has to make a reasonable effort to accommodate an employee who does not want to work on his day of rest of Saturday. This would apply to a Christian store owner closed Sunday and open Saturday. The Supreme Court of Canada said there is a "duty to accommodate, short of undue hardship, on the part of the employer." For a Jewish store owner closed Saturday and open Sunday, under Bill 115, the employees have an absolute right to refuse work on Sunday. Whether it imposes an undue hardship on an employer makes no difference. It is the discriminatory result which is prohibited, not a discriminatory intent.
Ontario's NDP government says it has no intent to discriminate against Jews and other minorities under its proposed Bill 115, but here is what the Supreme Court of Canada has to say about such intent: "An intention to discriminate is not a necessary element of the discrimination generally forbidden in Canadian human rights legislation.... Discrimination...arises (from) a rule or standard which is on its face neutral, and which will apply equally to all employees, but which has a discriminatory effect upon a prohibited ground on one employee or group of employees in that it imposes, because of some special characteristic of the employee or group, obligations, penalties, or restrictive conditions not imposed on other members of the work force."
But discrimination against minorities is just what Bill 115 will accomplish. Despite the NDP government's claim that this bill has nothing to do with religion, it imposes economic penalties on Jews and others wishing to observe the Saturday Sabbath and who wish to work, shop or open a business on Sunday.
There is an absolute right available to Christians and not Jews. Christians who do not want to work on Sunday will no longer seek protection under the Human Rights Code as they will have stronger rights under Bill 115. Jews will be stuck with the weaker rights available under the Human Rights Code. For Christians who do not want to work on Sunday, Bill 115 gives an absolute right to refuse to work on Sunday. For Jews who do not want to work on Saturday, because that is their Sabbath, the Ontario Human Rights Code, as clarified by the Supreme Court of Canada, stated:
"What is required is some measure of accommodation. The employer must take reasonable steps towards that end which may or may not result in full accommodation. Where such reasonable steps, however, do not fully reach the desired end, the complainant, in the absence of some accommodating steps on his own part...must either sacrifice his religious principles or his employment."
Minority workers and consumers pay a price. Sunday closing of retail businesses limits the range of goods Saturday Sabbath observers can buy on the weekend. Would Christians who do not want to shop on Sunday like to be told they cannot shop on Saturday? It limits the job opportunities for Saturday Sabbath observers who will not work on Saturday and want to work on Sunday, making it both harder to earn a living and to find a job that is satisfying. Jewish-owned stores lose weekend business. Most Ontario retail businesses will be closed on Sunday if Bill 115 is passed. There would only be a narrow range of goods available locally Sunday from Jewish-owned stores closed Saturday. Because of the poor selection, shoppers tend to stay home or go to Buffalo. These Jewish-owned businesses lose sales because of this. They do not get a chance at the significant weekend business available to other store owners.
There is a higher standard of religious consistency and sincerity placed on Jews. Under the Human Rights Code, for Jews to opt for Saturday Sabbath observance and choose not to work on Saturday, they must be consistent with sincerely held religious beliefs. This is a higher standard of religious consistency and genuineness than will be required of Christians who do not want to work on Sunday. Why should Christians who do not want to work on Sunday bother with the Human Rights Code when the proposed Bill 115 gives them stronger rights and requires no consistency in religious practice? They have an absolute right to refuse to work on Sunday whether or not they are consistent in their religious practice. They can accept an assignment of work on Sunday or, by giving 48 hours' notice, refuse such an assignment that they have already accepted.
The tradition of Sunday as a day or rest was forced on minorities and those who reject religion by government law. These people do not accept Sunday closing as a cherished and loved tradition. Seeing Sunday as an accepted tradition ignores the fact that it appears so only through government coercion. If Jews and other religious minorities, and those who reject religion, had been free to choose, there would be a significant tradition of shopping on Sunday. The NDP's choice of Sunday as a common pause day continues, by another name, the religious discrimination of the past against Jews and other minorities. As such, it ignores and diminishes the rights and status of those who do not observe Sunday as part of their tradition. If Saturday had been chosen, there is no question that Christian religious leaders would be outraged, which is one reason, conscious or unconscious, that Sunday was picked. It is vastly easier and traditional for Ontario governments, this time the NDP one, to ignore the rights of Jews and other minorities here in Ontario. If it had been the government's intention to give Christians special rights, it could just have stayed with Bill 115 unaltered. No different legislation would be needed.
The NDP should abandon its common pause day initiative. Inevitably, the choice of any day will discriminate against minorities, and Jews are tired of having second-class rights. Only a deeply ingrained bias towards Christian customs could have allowed this legislation to be introduced. The NDP's first priority should be to treat Jews and other minorities with dignity and to give their traditions practical, equal respect with those of Christians in the law. If that was their first priority, they would not go ahead with the common pause day. There should be no government-forced common pause day on the Christian day of rest and no more government-enforced economic and religious discrimination against Jews and other minorities.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Anderman. We have, I believe, about three minutes per caucus for questions.
Mr Daigeler: I would actually like to direct my question to the legal counsel rather than to the witness. My question arises out of the testimony. I think the witness's argument is a very interesting and important one. Apparently he is seeing a right that will be available to Christian workers to refuse work on Sunday that is not available to Jewish workers who would want to refuse work on Saturday as their Sabbath. That would be, I guess, unconstitutional. I am wondering whether the Solicitor General has looked at that question and what the view is of the legal department on that matter.
Ms Scarfone: As that area deals with the employment standards legislation, the right to refuse, I am going to beg the indulgence of the Chair to confer with the Ministry of Labour.
The Chair: Have you got any idea how long it will be before you would have any response, or should we just wait until our next meeting?
Mr Daigeler: I certainly hope we could have an answer before we go into the clause-by-clause.
The Chair: Certainly, okay. Could you record the question and pass it on for, if possible, a written response?
Mr Daigeler: If it is possible, sure.
Mr Anderman: Could I have a copy of that sent to me, if it is going to be written? I would appreciate it. If you get a written response, my address is on here. I would appreciate a copy of it.
The Chair: I have a clarification on that point. When any response comes to our committee, it is a public document and thus available to any member of the public. I believe the clerk has made note of your request, so she would probably send it off to you or make sure that happens. The clerk asks also if you could remind her.
Mr Anderman: Yes.
Mr Poirier: I appreciate your paper very much. Coming from a minority myself, obviously I took very good note of your arguments and I am waiting with much anticipation to find out what the response of the current government is on these arguments. I see your point. Thank you for bringing it forward.
Mr Anderman: I hope the NDP listens. I hope they are not intransigent and that the common pause day is negotiable. I would hate to think they are holding these hearings and just simply will not listen to these objections and take them into consideration.
Mr Daigeler: I hate to disappoint you, but we had the new Solicitor General appear before the committee this morning. He was very strong in reiterating that the common pause day principle was not up for discussion and only certain amendments would be acceptable. In fact, he issued a press release that you may want to get a copy of. That was one of the points I asked him, "Why are we holding these hearings?" We have had a fair number of witnesses who indicated, "Leave the thing along, the way it is at the present time." I should indicate to you, in all fairness, that both the previous Solicitor General and the one who just assumed his office have very strongly indicated that that particular point is not up for discussion.
Mr Anderman: Thank you for clarifying that.
1600
The Chair: Mr Carr is absent. Mr Kormos.
Mr Kormos: He sure is.
The Chair: I am sorry, my apologies. I should not make a reference.
Mr Kormos: He just went out for a minute. He will be back momentarily.
Thank you for an impressive bit of research here and argument and structure. I take it then that you would oppose any legislation that would purport to tell retailers when to open or close? Is that consistent with the conclusions?
Mr Anderman: My feeling is that minorities should be treated equally. It is not a matter of saying that you want to treat people equally. It is the actual effect of the legislation that should be looked at. If you can come up with something that treats all people equally, I am not going to object to it. What I say here is that inevitably any day that you choose as a common pause day is going to discriminate against minorities. That is what I expect you will find. But if you can find a way around it, that is fine. Perhaps I am wrong in that perception.
Mr Kormos: I was going to try to elicit your help in that regard. But your concern about these amendments would extend as well to the legislation that was passed by the previous government, which created local optioning for Sunday opening or Sunday closing?
Mr Anderman: My concern is that we have a multicultural society and that minorities should be respected. What would happen if you have some municipalities open and some closed is that, for instance, Jews would have the right to shop in some parts of the province and not in others and there would be a discriminatory aspect in that. For instance, a Jewish person living in a community that did not allow Sunday being open, would have a harder time getting a job on Sunday, so the discrimination would still be taking place.
Mr Kormos: The status quo, the last government's legislation, I trust, is as repugnant to you as the amendments.
Mr Anderman: Are you asking me to comment on previous legislation?
Mr Kormos: No, I am asking you to comment on the law as it stands now, the one that is being amended by this legislation.
Mr Anderman: I somehow have lost the drift of your question. I am sorry.
Mr Kormos: These amendments, in some people's minds, really do very little to affect the existing law. Basically, they add definitions of tourist areas or tourist designations and guidelines for the assistance of councils.
Mr Anderman: They give employees an absolute right to refuse work on Sunday. If you recall, that is one of the main problems. It discriminates against Jewish-owned businesses and it effectively creates a second-class status for Jewish workers. So there is a big difference between this. These amendments have a serious discriminatory impact.
Mr Kormos: Okay, we have a problem here. We are at an impasse. Your primary concern then is with the Ministry of Labour legislation, the right to refuse work, and your secondary concern is with the Retail Business Holidays Act.
Mr Anderman: I have concerns with the Retail Business Holidays Act. It forces Jewish stores to be closed on Christmas. That is discrimination. There is no need for it in our society. I am not opposed to employees having 36 consecutive hours in every seven days. I do not find that discriminatory.
Mr Kormos: In the final analysis, though, you would conclude that a common pause day, as compared to a pause day -- because you are saying that a pause day, and I think nobody disagrees with you, that pause concept is essential --
Mr Anderman: People should have 36 hours or more.
Mr Kormos: But you are saying that a common pause day cannot be acquired, cannot be achieved, cannot be attained.
Mr Anderman: It is my impression that if you go for a common pause day, you are going to be in serious conflict with respecting minorities in a multicultural society. I do recognize that earlier today you said it is traditional and it is a Christian day of rest, but as I have pointed out here, it is not everybody's tradition.
Mr Kormos: Quite right.
Mr Anderman: People are tired of being treated as of second-class status and hearing: "The Jewish tradition is just a small group. We can put economic penalties and discrimination against them." It is about time we had enough of that. It is about time everybody had an equal right. I am sure you must stand for that.
Mr Kormos: Equal rights? My God, I was there, it seems, almost in the beginning.
Mr Anderman: What I have said is that this legislation is seriously in conflict with equal rights for minorities, especially for Jews. Do something about it.
Mr Kormos: I want to understand. Your primary concern is with the Ministry of Labour, with the labour legislation, and your secondary concern is with the Retail Business Holidays Act?
Mr Anderman: I will say this. I refer in here to the sections of Bill 115 that I am concerned about. They are all listed in here: subsections 39eb(1) and 39eb(2).
Mr Kormos: Yes, they are listed.
Mr Anderman: Those are the basis of my objections. My objections are all based around those sections of Bill 115. I just cannot respond in terms of that distinction you make because I do not think in those terms. Bill 115, subsections 39eb(1) and (2), creates serious discrimination against Jews. It creates a second-class status and it imposes economic penalties on them.
Mr Kormos: I appreciate that. Again, I am not sure whether these arguments were made the last round on Sunday shopping. It seems to me that the arguments would have been as applicable during the Liberal legislation as currently.
Mr Daigeler: They were addressed.
Mr Anderman: Well, if they were applicable, it is an opportunity for the NDP to do something about it now.
Mr Kormos: What I find interesting is what the Liberal response was, because Mr Daigeler says that the concerns were raised. Because of the dilemma that you create, I am interested in what the Liberal response was to the concerns that he says were raised, that are identical to the concerns you have raised. Mr Daigeler says the concerns were raised. Perhaps research will show that. Thank you very much.
Mr Daigeler: I do not think the issue of the Jewish worker's right to not work on Saturday was raised specifically; at least I do not recall it. However, the question of whether the identification of Sunday as the common pause day is discriminatory against other religions was, I think, settled through the court decision which ruled that it was not.
Mr Poirier: So what are you going to do about it?
Mr Kormos: We might do the same thing that -- we will have to look at the precedents.
Mr Fletcher: That is what we are here for, to listen and find out, and we might come up with something.
The Chair: Any further questions, gentlemen? Obviously, sir, you have stirred a great deal of profound thought on this very important issue. Thank you for coming and taking the time to present to us.
1610
MARATHON REALTY COMPANY LTD
The Chair: We have now a presentation from Marathon Realty Company, Ms Neena Gupta and Mr Ray Casey.
Ms Gupta: Good afternoon, gentlemen. I would like to introduce myself. I am Neena Gupta. I am a lawyer with Goodman and Carr. We represent Marathon Realty. Mr Casey is from Marathon Realty.
The Chair: You have approximately half an hour. Please divide that time, if you wish, between the presentation and the opportunity for members to ask questions. I see by the size of your presentation that there may not be much time left over.
Ms Gupta: I tend to put a lot more in. I fully appreciate that I probably will not get through everything I want to say about it. However, I did not want you to think that we were making up figures, so most of the stuff that I will discuss is backed up by statistical data and is tabbed. If anyone has any bedtime reading to spare, they can check whether I am making things up or not.
Some of you may know who Marathon Realty is. Marathon is a very large developer. It also owns about six shopping malls in Ontario. As landlords, they can see the erosion of the retail business in Ontario, and it is their belief that Sunday shopping, in general, would be one very useful way of promoting the retail sector in Ontario.
My concerns will be directed both to the philosophy of mandatory Sunday closing -- which I understand was part of the old 1989 Liberal version of the act, but I think some of the points made then ought to be reiterated here -- and the second half of my presentation will be focusing on the tourist exemption, because as a lawyer, I have some concerns about some of the drafting of the tourism exemption.
As most of us know, between July 1990 and March 21, 1991, there was Sunday shopping in Ontario. Marathon Realty began to track how many customers actually availed themselves of Sunday shopping during that period, and they were surprised at the intensity of demand for Sunday shopping.
Tab 1 of my presentation includes some of the customer traffic information that we gathered during that six-month period. We found that the average hourly traffic on Sundays in Dufferin Mall in Toronto, for example, was roughly 2,400 per hour, and Monday to Saturday was 1,800 per hour. To us that is a clear indication, in a very graphic way, that consumers appreciate having the convenience of both Saturday and Sunday shopping. There is a similar trend, although not quite as pronounced, at Place d'Orléans in the Ottawa-Carleton area.
In retrospect, we think the reason all that Sunday shopping was occurring is quite self-evident. I work, my spouse works -- Monday to Friday, overtime. We do all our errands on Saturday. Saturday at 6 o'clock, we are both exhausted, and our idea of a good time is crawling on to the La-Z-Boy and watching a video. It was not the glamorous yuppie life it was made out to be. The six months that we had of Sunday shopping, we actually did our errands together. I am not anomalous. All my colleagues at work, the cleaning lady at work, our secretaries, all enjoyed it. To make it sound like it is a poor-versus-rich issue, a unionized-versus-non-unionized issue, is not true. My unionized friends -- nurses, for example, policemen, factory workers -- work ridiculous hours, coming home at 8 o'clock in the morning and being totally dead between 9 and 5, and they do not like shopping Monday to Friday. It makes it a lot easier having two days of shopping.
I know there are some people who say making retail workers work on Sundays is, in effect, making the most vulnerable of society pay for the convenience of the rich. It is not true. We expect taxi drivers, hotel workers, restaurant waitresses, the aviation industry, airline pilots, people who work at the airport, municipal transportation workers, nurses, doctors -- everybody works Sundays. It is not unusual to work Sundays. The whole concept of a common pause day is a belief in an innocent time, when Monday to Friday, father went to work, Monday to Friday, mom did all the errands, and the children and mom and dad spent Saturday and Sunday together. That was idyllic, but it is not the way society works today.
The Goldfarb consultants' report, which I am sure you received a copy of when it first came out in December and January, indicates a surprising amount of support for shopping on Sundays. In particular, the public response was strongest where you had people who were lone parents with children, dual-income families or people who worked unusual hours. Those are the people who are hurt by legislation which forces stores to close Sundays.
I invite you to read, at some point in time before formulating your thoughts on Bill 115 on mandatory Sunday closing, the Goldfarb consultants' report. Whatever you think about the provenance of the report and whether or not it is biased, tab 3, pages 11 and 12 indicate a surprisingly strong amount of support, and what is more important, that it does not erode the family life or quality of the time spent together by the family.
At the bottom of page 11 of tab 3: 62% of Metropolitan Toronto residents felt that Sunday shopping actually gave them more time to spend with their families. If the very purpose of this legislation is to protect family life, perhaps mandatory Sunday closing is not the way to go.
Some of the criticisms I have read about Sunday shopping are concerned with two groups. One is the retail workers, and the second is the small proprietors who do not have the ability to stand up to people like my client, Marathon Realty.
Between July of last year and March of this year we did have our malls open, but we allowed our tenants to decide whether they wished to remain open. A surprising number did. That information as to the voluntary opening of our tenants can be found in tab 5.
It is probably quite interesting to look at, because there is some fluctuation. For example, in the two months preceding Christmas, November and December, there were a fairly large number of stores open, and in the less popular shopping months of January and February there is a considerable drop. That means each tenant made the decision as to whether it was profitable for them, or appropriate for them, to remain open on Sundays. We did not come down as a heavy landlord; we did not have to, because they recognized that is what they wanted to do.
There are of course costs associated for most of our tenants in remaining open on Sundays. There is additional labour; that is a consideration. One of the ways Marathon decided to cope with that was to reduce hours of opening at other times. At the Dufferin Mall, the mall is opened later, and at Place d'Orléans we actually reduced the hours of opening by 14 hours even though the Sunday hours were only an additional five hours. It was a way of reallocating productive shopping hours and taking away non-productive shopping hours. One of the advantages to the tenant was that their overhead costs were not significantly increased.
The other problem is whether retail workers will be coerced to work on Sundays. I have tried to find statistical information as to how many retail workers, during this period of September to March of last year, felt that they were coerced or intimidated to work on Sundays and how many felt they were doing it on a voluntary basis. I simply could not find anything of that sort, although I understand that, in particular, the food workers in Ontario are very opposed to Sunday shopping.
There are a couple of things we can do to protect retail workers without banning shopping in general on Sundays. Bill 115 contains an absolute right of every employee to refuse Sunday work on 48 hours' notice. Second, one should recognize that casual and part-time workers do want to work on Sundays to enhance their income and probably can do so and at the same time protect full-time workers' desire to have a break on Sundays.
Those are my thoughts with respect to the whole philosophy of Sunday shopping, but I recognize, given the history of Sunday shopping in Ontario, that there is a significant body of opinion that believes this is the way Ontario should go. Therefore, I would like to turn to my technical concerns, particularly as a lawyer, with Bill 115. While doing so, I think it might be useful for committee members to look at the proposed draft regulations of the tourism criteria, which I have included as tab 6 of my presentation.
Mr Carr: You are so organized. You must be a Capricorn.
1620
Ms Gupta: Yes, I am actually a Capricorn.
Under subsection 1(2) of the proposed regulations you have six potential criteria that can be used to determine whether an area is actually a tourist attraction.
I am from out west and I can tell you that I think much of Metro Toronto or downtown Toronto can easily fall within 1 to 6. When I arrived in Toronto at 18, I wanted to see two things: the CN Tower and the Eaton Centre. Those were the two lists. If the Eaton Centre was not a tourist attraction for me, I do not know what else was. I was 18, I was naïve, but I was not the only person from Canada who thought the Eaton Centre was the most amazing thing. Now, the West Edmonton Mall, of course, is better, but that is another thing. My client does not own that one, so I should not have said that.
There are enormous historical, cultural and ethnic attractions all over Toronto, and it is what American tourists come up to see. They come up to see Chinatown, they come up to see Kensington Market, they come up to see the things that make our city so much more liveable than every other city, and we want to close the whole city down.
It seems to me that you, as a government, will have a hard time excluding areas in certain cities under these tourism criteria. What you will have is councils arbitrarily interpreting these criteria depending on what their personal philosophies or what the collective philosophy of the council is, and there will not be the coherency and consistency I think my clients in general deserve.
In particular, I would like to draw your attention to number 4 of the tourism criteria which talks about, "Shopping activities which feature a unified concept or theme or other specialized shopping activities catering to visitors."
My client and I thought of a lot of things that featured a specific specialized theme, which probably were not intended by this committee. Things like discount malls, furniture malls, automobile malls, even discount fashion malls -- all of these exist within the greater Metro region and can arguably be a specialized shopping activity. But the catch is, you say to me, you have to cater to visitors. And I ask you, what do you mean, cater to visitors? What is a visitor? Am I visitor when I go to Mississauga or not? You have not told me. None of the regulations here define what a visitor is.
I do not think that is particularly wise or fair or workable, nor philosophically am I willing to concede that somehow we should have areas, because they cater to visitors, open on Sundays while the rest of us Torontonians to do not get a chance to enjoy it. And if perchance a business starts to attract too much attention from Metro Toronto residents, you are going to yank it away because they do not fulfil the criteria any longer.
The other serious concern I have about the tourism criteria as they are drafted is that there seems to be a significant unequal treatment of businesses in the same area, depending on whether they are larger or smaller. I could not figure out the philosophical justification for that. It is true, bigger businesses employ more people, but they are able also to hire more casual and part-time workers and adjust their workers' schedules to help each worker obtain a Sunday day of rest or another day of rest that they want. If you have a small business with two employees, the flexibility is not there. So if you are trying to protect people in the retail sector, there does not seem to be a reason to stop big businesses from opening.
I know it is popular to bash big business; it is easy to do, but it is not necessarily fair. Places like our large tenants attract customers for all of our smaller tenants. It is the way every single mall works in Canada. Big business is not bad. Without the big businesses our small businesses could not feed off them. That is the way it works.
Why should you handicap big businesses which have the ability to adjust, who are often unionized so they have to, through the collective bargaining process, negotiate things with their workers and often offer higher wages than the minimum wage given by full proprietors or small businesses? So why should you handicap them in a tourism area? What you are allowing, I suppose, is the tourist traps to remain open and the big businesses have to stay closed on Sundays. I do not know how many tourists are going to appreciate that.
Finally, I have some concerns about municipal councils being given the right to decide whether something falls within the exemptions in the tourism criteria. Municipal councils mediate and compromise between different interests in a city, but they are not really equipped to decide whether this application fulfils these technical criteria and that application does not. They are not equipped to say, "Well, this city has this precedence of interpreting this particular phrase, so we should be consistent with that." The kind of job that you have assigned municipal councils is a job that your regulatory boards do every single day.
If you insist on doing something like that, then go one more step and have a professional group of people who have experience in determining how applications should be adjudged and who are subject to the same kinds of checks as your Ontario Municipal Board or your Labour Relations Board. It is only fair. We should not be, as businessmen, subject to the whims of a particular council, which is not necessarily unbiased, because they are elected officials who have to account to their particular constituency. It is not their job to be judges. We have never allowed them to be so; and I do not think these regulations ought to make them so.
One last complaint. Under tab 7, I have found a possible definition of "tourist," but I have been trying to find the official definition of "tourist" and I do not think there is one.
Mr Poirier: We are working on it.
Ms Gupta: In my formal presentation which is written, it acknowledges that we cannot establish or verify the provenance, but it suggests that a person who is from out of the province or out of the country is a visitor or tourist -- that makes sense -- or anybody who travels 40 kilometres or more is a tourist.
It seems to me that in the last two years, I have been seeing a lot of ads suggesting that you should be a tourist within your own city, or you are a tourist within your own province. It seems to be singularly unfair to businesses who attract these kinds of local tourists not to take avail of the tourist exemption. I think a lot of work has to be done in drafting the tourist exemption.
Those are my formal remarks. My presentation under the tab text is a far more detailed reproduction of what I have done.
The Chair: We have only a little less than four minutes per caucus. Mr Poirier from the official opposition.
Mr Poirier: Having Place d'Orléans -- with an accent -- half in my riding, in the republic of Prescott and Russell, I am familiar with your operation.
Mr Casey: Why do you want this? You have your own rules.
Mr Poirier: That is right. We do have our own rules in Prescott and Russell. Could you confirm again? I followed with interest your provisions when you have tenants in your malls. What do you specify in your mall?
Mr Casey: The lease that the tenants signed provides for the landlord to set up the operating hours for the specific shopping centre. That is more or less required so that you have some kind of uniformity in opening hours so the customers understand it. When Sunday shopping was allowed, we basically said to our tenants, as it relates to that provision of their lease, "We will not put you into default of your lease if you do not open on Sundays." As you can see from the information, the majority of the tenants chose to open.
Mr Poirier: The reason I ask is that we had heard some pretty horrible stories about being dragged through the mud and tortured in the Spanish Inquisition because of Sunday shopping, what people claim mall owners do to leases of tenants, that if they do not observe they are out on their heads and that kind of thing.
Mr Casey: I am not aware of any situations where a tenant's lease was put in default or a tenant's lease terminated as a result of them not opening during that period of Sunday shopping.
Mr Poirier: In your operations or elsewhere also?
Mr Casey: Elsewhere also.
Mr Poirier: Because what we hear is pretty horrible. That is why I wanted to get your feedback on that.
Ms Gupta: The other thing is that the present legislation contains a provision saying any effort to make you open on Sundays is null and void. Perhaps if your concern is to protect the small franchisee or tenant you should keep the provision there so no one can force you to remain open on Sundays, but you can choose to remain open on Sundays.
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Mr Poirier: As a context, what if wide-open Sunday shopping became available? Would you put a clause in there forcing them to open on Sundays?
Mr Casey: That clause exists in the lease right now.
Mr Poirier: What does it say?
Mr Casey: It basically says the landlord determines the hours that the shopping centre will open and the tenants have to follow suit. As I mentioned earlier, what we did on Sunday shopping was allow the tenants to open at their own will. Obviously, the legislation as proposed overrides that.
Mr Poirier: Including your large tenants? You would make sure that they would not be tied down to the Sunday hours?
Mr Casey: That is right.
Mr Poirier: Thank you for that clarification.
The Chair: My apologies to you, Mr Carr, on an earlier occasion. I bypassed your party and I made mention of the fact that you were absent. That was not an intentional reflection, certainly given the hard work and long hours you have put in on this committee.
Mr Carr: I have asked more darned questions than anybody.
The Chair: It was more a matter of surprise than anything else, so my apologies.
Mr Klopp: Mr Chair, I promise I will not bring it up in the House.
Interjection.
Mr Carr: Thanks very much. After the kids saw Mark outside, they are now calling them Uncle Mark and Uncle Peter. They want to know when Uncle Peter is going to take them to the Eaton Centre.
Mr Kormos: On Sunday. I will go over to 184 Main Street first and sign them up, and then we will go to the Eaton Centre.
Mr Carr: Thank you for a good presentation. I was very interested in the point you made about the prejudice, if you will, of municipal politicians, that they will not accurately reflect whatever the provincial government's intentions are. I think we have already heard that. We have heard municipal politicians saying, "We'll use it to get out of it." Notwithstanding the fact the Premier says we want a common pause day, the municipal politicians are saying: "You're giving it to us. Thank you very much, we'll apply it the way we'd like."
I was interested in your comments about a provincial board or commission or whatever set up to look at this whole matter. This had come up before from a couple of groups -- I cannot remember which ones. They were saying, and I think you have mentioned something along the lines of the Ontario Municipal Board, a division of that, something like the labour board. Could you just expand on how you see it working and the makeup? Would it be a collection of business/labour? Appointment by the government? How would it be?
Ms Gupta: I think realistically it is going to be appointment by government, and usually what happens is you have a few lawyers -- you cannot quite escape them -- and you have people who are involved in the business sector, probably people who are experts in the tourism area. So I see the ministry of tourism as being a source of people. People in the bureaucracy there would probably be quite sensitive to what are actually tourism areas in Ontario and what they need in terms of exemptions to the legislation.
My concern is that if you have the old system, the 1989 version of the act really did not give them any criteria. They could exempt themselves or not exempt themselves depending on what they felt was politically correct for their area, and that is what municipal councils are good at doing. By adding and tightening up these criteria, you are essentially given them a role, saying: "Okay, these are the criteria. Does the application fit?" I see a potential inconsistency from municipality to municipality, which is not really fair for a business like Marathon where they have interests in more than one constituency, so essentially the same application would not be successful.
Mr Carr: There are two points with that and maybe you could just talk to them. Number one, I guess, would be the problem that any time a government appoints somebody it becomes political, although I think with the Ontario Labour Relations Board that has not happened quite as much. Maybe you could just talk to that.
Second, what do you see in terms of the cost of something like that? Would it be a big board? Have you given any thought? As you know, in this day and age, with our deficit being what it is, we do not need any added costs. I was just wondering if you saw something that could even be part-time, not a full-time board, where they just met occasionally. Is that what you see?
Ms Gupta: I do not think it has to be a very large board although I think it is important to have consistency of membership whatever you do; that is number one. Number two: Yes, I think there is a cost associated with it, but essentially, this legislation fobs off the cost to the municipal councils and I do not feel that this is particularly fair. Someone is going to have to pay for it. If we do not pay for it in our income tax, we will pay for it in our municipal taxes.
Finally, as a lawyer I have a great deal of respect for the administrative tribunals of this province. I think the people there try to be fair, they try to be professional about it. I think there is a different quality. I am not trying to hide that, but I think that once they are appointed they make a concerted effort, especially if they are full-time and especially if there are some long-term appointments or there is some continuity there. I think that in general they can be extremely professional and they develop an expertise over time that is very valuable, so they can cut to the quick of the issue and be consistent. They do not have to reresearch and reconsider every application, because they know there are three issues and they can consider them very quickly. That is why I like that kind of proposal, although this is all subject to the fact that I do not like mandatory Sunday closing at all. I am saying if you are going to do this, do it rationally, not irrationally.
Mr Carr: Thank you for a well-thought-out presentation.
Mr Fletcher: Just as an aside, when I came to Toronto when I was 18, I wanted to see Yonge Street on a Friday and Saturday night. That was my tourist attraction.
There is a heck of a lot here. I see presentations coming in from the ma-and-pa stores that are not high-tech, not as glossy, not as professionally read --
Interjection: But easier to recycle.
Mr Fletcher: Yes, easier to recycle. There is a lot of money put into this; I can see that. That is one thing that I hear a lot from the downtown business cores in a lot of cities: "Those darn malls. They're taking away our business, our downtowns are dying and there's nothing we can do." I see what is happening in my own community, where they tried to revitalize the downtown core, and what has happened is that they have allowed the malls to open on the outskirts and the downtown is dead and dying. The streets roll up. You name it, they roll up at 12 noon after the buses.
Ms Gupta: So we should let the downtown core be open on Sundays completely.
Mr Fletcher: All I am saying is that the darn malls are apparently being seen as the downtown core's problem in a lot of areas, and that is where a lot of the opposition is coming from: the small retailers who are downtown saying no to Sunday shopping. In my jurisdiction, during the election I would walk down the street, and in each store window you would see, Say No to Sunday Shopping, but outside the city, on the outskirts, the malls were saying, "We want Sunday shopping," and it was killing them.
Ms Gupta: I represent a lot of small businesses in terms of defending them against charges brought under the Retail Business Holidays Act, and that is essentially how I got to do this presentation, because I have been involved with it for the last two and a half years. I recognize there are sole proprietorships and small stores that do not want Sunday opening; I would be stupid not to, but I recognize that there are a lot of small and medium businesses that do want Sunday shopping and who hire me to say, "Get me off this charge," or "Can you pay off the crown prosecutor to get us off?" It is not true that all the stores on the street want to be closed on Sundays and all the malls want to remain open on Sundays. It is just simply not true. That dichotomy does not work.
Mr Lessard: In part of your presentation you mentioned that the number of hours the rest of the week were reduced, as far as mall openings are concerned, so that the mall could open on Sundays, and there were actually more hours cut back during the week than there were opening on Sunday.
Ms Gupta: That is true for Place d'Orléans, although I do not think that is true for Dufferin. I think it was more of an adjustment at Dufferin Mall.
Mr Lessard: Do you think that Sunday openings would create opportunities for increased employment?
Ms Gupta: We do not have any statistics to prove that, but on a casual observation at Dufferin Mall, which is where I shop on Sundays, the people who serviced me there were younger kids and people who were not clearly regulars, because they did not know the store as well. I think they got a chance to get their foot in the door when they would not have otherwise.
Mr Lessard: I guess that is one of my concerns. If you follow that submission, it would seem as though the full-time workers who did not want to work on Sunday were losing out to casual and part-time workers. Their hours were going to be cut back and they were going to be replaced by casual and part-time workers.
Ms Gupta: I do not think that works, because nobody -- well, very few people -- work all the hours that our malls are open. I mean, it is incredible. I think it is over 65 hours.
Mr Casey: It is between 55 and 65 hours a week that malls generally are open.
Ms Gupta: And Sunday shopping, at least at Dufferin, was only 12 to 5 or 11 to 5. So very few workers, I would think, would work at the mall every single hour the mall is open. That is just simply not true. Most of them work somewhere between 37 1/2 hours to 40-plus hours, so there is room for adjustment there.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your interesting and lively presentation. Our committee is adjourned until August 26 at 9 am in Windsor at the Windsor Hilton.
The committee adjourned at 1641.