I think that question always comes up when we talk about either the minimum wage or raises through a collective agreement. I think there's a bit of fallacy in that situation. We hear it from small retailers and we hear it from large retailers, each time, that if minimum wages go up anywhere in the country, they're going to close the doors and they're going to lay off people. That actually doesn't occur. What does become factual is that people have more money to spend inside their communities, and that will generate more income and more jobs.
Again, I believe it's a flaw in the system that we need to keep margins so tight that it does not allow proper compensation to be provided to the people doing the jobs, but when we have a pandemic, they were able to [Technical difficulty—Editor]. We don't see stores closing and we don't see people going out of business as a result of this portion of it. I do realize that the pandemic has hurt people in other areas, but I'm talking about food retailers. There is research out there that says people are saying, “Look, if I knew that the grocery store person I see every week could get a decent wage and some pension and some benefits if I had to pay a couple cents more on a can of tuna or for my carrots, then I would happily pay it.”
A number of things will provide better and more stability. You can talk about some of the things in the small communities that you're talking about. As Carolyn Wrice said, very clearly, we have some people, some workers in these stores, who are using food banks. We have to accept that there's a flaw in this system. We could provide a far better situation for the workers who are in there and for those small communities, because there would be more money for them to spend at other locations as well.