Finance committee  Unquestionably, and that's certainly been our advocacy over a number of Parliaments. The situation in Canada is that the rates have come down slightly from what was, on average, about 1.64% back before 2015. They came down to 1.5% and were supposed to be 1.4% right about now, ac

Finance committee  There are obviously going to have to be parameters. We have a bunch of entities that are operating at close to full capacity. One of the tests, as with the other program, would be a revenue-drop threshold. Obviously, you're going to have a situation where that threshold is goin

Finance committee  Let's talk first about the credit card fee. It is a challenge, and it's become a particular challenge in this environment. The reasons for that you'll probably intuit. One is that people are tending to use cards more than they are cash. They're tending to use tap. Although we a

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the committee for today’s opportunity to present a retail perspective amidst this crisis. For those unfamiliar with the Retail Council, we represent small, medium and large retail businesses with a presence in every community across the

Finance committee  Thank you. We are very concerned about unlevel playing fields developing in the online space relative to domestic sales. By that I'm not trying to create it as a bricks and mortar versus online thing. There are a great many companies that are operating “.ca” sites in Canada that

Finance committee  Sure—

Finance committee  That's right. I want to be clear. The reports of retail's death are much exaggerated. Retail grew in this country last year. Our retail employment is actually holding steady. In fact, full-time retail employment has increased in this country, but it is a very disruptive period.

Finance committee  We have had conversations with an assistant commissioner. This was originally brought up in a relatively low-bridge way, should I say. We put in a submission initially to say, “Hey, you have a dissonance between your employers' guide and your folio.” Frankly, that received a pro

Finance committee  I think the challenge for smaller retailers is that they are everything from head chef to bottle washer, in a sense. They have so many hats to wear, and there is a great deal of regulation—federal, provincial, municipal, and so on. Compliance is more of a challenge if you are inv

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to provide a retail industry perspective in your pre-budget deliberations. The Retail Council of Canada is engaged on several key files before the government and before Parliament, among them the NAFTA renegotiations and the Canadian

International Trade committee  We would envisage there always having to be a reserve for new entrants, because we wouldn't want an ossified system. Let's understand that this is European-produced cheese to be consumed by Canadians at the end of the day. Presumably they're not buying it directly, which means t

International Trade committee  Yes, I would. Absolutely. We've supposed that it is based on prior years'...but you'd have to have some aperture for new entrants; otherwise, it would perpetually be sealed among a group of established players. There would always need to be enough flexibility to allow that. But

International Trade committee  I'll try to field that. It's pretty speculative. We certainly looked at the implications of the loss of the TPP, because we are now presuming that it is a loss, and the gains on CETA. We looked at the kinds of goods that were being brought in, and there is quite a differentiati

International Trade committee  I think the answer to that question is yes, and obviously any regime needs to contemplate smaller operators and specialized operators and, in some cases, those who cater to particular ethnocultural food groups and so on. Absolutely, we see that. We're worried that, if the quota

International Trade committee  Prospectively it could, if we were to gain enough scale, especially obviously in the online commerce space.