Month: June 2020

Nova Scotia-based Empire Company is better known to Canadians as grocery stores under the Sobeys, Safeway, IGA and FreshCo labels. You might have missed the business news the other day about the company’s highly profitable fourth quarter and past year. Not many companies in the food business get to announce a 43 per cent increase in net earnings in just one year.

We also hear that Sobeys and the rest are now cutting the pandemic increase that many grocery store employees have been earning since the pandemic hit Canada in March. It has kept them competitive with each other in the business by adding $80 to $100 per week to employees pay for the past three months.

Now that the crunch (or at least the first wave of the novel coronavirus) is on the wane, even companies such as Loblaws—which includes Zehrs and No Frills, are eliminating the bonus. It was really nice that Galen Weston, of the third richest family in Canada, made the announcement to the companies customers who use its ‘Optimum’ loyalty program.

When asked by the media why the company would not continue the improved salary program, the Weston heir, worth about $13 billion, responded that he is a strong believer in a progressive minimum wage and “would support any government-led effort to establish a living wage.”

While there is an assumption that Loblaws-owned stores are among the most expensive stores for Canadians to shop for their groceries, there has been a constant increase in food prices across all grocery stores this year. Any house holder who pays attention to the weekly flyers and in-store prices can attest to that. And any large chain that wants to argue that can check with their own comparison shoppers to verify it.

To cut back now on their employees’ salaries shows their greed.

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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]

So, let it be with Sir John A. Macdonald. How often must we decry the stupidity, the ignorance of those who want to destroy the records, the mementos, the reminders of the heroes of our past? Why can we not just recognize their accomplishments? Is there no forgiveness for the errors of their times?

Talking to a university student yesterday, he asked me about these attempts to have his generation apologize for the failures of the past. He wanted to know if it made sense for him and his friends to be apologizing for something that his generation has never considered.

The facts are that he was neither born with prejudice, nor was he taught prejudice by loving parents. He understands that the residential schools for our aboriginal peoples were a sorry mistake of politicians of our past. They thought they were helping. They were not.

Apologies by government were offered and reparations are being made. Now let us go on together.

But I object strongly to the suggestion that there is systemic racism in Canada. Growing up in Toronto was an education in the peoples of our world. And for prime minister Trudeau to say that there is systemic racism in the RCMP is a slur on our Mounties. What he proved in that statement on television was that he really did not understand the word ‘systemic.’ There are probably more than a few with racist tendencies here and there among our red coats but it is hardly a part of the system.

Actually, as a young airman stationed in Alberta, I found the new Mounties doing the provincial police duties in rural areas were more likely to come down hard on us than the local aboriginals.

In the United States, there is ample reason for people to want to pull down statues such as Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. That statue might have been there for the wrong reasons.

But please pay attention to the words of William Shakespeare: “The evil men do lives after them.”  We need to be reminded of that when we see the memorials to the greats of earlier times.

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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to  [email protected]