Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question is really directed to Ms. Brisebois and Mr. Chant.
We talked about buying. Really, what it comes down to is changing a culture in North America. We used to have a very robust garment industry in Toronto. In fact, up until 30 years ago, we still had shops on Spadina Avenue downtown. I visited some of those shops. I was in a shop in Brampton 10 years ago that probably was very questionable, and probably needed some inspectors to go in there.
I would hazard a guess that if we went around this room here today, we would find that the clothes that we are wearing were not made in Canada, or very few of them were made in Canada. They were probably made in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Bangladesh. What it comes down to is a price point.
I guess my question for you, Ms. Brisebois, because you say that you represent 45,000 retailers across Canada, is this. It takes selling a whole lot, selling hundreds and hundreds of $10 T-shirts for your retailers to pay the cost of the rent in some of the malls they occupy, so where does the price point hit, that it no longer becomes viable or that we start increasing the prices to the purchasers here?
We all know our attitude. Everybody says, “Look what I got on sale”, so it becomes a very fine balancing act from the point of view of a business active in Bangladesh. You say that Bangladesh wants you to stay there, Mr. Chant. So how do we make that happen, that we hit that happy medium where we are providing the safety and security for the people in Bangladesh, and yet you are still able to operate there and we still find Canadian retailers who want to sell to Canadian purchasers who want to purchase at that price? Where is that balancing point, and how are you managing that, first of all, for the retailers, and for the producers?