Manitoba Committee Hansard — 3 June 1993 (Education Committee, Sitting 5, 35th Legislature, 4th Session)

35-4-ed5

Manitoba — Debates (Hansard)

MG-8048 Fourth Session ·Thirty-Fifth Legislature of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba STANDING COMMITTEE on ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 42 Elizabeth II Chairperson Mr. Jack Reimer Constituency of Niakwa VOL. XLII No. 5 -11 a.m., THURSDAY, JUNE 3,1993 ISSN 0713-9969

MANITOBA LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Thirty-Fifth Legislature Members, Constituencies and Political Affiliation NAME ALCOCK, Reg ASHTON, Steve BARRETI, Becky CARSTAIRS, Sharon CERILLI, Marianne CHEEM A, Guizar CHOM IAK, Dave CUMM INGS, Glen, Hon. DACQUAY, Louise DERKACH, Leonard, Hon. DEWAR, Gregory DOER, Gary DOWNEY, James, Hon. DRIEDGER, Albert, Hon. DUCHARME, Gerry, Hon. EDWARDS, Paul ENNS, Harry, Hon. ERNST, Jim, Hon. EVANS, Clif EVANS, Leonard S. FILMON, Gary, Hon. FINDLAY, Glen, Hon. FRIESEN, Jean GAUDRY,Neil GILLESHAMMER, Harold, Hon. GRAY, Avis HELWER, Edward R.

HICKES, George LAMOURE UX, Kevin LATHLIN, Oscar LAU RENDEAU, Marcel MALOWAY, Jim MANNESS, Clayton, Hon. MARTINDALE, Doug McALPINE, Gerry McCRAE, James, Hon. MciNTOSH, Linda, Hon. MITCHELSON, Bonnie, Hon. ORCHARD, Donald, Hon. PALLISTER, Brian PENNER, Jack PLOHMAN, John PRAZNIK, Dam�n. Hon. REID, Daryl REIMER, Jack RENDER, Shirley ROCAN, Denis, Hon. ROSE, Bob SANTOS, Conrad STEFANSON, Eric, Hon. STORIE, Jerry SVEINSON, Ben VODREY, Rosemary, Hon. WASYL YCIA-LEIS, Judy WOWCHUK, Rosann Vacant Vacant CONSTITUENCY Osborne Thompson Welli ngton River Hei ghts Radisson The Maples Kildonan Ste.

Rose Seine River Roblin-Russell Selkirk Concordia Arthur-Virden Steinbach Riel St. James Lakeside Charleswood Interlake Brandon East Tuxedo Springfield Wolseley St. Boniface Minnedosa Crescentwood Gimli Point Douglas Inkster The Pas St. Norbert Elmwood Morris Burrows Sturgeon Creek Brandon West Assiniboia River East Pembina Portage Ia Prairie Emerson Dauphin Lac du Bonnet Transcona Niakwa St. Vital Gladstone Turtle Mountain Broadway Kirkfield Park Flin Flon La Verendrye Fort Garry St. Johns Swan River Rossmere Rupertsland PARTY.

Liberal NDP NDP Liberal NDP Liberal NDP PC PC PC NDP NDP PC PC PC Liberal PC PC NDP NDP PC PC NDP Liberal PC Liberal PC NDP Liberal NDP PC NDP PC NDP PC PC PC PC PC PC PC NDP PC NDP PC PC PC PC NDP PC NDP PC PC NDP NDP

12 2 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Thursday, June 3, 1993 TIME- 11 a.m. LOCATION- Win nipeg, Manitoba CHAIRP ERSON- Mr. Jack Reimer (Niakwa) ATTENDANCE- 9- QUORUM - 6 Members of the Committee present: Hon. Mr. Stefanson Messrs. Dewar, Helwer, McAlpine, Penner, Reimer, Mrs. Render, Messrs.

Rose, Storie APPEARING: Sharon Carstairs, MLA for River Heights Clayton Manness, MLA for Morris Daryl Reid, MLA for Transcona WITNESSES: Charles Finnbogason, Bramalea Limited Joan Seller, Canadian Union of Pu blic Employees-Manitoba Pau l Mo ist, Canadian Union of Pu blic Employees-Manitoba Robert Ziegler, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 832 Art Kerr, Manitoba Association of Shopping Centres Cliff McMillan, Winnipeg Presbytery of the United Church of Canada and The Association of Christian Churches in Manitoba WRITTEN SUBM ISSION: Toby Oswald, Canada Safeway Limited MATTERS UNDER DISCUSSION : Bill 4- The Retail Business Su nday Shopping (Temporary Amendment) Act Bill 23-The Retail Busi nesses Hol iday Closing Amendment, Employment Standards Amendmen t and Payment of Wages Amendment Act *** Mr.

Chairperson: Will the Com mittee on Economic Development please come to order. The committee will continue to consider the following bills this morning: Bill 4, The Retail Bu sine ss Su nday Sho pping (T emporary Amendments) Act; Bill 23, The Retail Businesses Holi day Clo sing Amendmen t, Employmen t Standards Amendmeni and Payment of Wages Amendment Act. As agreed last night, we will continue to hear from presenters this morning. Before we adjourned last night, I read the list of presenters who requested to return this morning, and they are: Mr. Charles Finnbogason, Mr. Walter Kucharczyk, Mr. Ken Nolan.

On your list, you have Ms. Toby Oswald, but she is instead giving a written presentation, which has been distributed. We also have these presenters: Ms. Joan Seller along with Mr. Paul Moist, Mr. Robert Ziegler, Mr. Randy Cameron, Mr. Art Kerr and Reverend Cliff McMillan. At this time, I will call Mr. Charles Finnbogason. His presentation has been distributed. You may begin, Mr. Finnbogason. *( 1110 ) Mr. Charles Fln nbogason (Bramalea Limited) : Thank you, Mr. Chairperson. My name is Charles Finnbogason.

I am appearing before you this morning in my capacity as vice president of Manitoba and Saskatchewan for Bramalea Limited. Bramalea manages St. Vital Centre and Unicity Mall in the city of Winnipeg. I am also appearing on behalf of Cambridge Shopping Centres Ltd., the managers of Kildonan Place; and the Cadillac Fairview Corporati on, managers of Polo Park Shopping Centre and Portage Place. As an industry , we were pleased with the government's decision in November of 19 92 to give retailers the option of being open for business on Sunday s without the arbitrary constraint of li miting the number of employees.

As I am sure you are aware, the retail industry has been suffering over the past several years due to consu mer uncertainty, unemployment and

12 3 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 19 93 cross-border shopping. The key to success in retailing is to provide the customer with what they want and when they want it. Based on our ex perience since No vember of 19 92 , our cus tomers want the option of fulfilling their shopping needs on Su ndays, and we want to be able to continue to give them that option. Under the current legislation, consumers have the option of staying at a hotel, eating in a restaurant, taking an airplane flight or attending a sporting event on Sundays. We feel the shopping pub lic should have the same option.

Does a change in legislation to permit Sunday shopping mean that all retailers and all shopping centres will be open every Su nday? We do not believe this to be the case. Our hours of business have always reflected the needs of our customers and will continue to do so. For the same reason, we chose to remain closed on Easter Sunday and Victoria Day. Given the option of shopping on Sundays, our customers will vote with their wallets, clearly indicating their preferences, and we will react accordingly.

We feel the decision to open on Su ndays should be based on cus tom er requi rements and not government legisla tion. While our pr eferenc e wou ld na turally be for unrestricted Su nday shopping, we feel the proposed legislation gives our retailers the abil ity to serve the needs of their customers. As such, we ur ge you to recommend the passage of the proposed legislation. This concludes my presentation. Should you have any questions, I would be pleased to address them. Mr. Chairperson: Thank you very much, Mr. Finnbogason. Mr. Jerry Storie (FUn Flon): I want to thank Mr. Finnbogason for his presentation.

The first question is that in your final paragraph you suggest that your preference would have been for wide-open Sunday shopping, and you say this legislation gives our retailers the ability to serve the needs of the customers. The legislation that you are referring to is Bill 4. Mr. Flnnbogas on: I am talking about the two bills together. [interjection] Mr. Storie: Yes, Mr. Chairperson, I was going to ask that question. I appreciate Mr. Finnbogason clearing that up. But, of course, Bill 23 does not do that. Bill 23 gives the municipality the right to decide.

I am wondering whether you think that is an appropriate way to develop provincial policy. Mr. Flnnbogason: We operate under the same constraints in other provinces and do not have any difficulty with that. Mr. Storie: Mr. Chairperson, I recognize that other jurisdictions have also chosen the option of piecemealing this kind of policy. Manitoba, obviously, is qu ite different.

I am wondering whether, given the fact that you represent shopping centres in the city of Winnipeg, whether you have had a chance to meet and discuss the concerns, for examp le, of representatives of the Manitoba Chamber of Comm erce, who fear that this legislation is going to contract their opportunities. Mr. Fln nbogason: No, I have not. I am appearing on behalf of three real estate developers with properties in the city of Winnipeg and none outside. So, no, I have not. Mr. Storie: Mr.

Chairperson, the other question I had, had to do with the suggestion that everything was going well within the current system, the wide-open trial period. I am wondering why it is that, for example, today in the press we saw reports from downtown merchants that suggest that this experiment has been a fai lur e, that Sunday shopping has not increased traffic, that it has not seen an increase in the volume of sales. How do you account for those discrepancies even within the city of Winnipeg? Mr.

Flnnbogas on: I would suggest that the issue is not whether Su nday shoppin g woul d be suc cessful or is successful, because in some cases, particularly in downtown developments, it may not be. I think the key here is giving the retailers the option to be open. Mr. Storie: Mr. Chairperson, in terms of the centres you represent, would the majority of tenants not be able to open under cur rent legislation given the fact that many of them, if not the majority, could operate and perhaps do operate with fewer than four employees already? Mr.

Flnnb ogason: I think the idea of imposing arbitrary restrictions on the ability of a retailer to properly serve their customer needs is not the way to approach the issue. There is no question that some small stores may be able to open with one

June 3, 1993 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 12 4 employee or two employees or as many as four; obviously, a department store would not be able to do so. We feel the retailers must have the ability to properly serve the needs of their customers with whatever number of employees are required. Mr.

Storie: I guess the question was, given the experience of many of the small businesses in your shopping centres cu rrentl y, and in shopping centres other than the ones that you represent here this morning, has not been a successful one, I am wondering whether that means, then, that the arg ument tha t this re presents an economic opportunity and a business opportunity holds any water. What was said before is that it is the government's argument for pursuing it. Mr. Flnnb ogason: If Sunday shopping proves not to be successful for retailers or for shopping centres, they will not be open.

The key issue and the point that we are trying to make is that the consumer will decide. If they shop, we will be open, the retailers will be open. They v.1ll be suc cess ful . Bas ed on our exper ience , in a situation where the retailers cannot be compelled to open and the employees cannot be compelled to work, the vast majority of our stores continue to be open and continue to do well. If they were not doing well, they would not be open. Mr. Storie: You are here representing Bramalea limi ted.

The Manitoba Federation of Independent Business, in a survey that was done in Manitoba amo ngst their memb er s, more than 4,000 members, suggested almost 60 percent of retailers are opposed to this leg isla tion. I am jus t wondering how this squares with your support of it and whether, in fact, you have done a survey of your own tenants. Mr. Flnnb ogason: The retailers who do not feel it is appropriate, profitable or whatever to be open on Sund ays under the proposed legislation have that option. The fact that they continue to open indicates to me that there is a consumer demand which we want to fulfill. Mr.

Storie: Mr. Chairperson, the legislation, as Mr. Finnbogason knows, provides for exceptions to existing commercial leases with your tenants, which will allow them to close notwithstanding provisions in the leases which would require them to open. I am wondering whether, if this committee were to ask businesses in shopping centres, not only the ones that you are representing but others, if they would suggest that there is pressure, subtle or otherwise, to remain open? Do you feel that it is possible that the owners of some malls will subtly put pressure on small businesses to remain open? Mr.

Flnnb ogason: I obviously cannot speak on behalf of other developers, but I think the legisla tion is absolutely clea r. The retailers cannot be compelled to open. I would suggest that if there was any indication that they were being compelled to open, then obviously I would assume that the government would take appropriate action in that regard. Mr. Storie: One of the malls that is managed by Bramalea is Portage Place and, of course, there have been rumours of discontent- Mr. Flnnb ogason: It is managed by Cadillac Fairview, not Bramalea. Mr. Storie: I am sorry, Cadillac Fairview.

But you are saying that certainly in your case, despite the fact that it is probably in your interest to have all of the tenants open on a Sunday, you do not feel that it is likely that there would be any pressure to remain open? *

(1120) Mr. Flnnbogason: Because a shopping centre is a retailing unit, obviously, if a customer comes to a shopping centre on a particular day to shop at a particular store and the store is not open, they may be upset that they made that shopping trip. Certainly, from the viewpoint of a customer, it would be preferable to have the ability to be consistent in terms of a customer coming to a shopping centre and knowing that all of the retailers would be open. Again, are other developers bringing pressure to bear on their retailers to open? I do not know. Mr. Storie: Final question, Mr. Chairperson.

It strikes me as odd that an organization the size of your s would be here before the committee supp orting legislation which could result, for example, in the City of Winnipeg saying no to Sunday shopping, no to the operation of your malls in the city of Winnipeg, while at the same time municip alities representing communities lik e Winkler and Emerson, Carman could be open Stonewall, the surrounding areas.

125 LEG ISLATIVE ASSEM BLY OF MANITOB A June 3, 1993 I am interested to know philosophically why it makes sense to allow municipalities to make these kinds of decisions, to allow this kind of patchwork quilt potentially to develop in the province with respect to Sunday shopping. Mr. Flnnbogason: I touched on this point earlier. I think the key issue is the ability to decide whether or not we are going to be open. You are quite right that under the proposed leg isla tion, the decision of whether or not a particular municipality is going to be open will be up to the municipality.

As an industry, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I have no doubt that the City of Winnipeg will be holding hearings similar to this one and it is our intention to make representation at those hearings as well. Mr. Storie: Final question, honest. If you had had your druthers, you would have rather seen the provincial government take responsibility and say that we are going to have wide-open Sunday shopping. Am I correct in that assumption? Mr.

Flnnbogason: Our preference as an industry would obviously be to be able to open, or to enable our retailers to open, during those hours when our customers wish to shop. Whether the decision is a provincial one or a municipal one, we work under those constraints in a number of different provinces across the country and have no problem with either of them. Mr. St orie : Thank you very much, Mr. Finnbogason. Hon. Eric Stefanson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism): Mr. Chairperson, I just have one question. You touched on the issue of consumer preference, consumer opportunity and so on.

I am wondering if you have any information, since the trial period began back in late 1992, for the clients you represent, the shopping centres you represent, how Sunday would compare to other days of the week. Do you have any information you can share with us in regard to that? Mr. Flnnb ogason: I heard a comment from one retailer indicating there has been a hundred percent increase in Sunday sales since they had the ability to open on Sund ays, but that is obviously not the information you are looking for. We do not split our sales out by the day of the week.

However, by observation, the traffic counts on Sundays at this point probably make it the third busiest day of the week after Saturday and Friday. The sales productivity during those five hours on Sunday would appear to be significantly higher than a number of the days during the week. Mr. Chairperson: Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Finnbogason. We will now call on Mr. Walter Kuc harczyk. That is the second time he has been called. Mr. Ken Nolan. Mr. Ken Nolan has been called twice now. Not here. Ms. Joan Seller and Mr. Paul Moist, president of CUPE Manitoba. The presentation has been distributed.

You may begin at any time. Ms. Joan Seller (CUPE Man itoba ) : Mr. Chairperson, CUPE Manitoba represents 20,000 members who work in the public sector throughout the province in areas such as heal th care, municipalities, school boards, daycares, nursing homes, Ma nitoba Hydro, the Worker s Compensation Board and child welfare agencies. While our members do not work in the retail sector, we believe that Bill 23 touches upon an important area of public policy, one which has spa wned much de bate thr oughout our communities and one which we feel compelled to speak on.

Many CUPE members work in operations which require them to provide coverage and services seven days a week, 24 hours a day. These operations, such as our health care system, are essential and require this level of service. The same, however, cannot be said of the retail sector, where until recently it was acceptable to the vast majority of the popula tion to have access to retail stores and businesses six days per week.

The only groups which seem to be requesting expanded rights to open on Sunda ys are certain business groups ; however, even amongst the business co mmunity there does not exis t a consensus on this point. Bill 23 represents this government's attempt to toss a political hot po tato onto munici pal governments for their decision. The reasons for this action, in our view, is the obvious absence of consensus both within the Legislature as a whole, and indeed, within the government itself.

Should Bill 23 be adopted, the inevitable result would be the absence of a cons is tent, standardized, provincial-wide policy in favour of a

June 3, 19 93 LEGISLATIVE ASSEM BLY OF MANITO BA 12 6 patchwork of differing Sunday shopping provisions. Bill 23 represents a nonsolution to a thorny political issue for this government, and for the reasons outlined herein, CUPE suggests that the bill be withdrawn. As mentioned, there does not exist a consensus within the business community on the issue of Sunday shopping. The Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce has lobbied long and hard for expanded Sun day shopping laws, while the Manitoba Chamber of Commer ce has reaffi rmed their opposition to such expanded laws.

What is clear is the fact that many businesses which have opened on Sundays have only done so in response to their competitors opening for business on Sundays. I quote from an

article in the Winnipeg Free Press, March of this year: "Even my boss doesn't like to open the doors on Sunday and make us come in to work, but if our competitor is doing it we don't have any choice." In rural Manitoba, the experiment initiated in December of 19 92 has not been met with widespread agreement or consensus. Many communities have even stronger views about the inadvisability of expanded Sunday shopping after the experiment.

Again, I quote, this time from the Brandon Sun, March of this year: Manitoba's second largest city is now officially opposed to Sunday shopping and there was no shortage of debate yesterday on both sides of the issue . . . Reverend Cliff Bergman, pastor of McDirmaid Drive Alliance Church called it 'the pinnacle of irony' that the province was cutting the workweek for its own empl oyees while endorsing a seven day workweek for retai l workers." The final area of concern from rural areas is the absence of public hearings on this bill outside the city of Winnipeg.

Many have called upon the gove rnment to hold hear ings throughout the province in order to adequately gauge the results of the expanded Sunday shopping rules which went into effect throughout the province. The views of busi ness and community le ader s from ru ral Manitoba deserve to be heard on this important province-wide issue, and CUPE supports their call for full public hearings throughout the province. The proponents of expanded Sunday shopping regula tions have cited increased retail expenditures as one of the reasons to adopt such legislation.

In December, Industry department officials predicted that a best-case scenario could result in annual increases in expenditures of as much as $300 million representing a 2.1 percent increase. It was also predicted that this increased economic activity could result in more than 4,500 jobs and more than $1 5 million for the provincial treasury.

These best-case scenarios were at best just predictions, probably fueled by the results in the first few weeks of the trial period of expanded Sunday rules which coincided with the Christmas shopping season whereby all reports said sales were up over the same period the year previous. However, there is virtually no empirical evidence to sub stantiate the optimistic predictions for enhanced sales in business and for increased empl oyment. Consu mer spending habits are dictated by disposable income available along with one's confidence in the economy and their own employment security.

It is difficult to imagine how extending shopping hours will somehow expand the amount of disposable income available to shoppers. * (1 13 0) Statistics Canada recently released a study which confirms what many working people already knew, namely, that their real incomes have been declining, and there does not appear to be any end in sight. Indeed , this go vernment itself is removing in the area of $1 29 million from the pockets of some 10 0,000 consumers who are public employees throughout the province through the introduction of Bill 22.

Yet we are asked to believe that these people, along with thousands of Manitobans who are unempl oyed, underemplo yed or on fixed and declining incomes, will somehow increase the amount they are buying through their having another day to shop. Manitoba's economy is one of the poorest performing economies in this country, and it would benefit greatly from some government stimulus. Bill 23 provides no such stimulus. It simply represents this government's attempt to appear to be doing something positive in tough economic times.

The current legislation which al lows businesses to operate on Sunda ys with no more than four employees was the result of a previous debate on

12 7 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 19 93 this subject matter and represented a compromise of sorts between business and government. It was not a perfect compromise. It allowed retailers of all sizes to open, but the legislation still favoured small retail outlets, often those run by families where it was feasible operationally to open. Large retailers had the right to open, but the size of their operations dictated that it was not functional or practical to open with only four employees allowed to staff their outlets.

While not a perfect situation, this left a sizable portion of Sunday business to smaller retail outlets whose share of retail business has shrunk considerably over the years. The cu rrent experiment and the proposed enabling legislation allow large retailers to assume a greater portion of the available Su nday business at the expense of small businesses.

This point was confirmed recently by a small business person in the city of Brandon, and I quote from the Brandon Sun of March 19 93: "I guess what I'd like to see right now is if it even had to go down to two or three (employees) ... it would probably be better for stores our size and smaller . . . .

Since the government thought it would be adequate for medium-sized stores like ourselves and the smaller people, but obviously it wasn't." "Since the four-employee rule was set Phillips has encountered increased competition from large operations who have entered a market once reserved for corner mom and pop operations ... . The grocer said his declining Sunday sales are a sign of things to come if wide-open Su nday shopping continues." In

summary, the expansion of Su nday shopping laws, while in our view not contributing greatly to the province's overall economic performance, also has the distinct probability attached to it that it will hurt small busin esses . In turn, this leads to increased unemployment and further weakening of our economy. All matters of public policy of which this subject is but one ought to be examined for moral, ethical and public interest points of view. On the sub ject of Sunday shopping, there is widespread sup port within our community for Sunday to remain largely a day of rest.

This cannot and is not the case for many people, including many CUPE members who provide essential public services. But does Sunday shopping come anywhere close to meeting the test of an essential service? Manitobans have access to supermarkets for some 1 08 hours a week, from Monday to Saturday, 8 a.m . to 11 p.m ., and to retail department stores some 90 hours per week between Monday and Saturday. Will six more hours on a Sunday represent a much needed addition to these totals? Are there not now enough hours per week available between Monday and Saturday?

Any argum ents in supp ort of the need for exp anded Sunday shopping hour s mus t be weighed against the family, religious and other legitimate needs that many working people have traditionally realized on Sundays when such days were observed as days of rest. While we cannot place economic price tags or predictions of the value we derive from having such days of rest, it is important for our laws to be measured from a moral and ethical perspective in addition to the economic perspective. Su ndays represent a day when children are not in school, and are a time when whole families can spend quality time together.

Many Manitobans attend churches or other places of worship on Sundays. Many Manitobans volunteer within their communities as coaches and community club activists, and many of these pursuits occur each and every weekend, with Sundays being just as busy as Saturdays. These are but a few of the legitimate pursuits that are normally associated with Sundays, and the treatment of Sunday as another business day detracts greatly from the qua lity of life in the families, churches and communities where those workers, who must work on Sund ays, live.

CUPE neither accepts or views as credible arguments to the effect that expanded Sunday shopping laws are simply fulfilling a need within our society. The other side of that argument is that such expanded laws are the result of a lobby from some busi nesses which this government has chosen to accede to. This decision offends many Mani toban s, including gr oups such as the Association of Christian Churches of Manitoba who have come out against ex panded Su nday shopping. The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops have captured the thoughts of many Canadians with their recent commentary of the plight of the

June 3, 19 93 LEGISLATIVE ASSEM BLY OF MANITOBA 12 8 unemployed in Canada and on the evils of our current system which places such little value on labour at the expense of capital. I qu ote from the Canadian Confere nce of Catholic Bishops, a document of April 19 93: "Progress, according to the supporters of the free market, would be the 'inevitable' result of the 'invisible hand' at work. With sufficient time, there would be general improvement, they insisted, forgetting the human and social consequences involved . . . . The lesson is obvious, but apparently never fi nally learned .

We cannot abandon people's lives to the vagaries of the free market. Markets can play a useful role in an economy but only if they are people friendly." The quality of life of many Manitobans will suffer through their being made to work on Sundays. The assertion that said workers are spared the threat of dismissal by the proposed legisl ation is a proposition so naive that it begs response. The question of many workers is not whether they wish to have Sundays off or not, rather it is can they afford to refuse the offer of hours of work on any day of the week?

All branches of the retail sector are dominated by the increasing use of part-time workers at the expense of full-time jobs. These workers are just scraping by in many cases and refusals of assigned hours will see them punished economically. The fact that they may not be able to be punished via the dismissal route is at best a trite point. By all moral, ethical and fairness perspectives, the proposed expansion of Sunday shopping is a wrong move and ought not to be sanctioned by the provincial government.

As mentioned at the onset, CUPE members are not going to be directly affected by the expansion of Sunday shopping, at least not in their own working lives. Like all Manitobans, however, we will be impacted negatively by the fact that Sunday will increasi ngly become jus t another day to do business. Wha t is even more distu rbi ng is the government's tossing of this issue into the laps of municipal governments throughout the province. This is a classic exan.ple of the issue being tossed because the government has neither the fortitude nor the consensus within its own ranks to deal with it.

We find it deplorable that this issue is being referred to municipalities for them to deal with the political fallout that will likely occur from whatever decision may be arrived at. Such matters of provincial-wide interest ought to be dealt with by the level of government elected to deal with such law making. As the certified bargaining agent for many mun icip al wo rkers, we believe tha t ma ny Ma nitobans recognize the dis dain that this government has shown to our municipalities. Their grants have been cut.

The pressure on their tax base has been increased severely by the decision to reduce the provincial property tax credit, and the inequitable sharing arrangements of VL T revenues further compounds their fiscal situations. Bill 23 represents but another intrusion onto this level of government by the province. It has little if any merit and ought to be withdrawn. Mr. Chairperson: Thank you, Ms. Seller. Mr. Storie: Mr. Chairperson, I want to thank Ms.

Seller for an excellent presentation, particularly on the issues apart from the economic issues which we debated quite extensively last night with the Manitoba Chamber and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. I was particularly interested in your suggesting on page 5 that there are no really credi ble arguments to suggest that Sunday shopping laws are simply fulfilling a need. I guess my qu estion would be, are they fulfilling a want? Mr.

Paul Moist (CUPE Manitoba) : Through the Chair, in response to the questioner-no want that we have heard articulated by any group purporting to represent normal Manitobans and average Manitobans. * (1 140) I sat through the delegations last night, and we have researched and read everything we can get our hands on, on this subject matter in Manitoba, and there is no group within our membership or the population at large we have come across that is asking for this, apart from a certain component of the business community. Mr. Storie: Well, Mr.

Chairperson, the reason I am trying to differentiate between what may, in fact, be a need for essential services-and Ms. Seller mentioned in the presentation that, of course, CUPE members do work on Sunday to provide essential services.

129 LEG ISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 1993 The government has attempted as one of its only and certainly still feeble excuses to support this legislation the suggestion that consumers want this. So it leads me to the question-obviously there is no need, no imperative, that we open retail business es on Sunday for sh opping. The question is, is there a want? Is there a desire? You are saying none of your members, none of the people that you are in contact with, that you are aware of, have been at the minister's door begging for Sunday shopping. Mr.

Moist: Through the Chair, we know of no groups who have put forward that position. There may well be Manitobans who access those outlets on Sundays if they are open, but that has been a matter of convenience or happenstance. There has not been widespread consensus to ask for expanded Sunday shopping, and, to the contrary, we heard from delegations last night in communities in Manitoba who are completely opposed to that. Mr. Storie: So, Mr. Chairperson, if Mr. Moist were to speculate on where the pressure is coming from, the presenters last night, the vast majority of them, do not support the legislation.

We have seen the two major chain stores that presented last night suggest they would be prepared to close on Sunday. Their only concern was maintaining market share. They did not agree with the government apparently that this was an economic issue, an issue of adding value to the pie. Where is the pressure coming from then? Mr. Moist: Well, I think it is clearly coming from delegations such as the one that just preceded us at the microphone here, from big business and larger interests tor the most part who are not based in our communities, who are based elsewhere in the country.

We are of the firm view that not only is there not a hue and cry for this thing, it is going to hurt small business, and it is ironic that as a representative of the labour movement, we are here speaking to a majority Conservative government about them injuring a significant player in our economy which is small business. We do not think the previous legislation was perfect.

There is not an answer to Sunday shopping that is perfect in any jurisdiction in Canada, but the previous legislation or the existing legislation, pardon me, unless it is altered, provided access and market share to small businesses on Sundays. We heard from small-business people last night. We said it in our brief here, that not only is there not a hue and cry, there is a significant probability that small business's portion of market share is going to be negatively impacted upon by expanded Sunday shopping. Mr. Storie: Mr.

Chairperson, you are not alone in that view, and, of course, last night one of the presenters, a private citizen said, and I quote from his brief: Sunday open'�ngs reflect an absence of political principle. It places the interests of the advantaged over the disadvantaged. That view, I think, is supported by the concerns that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business found amongst retailers. Some 60 percent approximately opposed this legislation. Mr. Chairperson, my question, I guess, to Mr.

Moist is: Given the concerns that were expressed by Manitoba Chamber and rural opponents to this legislation, is there an alternative you can see to the present legislation that would be as acceptable to all as an alternative to what is being proposed? Is there some other solution that we have not hit upon? Mr.

Moist: Well, we did not make a specific recommendation in our brief, and there are delegations representing employees who work in the retail sector coming up after us, but I think the person we quoted in the text of our brief from the Brandon Sun, the small-business person in the city of Bran don, said that th e current law to be amended, perhaps downward to two or three employees, would significantly entrench that market share on Sundays to the small family-run operations and make it absolutely improbable, if not impossible, for Canadian Tire or a large chain to open up on a Sunday.

We have not devoted a lot of thought to legislation beyond that which currently exists, but I think the small businessman from Brandon is pointing us in a direction that the answer, if there is an answer to this thing and there probably is not one that is acceptable to everybody-but the duty of you and people opposite you at the table is to forge some consensus for our community, and that is not evident in Bill 23 or Bill 4.

June 3, 1993 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 130 Mr. Storie: I have just a comment and I guess a final question. I have raised, and other presenters have raised, the issue of Sunday shopping and the frenetic pace of our lives being a phenomenon that is kind of unique to North America. Many other jurisdictions, many other countries in the world, do not have Sunday shopping. They have limited Saturday shopping. They have limited weekday shopping. Obviously, there are other ways to conduct retail business and business in general that seem successful for other countries.

In your brief on page 6, you talked about how the quality of life for CUPE members is not going to be directly affected because most of your members are not working in the retail sector, but I am wondering whether you can help this government determine how this legislation is going to affect the quality of life. How can we set some benchmarks today so that we can isolate the impact of this legislation?

Are there some social consequences, if you will, that we should be looking at to help us determine whether this legislation, assuming that the government uses its majority to push this legislation through-how are we going to tell? Mr. Moist: We chose, in our written submission, to use the words of others, not of people from the labour movement.

We used the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, small-business people outside of the parameters of the city of Winnipeg, and I think the government would be well advised to listen to groups who sometimes more naturally fall within their political constituency than in any other party's. Secondly, I heard a presenter has left. He decided not to present a brief a few moments ago and felt that this process was flawed somehow, and he just left. He is not going to make a presentation. I think he is wrong.

I think we are probably fortunate in Manitoba to have a system that allows public hearings on all matters of public interest and all laws, and any government, including this one, is well advised to pay heed to those Manitobans who come forward to make submissions on any laws. Our union is not directly affected. Our people, to a large extent, work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The occupations they work in meet the test of an essential public service--delivery of our water system, our health care system and things like that. This does not meet that test by any stretch.

There are components from all sectors of the community-business, labour, business group� who are giving the same message to these public hearings, and the government and members opposite would be well advised to pay heed to that advice. We are not the main players in this bill, but on any matter of public policy, we think it is important that any government hear from all sides of the issue, and this is our small contribution to that debate. Mr. Storie: Thank you, Mr. Moist and Ms. Seller for an excellent presentation. Mrs.

Sharon Carstalrs (Leader of the Second Opposition): You spent some time in your brief talking about need and the fact that Manitobans did not need it because they had a considerable number of alternative hours, particularly in the city, to do their shopping. If Manitobans do not need it, and if Mr. Storie is correct that they do not want it, why did so many people and have so many people taken advantage of it on Sunday in your opinion? Mr.

Moist: Well, we heard a presenter last night-! do not believe you were present, but a presenter from Canadian Tire, and he cited stats, some unpublished stats, but some stats which indicated that business was up on Sundays. He mentioned the month of April and I can understand that. The month of April is when many consumers go and buy their outdoor supplies, their gardening supplies and all that, and if the outlet is open and accessible, I expect people are going to access it. * (1 15 0) The telling point for us though is there was not a hue and cry for the expansion when the experiment began last November.

It might make great sense to do that at times of the year, like Christmas, when people are into their high-consumption mode. Many of the retailers whom we talked to, and you will hear some mention of them in the brief that is following us here from the United Food and Co mmercial Workers Union-most retailers' portion of their market share beyond the Christmas season is pretty minimal on Sundays. They are staying open, as the person was quoted here,

131 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOB A June 3, 1993 because their competitors are open. Just like the delegation said last night, they do not really want to, but they are not going to lose market share to other large competitors. I think it is a bit of an anomaly that people do access these outlets because they are open, but they never really lobbied for it. Mrs. Carstalrs : Did you do any kind of surveying of your own membership to find out how many of them actually did take advantage of Sunday shopping? Mr.

Moist: We have not surv ey ed our membership of 20,000, but through convention and through discussion on issues such as this, we have confirmed the point that I made a little while earlier, that they do not have a great hue and cry for Sunday shopping, and they, in fact, support the day-of-rest argument we are advancing, but we did not survey them on their own shopping practices. Mr.

Jack Penner (Emerso n) : I want to establish, if I may, for my own edification a position I thought I heard you take, and that was you would be satisfied that we revert back to the legislation we currently or previously, previous to the last six months, had operated under. Is that correct? Mr. Moist: The current provision, we believe, favours small business and family-run businesses, and it is not perfect, as we say in the brief, but it might be the best compromise. Mr. Penner: So the legislation that is in place with the four-employee business being able to open would satisfy you. Mr.

Moist: It would satisfy the concerns we have presented here in our brief, yes. Mr. Penner: Can you, sir, distinguish for me the difference that you discern or you make in the employee who works on a Sunday in a business with four employees or less and the employee who works in a business with more than four employees? Can you make that distinction for me? Mr. Moist: Through the Chair, firstly, we are not here purporting to represent employees of the retail sector. Secondly, we draw a point in our brief from a business person in Brandon who has a family operation. We quote him.

He says there that his share of Sunday business declined during the experiment. So he has been open prior to the experiment beginning in November, throughout the experiment, and he is still open today on Sundays with a declining share, because the proportion of the shopping public on Sundays is going elsewhere. They are going to the larger retail chains-not retail, the larger food stores in the city of Brandon, so I think your experiment has cost that small businessman, and he put the proposal forward, which I responded to a few moments ago, to even go beyond the level of four to two to three.

We did not make that recommendation, but we see the wide-open expansion and the institutionalization of your experiment as being wrong. Mr. Penner: You are a public employee union, is that correct? Mr. Moist: We are. Mr. Penner: The question I ask you again, make the distinction for me between the employee that works in a place of business with four employees or less or four employees or more. What is the difference? Mr. Moist: I, through the Chair, do not understand the question because we are not purporting to represent any individual employees. Mr.

Penner: ... any differently in a business that employs four people or less or four people or more? Are the concerns of your union any greater for the welfare of the family that works on Sunday employing four employees or less or four employ ees or more? Where is the distinction-[interjection) I did not ask Mr. Storie the question. I asked the question of the union representatives. Mr. Moist: Through the Chair, I guess, as a matter of public policy, we favour legislation which reduces to an absolute minimum the number of employees who have to work on Sundays.

We also take this from the business community because we do not operate small businesses, but reading what the business community is saying, many of the small businesses who owned the largest share of the business available on Sundays prior to the experiment were small family-run operations.

June 3, 1993 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 132 They have trad itionally remained open on Su ndays. That was their decision. They had the option all along of not opening on Sundays. But I guess, if you chose a career to run a family groceteria, what went with that career was seven days a week operation. The statu s quo, if that was a deal or an arrangement that favoured small business, is being upset by the experiment and by the entrenchment of the experiment through this legislation.

So I am not purporting to stand here and represent or get into a debate with you about the fairness of one employee versus another employee because I think that detracts from the overall message we are trying to impart on you. That message is that we believe the expansion of Sunday shopping is not being requested largely, and it is going to impact negatively on the overall quality of life in Manitoba. Mr. Penner: I am a bit confused.

When I go back in history and read why unions were esta blished and why emp loyees of cer tain companies or groups of employees needed a broader-based support for their position, they in fact formed unions and/or fede rations and associations to make the ir poin t and be represented by people like yourself. I hear you saying that you really have no concern about those people and their position at work compared to the others. You do not want to make the dis ti nction .

I ask you again: Are you concerned as a union about the differentiation that you are proposing, or are being a proponent of, that is being set by the current legislation versus what we are proposing now? Mr. Moist: One comment and Ms. Seller is going to add another comment. Firstly, there are two questions. One, do you have a job, period. This legislation, according to many business spokesmen, including a proponent of the legislation last night from Canadian Tire-he argued that the market share of those small people has been going down and will continue to go down. This will help that. This will fuel that.

So if you are asking me, do I not care about people in four-people businesses or smaller, I am sacrificing their interests and advancing the interests of people who work in larger institutions. I am saying a job first is important, and this will help put small businesses out of business. It is reducing their market share. Mr. Penner: Mr. Chairperson, the representation we heard yesterday, representation by businesses asking for a level playing field, do you propose that same proposition for you r empl oyees or for employees in general that there should be a level playing field? Mr. Chairperson: Ms.

Seller, I am sorry, you wanted to make a comment too. Ms. Seller: Actu ally, I wanted to mak e a comment on the previous statement. You asked the question about whether we cared and it is emphatic, yes, we care. The difference is, I mean, we do not like it at all in some respects. If it is a difference between three people being forced into a situation of having to work on Sunday and 300 people throughout a community having to work on Sunday, there is a very large difference there.

We work very hard in essential services to maintain a minimum level of staff on statutory holidays and on weekends, for example, so that the service is not affected, that the service is still being given, but that the minimum amount of employees have to work through those conditions. Another fact is that if you are working in a retail outlet and you are working fou r hour s a day, then economically you cannot afford to turn down any extra hours. You are literally being forced into working on that day. •

(1200) We could go on for hours talking about the other things, the other disadvantages that are going to bring into play for those same employees that are not amongst your high-wage earners in this province and how it is going to affect them even further than just an extra four or six hours wages on that day. Yes, emphatically, we care very much about those people.

The present leg islation, which mainta ins a minimum of people who are going to be adversely affected by that, as opposed to a piece of legislation that is going to force a very large portion of the retail employees in this province to work on a Sunday, there is a very large difference between that. We had a small-business person here last night who, in his presentation, said it meant the difference between having 30 people working on a Sunday and being able to run the operation with

13 3 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 19 93 eight people. You cannot ju st disqualif y statements like that. Mr. Penner : There has been a lot of advertising on one issue or another over the last while that we have heard from public sector employees unions, whether it be health care-a nd some of them are questionable at best. However, I would like to ask you: How much money has your union spent over the last while in advertising on thi� issue? Ms. Seller: On Sunday shopping? Mr. Penner: Yes. Ms. Seller: The amount of money we have spent is nothing, absolutely nothing. Mr.

Penner: Can you define for me, if this province passed legislation to shut down all retail busi nesses on Su nday, where would you draw the line? Which should be allowed to remain open as a publ ic-service-type work area? Where would you make the cutoff? Mr. Moist: I think that is sort of a rhetorical question. That, through public policy debate and through the establishment of public services that we now enjoy, the ones we still enjoy, that debate has been had already. The community is well aware of which services are available on Sundays.

We could start going through the list of our hydroelectric utilities, our water system, our health care system, but those debates have been had already, and it is well documented what is open. Mr. Penner: Drugstores should be among those that should be allowed to be open. Is that correct? Mr. Moist: Drugstores have traditionally been sman enough operations that they fit under the ambit of the current legislation, and they have been open. Mr. Penner: Should drugstores be allowed to sell hoes and shovels and those kinds of things? Mr.

Moist: I am not going to get into a debate about what outl ets that have four or under employees should be allowed to sell. If you are atte mpting to advance an ar gumen t that a drugstore is going to detract from Canadian Tire's market share in the sale of hoes and shovels, I think we are getting into fantasy land that too often prevails in here. I am not going to get into it. Mr. Penner: Mr.

Chairperson, fantasyland or not, the argument was advanced yesterday very, very forcefully that the reason we are probably into this situation is because of the four -emplo yee prohibition on opening that we have, and the essential services that were needed to be provided on Su nday through the opening of drugstores and those kinds of things. The argument was made that that is why we are into the situation we are into today.

Then ther e are some very innovative entrepreneurs out there, and I give them a tremendous amount of credit for being innovative; yet, when a drugstore becomes a hardware store under the same roof, where do you draw the line? That is the question I ask you: If they. in fact, the province should pass legisla tion to shut down the retail sector in a province, where do you draw the line? Where do you make that cutoff? Mr. Moist: Mr.

Chairperson, we are moving from the member asking questions from a perspective of fairness amongst employees to now asking a public sector union to draw the line for retail business in Manitoba. I will say this- Mr. Penner: No. I am ju st asking you the question as to where you would draw the line. Mr. Chairperson: Order, please. Mr. Moist to continue his answer. Mr. Moist: One of the rec ommendations contained in our brief is for this government to send this committee throughout the province and consult with all Manitobans on that point.

I am not going to, for a moment, say that the existing legislation is perfect. There probably is not a perfect body of legislation for this particular subject matter. What the current legislation did, though-notwithsta nding that some drugstores may have stocked some of their shelves with clothes. What the current leg islation does is provide market share to small business in Manitoba that you are destroying with this legislation. I am not going to, and we are not going to, get into a debate about drawing the line. Mr. Penner: Mr.

Chairperson, the legislation that we are proposing is enabling legislation, allowing mu nicip alities, local govern ments to make decisions on whether they would want business to be open in their communities. I happen to represent an area where a number of communities would like to be open on Sunday and a number of communities would like to be closed on Sun day. This legis lation acc ommodates

June 3, 19 93 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 13 4 exactly that. It allo ws the City of Winnipeg to either open or close; it allows the Altonas of the world to either open or close as they choose. Those businesses within those communities then would abide by those rules set up. Are you agreeing that we should allow that kind of flexibil ity in legislation in order to be fair to the people who live within those communities and the employees who work within those communities? Mr.

Moist: Through the Chair, the questioner uses the word "fairness" at the end of his question, and with two points we have a response to that. One: This is a question of public policy, which is provincewide, and it deserves attention from the provincial government and some leadership from the government. Secondly, you do not extend that same logic to municipalities and school boards throughout the province when you do things like Bill 16 in the educ ation sector. You are not representing and recognizing an autonomous level of government.

They cannot, in consultation with their ratepayers, set a tax increase beyond your own predetermined level. Secondly, in the area of video lottery terminal revenues, you are not going to let municipalities determine-and they are elected to do that- their own order of work, and their own order of public and capital works projects. You are going to share revenue with them, with lots of strings attached to it. Thirdly, you upset those levels of government in Manitoba to the tune of one-third of the property tax credit being eliminated, and put more pressure on municipalities.

But here you come before us now with Bill 23, and you tell us you want to recognize the autonomy and integrity of municipalities. This is absolutely farcical , and this is an issue for the Province of Manitoba to deal with. You have shown your disdain for municipalities and for school boards through various other pieces of legislation. Do not try now to argue that you recognize the integ rity of those levels of government. Mr. Chairperson : I would just make point of the fact that this is a time for ques tions and not a time for debate; it is for the questioning of witnesses. Mr. Penner: Mr.

Chairperson, I could certainly enter into a debate with the honourable member, or the member representing-and he might be an honourable member some day- but the member representing CUPE. I would entertain that at some point in time outside of this room, but this room is set aside for questioning specifically on the legislation that is before us, and I think I have attempted to do that.

If the member for CUPE would want to debate the other issues, automonies of local governments and those kinds of things, I would cert ainly entertain that, because the tax structure or the tax credit system that we put in pla ce or that governments at some past time had put in place are certainly not fair. The education funding systems that have been put in place by previous governments certainly do need review. I do not think he would argue that. So I would suggest to the honourable member, if we want to enter that area of debate, I would certainly welcome that.

I, however, ask again: Do you agree with allowing local governments more autonomy in the setting of regula tions or rules governing business and/or other things in this province? Mr. Moist: If there was a policy or legisl ation struck by this level of government which was orientated towards curtailing Sunday shopping but left some flexibility for municipalities to work within that ambit, I would answer yes. But this legislation opens it up far too wide. Mr. Stefanson: Mr. Chairperson, Mr. Moist or Ms.

Seller , I want to go back to something along the lines of what the Leader of the second opposition par ty touched on. I do not think anybo dy disagrees that there is certainly not unanimous consensus on this issue amongst Manitobans one way or the other. In the last period of time, there have been a series of surveys done. We have had a couple subm itted here over the last 24 hours to this committee from different organizations. Each and every one does show that when you look at Manitobans in total, a majority do support what we would call wide-open Sunday shopping. I am refe rring to Ma nitobans in total ly.

We get examples like today from a manager of many shopping centers in Manitoba sug gesting that Sundays are their third busiest day of the week. I come back to your comments in your brief about who wants this and who this is for. I guess I take a degree of exception with suggesting that it is only for a certain segment of the business community,

13 5 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITO BA June 3, 19 93 that there are many individual Manitobans out there who do in fact want it and, I would hazard a guess, many of your members whom you indicated to us you have not surveyed, but I would suggest, if you did survey them, you probably would find that many of them do want it as well.

I guess I would ask you to comment on the whole issue of consumer, whether it is want and/or need, and that is often a difficult issue to determine with a high degree of accuracy, whether it is preference and want or whether it is need, but clearly, many Manitobans are suggesting they prefer changes to the Sunday shopping. * (121 0) Mr. Moist: You are right in saying it is a difficult thing to measure, but I am hoping we are not getting into sort of government by popular opinion or government by polls.

If we were to take a poll, through the Chair to the questioner, of Canadians' attitudes about capital punishment, for example, we might find a majority of them respond in saying they favour that, but as a matter of public policy, the delegates we have elected to serve in the House of Commons have decided against that. Sometimes we elect governments to make laws often which are in the greater public good which may not be eminently popular. This perhaps falls within that parameter. Mr. Stefanson: Just one follow-up question.

I would imagine this affects some of your membership, and again, there is not extensive research across Canada or the United States, even though every state in the Un ited States has wide-open shopping and eight out of 1 0 provinces now have wide-open shopping. A sur vey done by a Gold farb study in the province of Ontario showed that support is highest among single parents, working women and those who work irregular hours. A large majority indicated Sunday shopping does not interfere with their family activities.

Realizing that for many individuals who perhaps work the Monday to Friday and use their Saturday for personal activities, recreational, family activities, sports, arts, culture, whatever it might be, Sunday does provide them with an opportunity to go and meet some of their other needs such as shopping for food, clothing and whatever. I am wondering if those statements and that research that has been done would reflect certainly the needs in much of your constituents and many Manitobans. Mr. Moist: I guess it is a question of degree.

Are 108 hours in terms of grocery shopping enough per week, or do those additional six hours contribute so greatly to our list of choices available to us? There are two types of individuals we have to deal with: those who have to work- Point of Order Mr. Chai rp erson: Order, pl ease . If the members do have a conversation, I would suggest that they do it at the back of the room. Mr. Moist has the floor, please. Mr. Moist to continue. *** Mr. Moist: -and those employees who have to work as well, not just the people who are accessing the establ ishments, and there is an overall quality-of-life issue here.

Again, you might make the same argument about, would it not be more convenient to be able to purchase liquor on Sundays or beer from a corner store on a Friday night or anything like that. To date, successive governments have curtailed that as a reasonable limitation on our right to access that particular product. I do not believe it is impairing our society at all . Mr. Stefanson: This will be my final question, but because of your final statement and what you said earlier, Mr. Moist, you referred to essential services in Manitoba as being something that you were supportive of.

Picking up on that, that then leads to the whole issue of a definition of essential services, and the opposite can be asked of you, as to whether or not you support the wide-opening of restaurants, whether you support the wide-opening of recreational facilities and activities, whether you support the wide-opening of hotels. I could go on with an extensive list of other sectors-m anufacturing facilities that are all owed to produce, the transportation industry that can function wide-open on Sunday, the agricultural community that can function wide-open on Sunday, every other segment of our society that can.

You said essential services, so is it a safe assumption that you suggested many of those functions should be curtailed in this province and cut back to more restrictive roles?

June 3, 19 93 LEGISLAT IVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 13 6 Ms. Seller: There again, we could enter into a very long debate on what an essential service is. A retail outlet does not have to depend on the weather for whether or not they can do their job, like in the agricu ltural field. There is no comparison here. It depends exactly on what you are saying, that the whole pur pose, the whole evolution of recreational facilities, such as parks and in the wintertime rinks and that, were to provide places for families to go and spend time together, that is the reason they exist. That is a debate that could go on forever.

Again, we are not here to debate. I mean, if you want to scrap this piece of legislation and come up with a new one, then we are more than willing to start talking about that one. What we are trying to deal with here is our opposition to the legisla tion that is being proposed here. Another point that I want to make to something Mr. Penner said a little earlier was that this is su pported, through surveys and that, by single parents and women.

Again, I have to say to you that if I am a single parent who is struggling to make ends meet on a very low hourly wage, and it is a difference between me perhaps being able to provide quality child care for my childre n; or perhaps pay for some of the school supplies that I now have to pay for that I did not have to pay for before; or to pay for the extras like getting into the zoo that I did not have to do before; and if it means that I can pick up a few extra hours on a Sunday, then it is not a matter of my choosing to do that in place of my family time, it probably means I am not getting any family time anyway.

I think there are a few real, very basic realities here that are not being looked at when you quote things like saying these are the kinds of people who support this kind of thing. You cannot stop it right there by saying that I support it, yes, and that is where it ends. There are a million other factors that are forcing those people into supporting these kinds of things, and you cannot look at them in isolation. That is not a reality. Mr. Chairperson: Thank you, Ms. Selle r. Mr. Bob Rose (Turtle Mountain): Jus t a quick que sti on.

I am sti ll having a li ttl e difficulty establishing your position on local option. In your introduction, you say the government's attempt to toss a hot political potato onto our Manitoba go vernments. I under stand that your first prefe rence wou ld be total withdrawal of the legislation. It seems to be that your second preference would be for the province to impose it provincewide rather than local option.

I have difficulty understanding why you would not be concerned about fam ilies and workers in co mmu nities lik e Dauphin or Flin Flon or Thompson, local communities that might very well decide, under the local option procedure, not to allow Sund ay shopping. Why would you rather have it provincially imposed across the entire province and not have the opportunity for local communities to do the very things that you are sugges ting should be happening? I am not saying I disagree with them. I do not understand why you oppose the local option. Mr.

Moist: I guess we look to government at a central level like the province to foster some harmony and some standardization within our community. Whether or not the quality of family life is affected by legislation such as this ought not to be predicated by your geographic location within the province of Manitoba and the strength of, say, a religious lobby in your community. That ought not to be the deciding factor about whether you or your family get to spend a traditional, for the most part, day of rest together. For that very point, we think that the province as a whole ought to decide the question.

I do not believe there is any answer that is going to satisfy each and every single group in society's position on this particular matter, but it is an important enough matter that impacts on people's lives that it ought not to impa ct on my li fe in Winnip eg in a significantly different way than your life in rural Manitoba. Mr. Rose: Obviously, the people that are most intere sted in Su nday shopping are living in Winnipeg.

What I hear you saying is that, if the legislation goes forward, the province should insist that every community in the province follow that law and not give them the opportunity to use local option to stay out of it. I do not follow your logic. Mr. Moist: We certainly favour the Province of Manitoba dealing with this issue and setting out guidelines for it. Within that framework, if it is not as open- ended as this is, I belie ve there is room-perhaps the small-busin ess person in

13 7 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 19 93 Brandon is correct. Maybe in that area it should be two-to-three-person businesses. I do not know. I am not a small-business person. I do not mind municipalities having some discretion within an overall framework which is set by government. You are not setting an overall framework here. You are tossing it. Mr. Chairperson : Thank you, Ms. Seller, and thank you, Mr. Moist. I will now call Mr. Robert Ziegler, United Food and Commercial Workers. Your presentation has been distributed. You may proceed. *

(1220) Mr. Ro ber t Ziegler (Un ited Food and Commercial Workers): As you know, originally this was going to pres ented by one of my coworkers, Darlene Dziewit, but I am here and informed on the issue and have been involved in it in the past. I do not intend to read totally from the brief. It is more of a highlight from which I will read certain portions and comment on others. Starting off, though, as it says on the first page, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union re prese nts about 40,000 Manitobans. That includes our members and their families and dependants.

Of those, about 60 percent work in the retail sector, predominately in the grocery industry, but we also have them in some of the other retail areas. We are opposed to Bill 23 which brings in wide-open Sunday shopping, because we feel for a number of reasons: one, that it is unfair, the way that it delegates that out to the municipalities rather than dealing with it on a uniform basis; but more importantly just the whole concept of wide-open Sunday shopping. Looking at the so-called trial period that we had since November of '92 to the present time, we would say that has been anything but conclusive.

Looking at some of the quotations, Minister Stefanson quoted, 75 percent of the people during that four-month period saw their sales either stay the same or go up. The survey did not reveal how many businesses had their sales go up and how many stayed the same. We could be looking at 60 percent, 70 percent that stayed the same and only 10 percent that went up. If we have an important issue like this trial period was supposed to be, we believe that this survey should have been made public, so Manitobans could get a better feeling of what the results of the sales were. Further on, Mr.

Stefanson was also quoted as saying that 11 percent of the people hired additional staff. Well, with our experience in the retail sector, unfortunately, the retail sector is not like a lot of other businesses. Some stores have up to 95 percent part-time employees. Hir ing 11 percent more people does not mean any more pay going to Manitobans.

What we have seen in a lot of the units we have had is they have taken the hours they have had over six days and spread them over seven, and where they have hired new people to work on the Sunday, what has happened is they have also given them a few hours during the week because they cannot maintain them for just working one day a week, and then they have taken those hours from the middle of the week away from their existing employees. Hiring more people does not create more work in Manitoba just by numbers.

The result of the survey was not made public, as I have said, and we feel that is should have been, so we could get a better feeling of that. Some of the reasons why we are opposed to Bill 23, on the following page, is that in the past, there has been pretty consistent opposition by a lot of organi za tions, including the Conser vat ive government, the Liberals, the New Democratic Party. They were unanimous in limiting Sund ay shopping, and we believe that is correct. The aspec t of trying to move it to the municipalities, we do not believe is the proper way to do that.

Doing that will create an unfair situation where you have one municipality who has to stay open to be competitive with another municipality. All the small communities around Winnipeg will have to stay open, otherwise they will lose their business on weekends. There is a justification that.this Sunday shopping and opening up will stop cross-border shopping. That is a fallacy. I will talk about it a little bit further on in my presentation. All you have to look at is Ontario and British Columbia, where they have had wider-open Sunday shopping, and their economy has not turned around greatly because of that.

Looking on the next page, Su nday working, Sunday shopping, is not needed. There have

June 3, 19 93 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 13 8 been a lot of questions to the last presenter about the issue of need versus want. I think it is a very important question to look at because we have to balance. The question is, how much money do Manitobans or do consumers have to spend? When consumers have $1 00, they do not get $1 20 just because the stores are open a seventh day. As I mentioned before, in addition, all that is happening is part-time hours during the week are reduced and transferred to the Sunday operation. Sunday shopping in the last four months has not been beneficial to our members.

We have no more members working for us now than we did when this started last fa ll, and we represent Safeway and Westfair, the big food stores who have been wide open seven days a week. At one of our stores, in fact, we have had a decline of hours of almost 50,000 hours over the same time last year. Where are these extra hours? Sales might be up slightly, but at whose expense? The small grocer's. They key to Manitoba, the majority of our businesses are small businesses. Those are the ones who are going to get hit the hardest by this legislation. (Mr.

Jack Reimer, Acting Chairperson, in the Chair) There is an also an increased cost. You have seen a lot of comments in some newspapers to operating a seventh day, and that is at the bottom of the page. Many retailers have had additional overhead costs for staying open on Su ndays, and no doubt have passed those costs on to consumers by increased prices or not giving better service. On the following page are the ones who really benefit by this legislation, and that is the large shopping centres, the developers. Those are the real winners in this situation.

It is the large malls that have benefitted the most since the wide-open Sund ay shopping in the last four months. That is where people go to shop on Sunday. They do not go to the corner store. They go to the shopping centre. They go to the mall, and mall owners get a percentage of those sales. That is why I am not surprised that we had a real estate representative supporting it, because it is in his interest to have those malls open to increase their sales. As well, newspapers gain through the process of being open on Su nday, because there are more ads for them.

In the past, a lot of-in at least our sector- those stores were op en. Safeway was open on Su ndays. There was not a large cry. There was not a large line-up at those stores to be open. Manitobans were not doing it for that reason. That is the difference between a need and a want. Canadian Tire was open seven days a week. They had four employees. There was not a lot of employees. It is not a need that Manitobans have been going to those stores. I suggest to you, it is more of a want, something to do on that day. It is not something that we need.

Also, the issue of goods and services tax is what really is driving Manitobans, or one of the two things that is driving Manitobans to cross-border shopping. The reasons Manitobans, especially when it was first introduced, headed across was a protest. Introducing Sunday shopping is not going to stop cross-border shopping, especially when up until now and continuing at this point, you can get a rebate of your tax when you go down to North Dakota. You can get a rebate of the sales tax, so it is another plus to go there. Being open on Sunday is not going to affect that.

The other, the second big factor as to why cross-border shopping is so attractive to people was the value of the Canadian dollar as it stands. That fluctua tes up and down. When it goes up, it is more attractive to shop in the United States. When it goes down, as it is right now, there is less shopping in the United S tates. I suggest to you, that is why there has been more of a drop in cr oss-bor der shopping recently, the American-Canadian exchange rate rather than the Sunday shopping.

A figure on March 15 from The Globe and Mail talked about, the low Canadian dollar compared to the U.S. dollar has made U.S. goods more expensive. The Globe and Mail on March 15 indicated that comparing cross-border shopping between March of '92 and March of '93, the border crossing dropped by 19.3 percent, mostly due to the exchange rate on the U.S. dollar. I guess the best example of this as to why cross-border shopping is not the panacea that some people asked for is to look at B.C . British Columbia has had Sunday shopping for 10 years. They still have a problem.

They have had Su nday opening for 10 years, cross-border shopping during that period of time. It is one of the largest areas, and it is not because they could not

139 LEG ISLATIV E ASSE MBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 1993 shop on Sunday that they went to the States. It was the price. It was the tax. There is a third factor that comes in there that we are going to have trouble controlling, and that is, it is almost like it is a holiday to go across. If someone drives down to Fargo or Grand Forks, it is a getaway. It is a combination of both, but they spend the money there. Do not think that opening on Su nday here in Winnipeg is going to stop that. A lot of the presenters, I understand, have tal ked about the importance of a day of rest and the value to our society.

I think that is true. Sunday working, Sunday shopping, would be a death knell of a day of rest which I know many retail store worker s want to spen d with their fam ili es. Shopping on Sunday is not an absolut e crucial or essential service such as police, fire protection, hospital services. Manitobans have done fine without it for a long time, and they will continue. * (1 230) Now I bring back that issue that the retail industry is predominantly part-time employees. There is another difference that comes into that.

In the food stores, for example, an employee does not know until Thursday of this week what hours he is going to work next week. You cannot plan your life, your time with your family, your friends, like you can in a lot of other jobs. When you are a full-time employee, you have that ability to say, I am going to work, and I am going to have these two days off. Now we are opening a seventh day that takes away the one day a week that employees could be sure of trying to arrange a family get-together, a christening, a baptism, a whatever. That was the only day that the employees knew that they could get together.

That was discussed, I believe, or asked of the previous presenter: Well, what is the value of that? Our society is moving more and more away from the family unit, and I think we are seeing the damages to our society in ways other than retail and economic factors. We are seeing it in a lot of other ways where our society is going down as a result of that. I say that giving someone a day off on a Tuesday does not help when your kids are in school. How does the single mother-how does the couple, when the husband is working on that day and the wife is off but the kids at school, how does that build a family unit?

It does not. That is why we believe the previous legislation was much better than what we had. We would prefer to have no Su nday shopping, but we realize that is not realistic, so we say the present legislation, as it has worked over the last years, is the better alternative. (Mr. Chairperson in the Chair) The issue of need. There is ample opportunity to shop six days a week in the grocery industry and most of the retail area. We are looking at-a nd I think the previous presenter talked about 1 08 hours. It is actually mor e than that.

You can go to the major stores for over 1 08 hours per week, but you also have all the other mom-and-pop stores. You have the convenience stores that are open 24 hours a day-you can do theirs-a nd the retail sector on average of about 90 hours a week for people to shop and do their business. It was tal ked about earlier with the two presenters ago. If you look at a mall like St. Vital, probably every company but four could operate on Sunday with the present legislation. If you knock off Eaton's, The Bay and probably Woolco, most of those stores do not have more than four people working at one time.

It is a decision that they have realized over time that it is not logical for them to be open, but as soon as the other three are open they have to be open. It is the small Manitoba busin ess that is going to suffe r. The small Manitoba business is the key to Manitoba. It is also the· strip malls that are going to be suffering badly because of this legislation.

Most of the strip malls-and I do not know the figure, but I will only guess that probably 90 to 95 percent of the strip malls in this city, leaving out Unicity, Portage Place, the big malls-could operate under the old legislation with having less than four people. No need for this legislation, all the retail could be there. They chose not to because I think they realize that it was not in their best interest to be open. It is only in their best interest to be open if the big boys are open.

That cont inues on the next page of my presentation, that this proposed legislation will hurt small retailers and they may go out of business. We represent not only the large grocery stores; we represent some of the I GAs, some of the small Tom Boys, some of the small grocery stores. Those are the ones that are going to suffer the most under this legislation, especially in some of the rural communities around the cities, around the larger areas. A city like Steinbach, if they open up Sunday, it may be good for Ste inbach, but for all the

June 3, 1993 LEGIS lATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 140 small businesses around there, a good portion of the business is done on those types of days. The government is only satisfying the Winnipeg Chamb er of Comme rce . The Ma nitob a government is only answering the request of some Winnipeg members of the Chamber of Commerce who wrongly believe that Sunday shopping will improve their business overall and bring tourists to Manitoba.

The following associations and groups and thousands of citizens are clearly opposed to Sunday shopping: the Manitoba Federation of Lab our, which rep resents about 160,000 Manitobans; the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce rep re senting hundreds of busine sses in this province, the Union of Manitoba Municipalities, the Association of Christian Churches and private citizens. On the following page I give some of the quotes from entrepreneurs about their comments about Sunday opening. From Ross McBain, a veteran retaile r who operates six camera stores in Edmonton: "I have no use for Sunday shopping whatsoever.

The costs are much higher than the benefits." From Petris, whose Alexandria boutique is open on Su ndays, while his Suzy Creamcheese store is closed, "Sunday shopping has been over-rated. The expenses are going to be much higher than the additional sales will be." From the Winnipeg Sun, Stan Halbesma, Manager of Harry's Foods, is quoted as saying "We're taking a stand. I look at it from a family value aspect.

I need my time and my employees need their time with their family on Sundays." Janua ry 4, Mike Penney of Florsheim Shoes' Polo Park location is quo ted as saying "The businesses are losing a lot of money paying people. This does not pay the utility bills." From the Winnipeg Free Press on Janua ry 25, Pat Schmitke, a Canadian Tire store manager in Portage Ia Prairie is quoted as saying "We just don't feel there's enough business to warrant being open seven days a week." And remember, Canadian Tire was open in a lot of their locations under the old legislation.

We also had Advance who refused to stay open on Sundays. We also now have the rumour that The Bay and Eaton's are going to close for the summer months. If it is so good, why are they closing? What really comes into the next issue is the tourist industry. Is it important to have Sunday shopping for the tourist industry? Well, if we are hoping that Sund ay shopping is going to save our tourist industry, I think we are a little misguided. The majority of people who come to Manitoba do not come to Manitoba for shopping, especially the Americans.

With the exchange rate, the GST, the value of the dollar, it is the last thing they are looking at doing, and what they want to do is probably the specialty shops, the Osborne Village, those areas which can open under the old legislation. The recession is the real cause in the drop in retail sales the last little while. You look at store closures, store closures are not limited to Manitoba with restricted Sunday shopping. Store closures are all across Canada, in jurisdictions where they are wide open on Sunday. So do not think that is going to be that.

Turning now to another area that we wanted to comment on, and those are some flaws that we see with the legislation as it is drafted, that although it is indicated that the legislation as drafted will protect Manitobans, we do not believe that. The overwhelming majority of people working in the retail industry, probably 60 percent to 70 percent, are part time. Full-time employees are becoming fewer in number every year, and at least 50 percent of those employees are female. Many of them are depending on those hours as their sole income or to survive. Some are single mothers.

On the question of not being able to fire an employee who refuses to work on Sunda y, the employer will be able to find many other ways to get rid of an employee especially in a nonunion situation. You do not have to have a reason. All you have to do is give notice and they are gone, whether it be poor work performance, poor attitude, lack of courtesy, punctuality and a thousand other reasons. It is nice to say you can have recourse to try and fight that, but how am I, as an individual who has no experience, going to know how to do that, have the ability or the money to try and fight that?

I am going to go up against a lawyer, against the Employment Standards to say, I was fired for this. The company is going to bring in their lawyer who

141 LEG ISLATIV E ASSE MBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 1993 will say, no, no, you were fired because of your work performance. It is not a feasible scenario. What is more important though is that what will happen is that if you refuse to work Sunday-what is happening in our food stores? Very well, likely you are going to lose hours during the week. They will hire another employee to work on Sunday, give him some of your hours from Monday to Saturday.

You are both losers, but the existing employee is the most loser in that scenario. * (1 240) Second point, nonunion workers, as I mentioned, do not have the benefit of union counselling. Unfortunately, the majority of workers in the retail sector are not unionized, and that is a problem. They do not have that right to try and control their destiny. Nothing stops the employer in the proposed wording of legislation to reduce even full-time employees to part-time because they do not want to work Sunday or to reduce the hours of a part-time employee.

As a result of that, we are proposing wording that we would suggest, and you will notice it on the right-hand side in italics, that would be added to the legislation.

We think it should be scrapped, but at least one improvement would be adding the words: "No employer or person acting on behalf of an employer shall discharge, threaten to discharge, refuse hours of work, reduce be nefits, deny oppor tu nity for promotion, advancement or transfer, or in any way discr iminate against or act unfairly or unjus tly towards an employ ee." As well, at the bottom of that page, we feel that there should be a realistic penalty for an employer who does force an employee or does penalize, and that is tal ked about, for example, like The Labour Relations Act, the $2,000 penalty for discriminating, denying promotion, et cetera.

You have to have teeth to it if you are going to go forward with it. We prefer you not, but if you are going to, you better have legislation that works. The next issue that concerns us is, the legislation we believe is flawed in regards to the tenants and leases and the restriction about being open on Su ndays. Bill 23 purports to protect commercial tenants who have a lease with a shopping centre, but the problem is that only applies to existing lease prior to the legislation. In the renewal of a lease, the tenants will not have that protection and also leases signed after the bill will not have the protection.

We are therefore proposing, and you will notice in italics in the bottom right, to add another section: "A commercial tenant referred to in 4.2 above shall not be denied the renewal of his or her lease solely by reason that the said tenant did not, does not or will not remain open on a holiday, or on Sunday, as referred to in

Section 4.1 (2)(b). No commercial tenant's lease shall contain a clause compelling the commercial tenant to open on Sunday or on a holiday as indicated above." Next page is the issue I have touched on briefly, but it is the issue of, legis la tion should be province-wide. This is a provincial issue. It is a cop-out to try and pass it off to the municipalities. Prior to 1976, municipalities had the right to pass a by-law prohibiting Su nday shopping. The net result was some merchants were put in an unfair position when one municipality would be in favour of Sunday shopping and another would not be.

The return to this pre-1976 era, as I mentioned, is a cop-out. It will create more work and more cost for a number of parties: the busines smen, the lawyers, et cetera. I guess it is like Pontius Pilate is the comparison I see here. I wash my hands of it. It is the municipalities. So if the municipality opens it up on Sunday, blame them, do not blame me. But yet I take the credit. I gave you the right to be open. I do not think that is the way for responsible government to deal with an issue like that.

A couple of points that are not in my brief, before I do the conclusion, is that it is interesting that the people who support Sunday shopping, and there are Manitobans who do support Sunday shopping, are by and large the people who do not work Su ndays. It is by and large the people who work Monday to Friday, who never have to work a Saturday, a lot of them, and especially not a Sunday. Those are the people who support it because it does not affect them, and we-I say you as a Legislature-have some responsibility to look after the interests of all Manitobans.

Why are not more offices, why are not more plants open on Saturdays and Sundays? Why not the government services? There is a recognition that there is a balance and that is what this is. Yes, we have certain rights and we want to protect those rights, but there is a balance between

June 3, 19 93 LEG ISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 14 2 that. It is like the scale of justice. Well, it is a scale of human justic&-the rig hts of our society and our individua l s versus the rights of the businesses to do a profit. I say that scale tips strongly in favour of our members, of Manitobans in our society. I say the old legislation is the best balance for that scale because it allowed people to be open when there was a need for it. The question from the Honourable Mr.

Penner about the difference between four employees and not, they all have rights, but when you look at a store, Canada Safeway, with a hundred employees, you can find four employees who do not have children, four employees who do not have spouses working, but when they are open full blast, it is not the same scenario. It is harder to find those people. There is a difference between essential services, and I talked about that, and that is the difference between wants and needs. A lot of the areas such as restaurants and recreational, that balance is tilted a different way.

That has always been accepted historically as being a day that they work. Society in Manitoba has gone along quite well without being open on Sunday. The final issue that affects a lot of our workers, our members directly is child care. Opening up on Sunday has made it very hard for a lot of our members to get child care for their children on a Sunday. In conclusion, we believe that this legislation is wrong because it is not needed by the citizens of Manitoba. We believe it is wrong because it will not stop cross-border shopping.

We believe it is wrong becaus e it is only goin g to increase overhead costs and consumer prices. We also believe it is wrong because workers will be forced to work on Sunday, and if they do not they will either be fired or discriminated or penalized as a result of their refusal. We do not believe that the four-month survey has shown that there is any need for the legislation. I have not talked much about the family need, but it is key to our understanding. For those reasons, I submit that the legislation should be turned down and we go back to what we presently have. Those are my comments, thank you. Mr.

Chairperson: Thank you, Mr. Ziegler. Mr. Storie: Thank you, Mr. Chairperson, and as well thanks to Mr. Ziegler for his presentation. I wanted to follow up on-and I know Mr. Ziegler sat through a number of presentations already so I do not want to necessarily cover a lot of the same ground with each presenter. I wanted to follow up on your idea that perhaps the majority of people who are supporting wide-open Sunday shopping are in fact those who will never have to face the reality of having to work on Sunday. It is an interesting point because last night, of course, Mr.

Boro wski , presen ti ng as a pr ivate citize n, sugges ted that perhaps the optimum time for legisla tive committees to be held would be on Sunday when in fact people have the day off. So I am wondering whether this would maybe be a useful test because I think, quite rightly, you pointed out in the beginning of your brief that in fact the government is using surveys. We are not sure how the qu estion is frame d and if you ask something, do they want something, if they are not going to have to pay any price for it, generally, they say yes. Mr.

Ziegler: We all know, as you say, about su rveys and recent referendum and everything else. The phrasing of a question is very important to the result that you are going to get. Clearly, it was an issue raised by the last presenter, is that these briefs, these sessions should be at a time when more Manitobans could be available. They should be in rural Manitoba so that some more Manitobans-we look at Winnipeg as being our 600,000 or slightly over there, centre of Manitoba, but we should be going around to see what other Manitobans want.

Definitely, once we have that survey, we should have shown the questions and what the exact results were, not just some comments on that. I strongly believe that the people who su pport Sunday shopping are the ones that do not have to work it. That is from personal experience and from comments that I have had. *

(1250) Mr. Storie: I could not agree with you more. I think that that is quite likely. I think it is also a question of what people want and that, as other presenters have suggested, if you ask people, would they want to be able to buy beer and wine at their local store, do they want to be able to go

14 3 LE GISLATI VE ASSE MBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 19 93 whatever speed they want, people might say, yes, that is the case. The government has a responsibility, it seems to me, to provide the broa der social context of legislation. Mr. Ziegler: Even on that issue of wants, and I think you have touched on it, it is that balancing of what they want and what they need. A lot of Manitobans would like to take their pension money out, but the government of Manitoba has decided you cannot cash your money out. There is a purpose for that.

That is the role of this government, to balance what someone wants with what they need and what is best for our society and for Manitobans. That is what I think this legislation does not do. Mr. Storie: Well, Mr. Chairperson, Mr. Ziegler has twigged on a great idea. Perhaps it is time that the government did a survey of this issue for Manitobans in a formal way to find out what they are thinking and perhaps defining who in fact is interested in Su nday shopping. It would be qui te interesting, I think, to find perhaps, as Mr.

Ziegler suggests, that the people who are most supportive of Sunday shopping are those who will never have to work on Sunday. I agree with Mr. Ziegler. I do not think we should be setting public policy by referendum or by survey, but that appears to be the way the government is- the government is determined to do this, and in failing to be able to set policy by survey, they are going to ask some other jurisdiction to set policy.

My question was that your brief did not deal with it in detail, and that was the question of the impact of this legislation on your members perhaps in rural Manitoba and whether you have heard from rural members of your union in terms of their concern or their thoughts. Mr. Ziegler: Two comments, one on the first one, the issue of surveys, I just wanted to touch on one other point. I even had experience where one group of survey was being done for Sunday shoppers. They had people outside the till saying: Are you in favour of Sund ay shopping? I think this was even before the legislation came out.

Well, obviously, the people who were there on Sunday shopping are going to be in favour of Sunday shopping. You r second question in regard to rural Manitoba, yes, we have heard from some of our members who work in those communities. What is said is that if the larger community opens, we will have no choice but to open. We do not want to open. This empl oyees hearing it from their managers. Obviously, it is hearsay, but that is-it is very reliable hearsay. They are saying, we do not want to be open, but if the large community is open, we have no choice.

You see that just as a private citizen driving around, more and more stores in small communities. I grew up in the Interlak e area for a number of years. Stores are disappearing. They are all moving to the larger centres. That is not in Manitoba's interest. Mr. St orie: Mr. Chai rperson, Mr. Ziegle r mentioned the fact that the UF CW represents workers at Westfair and, I think, perhaps was at comm ittee la st night when the We stfai r representative suggested that they do not want to be open on Sunday necessarily. They will if they have to, but their concern was the question of market share.

Why is it not possible to find an alternative to wide-open Sunday shopping that would allow them to compete with their major competitors on some sort of level basis while maintaining- Mr. Ziegler: Unfortu nately, I was not here last night, but I support that. I do not believe that there has been any great growth or profit for the food stores being open on the Sundays, I really do not, when you add all additional costs that come into it. I believe the old legislation was that balance of allowing them because, as they were here, I am sure they would have said, they cannot be at a disadvantage.

It is the same thing for the municipalities. They cannot stay closed if Safeway is wide open. They cannot in Teulon be closed if a larger city is opened. It is that level playing field. We believe the old legisla tion was good. Maybe there is some variation in that area, but that is a much better choice than what this legisl ation is, yes. Mr. Storie: Mr. Chairperson, I think that point is worth pursuing because the member for Emerson (Mr. Penner) was asking the previous presenter about why it was fair that a small four-person operation could sell hoses that would compete with Canadian Tire.

June 3, 1993 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 144 I guess it sort of begs the question, in your view, is it a simpler and a better option to revise the existing legislation and make it more difficult to open, if you are not providing essential services, than to expand this? Mr. Ziegler: Yes, definitely that would be a much better choice to go. Realistically, I do not believe that we have this new legislation because a drugstore was selling a hose or a hoe or something else. I really do not believe that is the cause of this legislation, but if it is, there are much better ways to control that.

There are much better ways to modify the legislation, to clarify it. It is the essential areas of food, et cetera, that are to be sold. There was a time when Supe rstore was open, and they walled off part of their store and they operated with four employees. They did that. They found that it was not-but there are ways, so maybe we have to massage the legislation to make sure that the one or two companies that are selling the garden hose, the hoe, the whatever, cannot do that and disadvantage the other retailers.

Again, the balance of scales-nothing is going to be perfect, but that is a much better way to do it than just go hoi us-bolus, we are wide open. Point of Order Mr. Penner: On a point of order, I just want to correct the honourable member for Flin Flon (Mr. Storie) that I did not talk about hoses. I talked about garden hose and I was thinking that I might go out to these drugstores and buy a stack of garden hose and give them to young people that were rumbling in St. James area and put them out in my beet field to give them something meaningful to do. Mr. Chairperson: Order, please.

The member did not have a point of order. It is a dispute over the facts. Mr. Storie to continue his line of questions. *** Mr. Storie: Mr. Chairperson, those remarks were interesting, to say the least. Perhaps at some other future date the member can expound on his new theory of social justice somehow. I wanted to deal with one other issue that you touched on, and it is the question of tourism. It seems to me that there are two things happening within the province that sort of undermine the pro vince's contention and some peop le' s contention that somehow this legislation is going to support tourism activity.

One, of course, is the possibility that different jurisdictions will do different things. It is possible, conceivable, that the City of Winnipeg, for example, is going to say no to Sunda y shopping. The city of Winnipeg would obviously be one of the major destinations for people coming from out of province. It is also obvious that many of the individual retailers who will still retain the option, if they have fewer than four employees, in any municipality of opening, and as well, some of the department stores in downtown Winnipeg for example are going to close on Su ndays.

How is this going to support any kind of tourism effort, feeble as it may be, that the province has launched? Mr. Ziegler: Well, clearly , I think you are right. I do not think they are going to come here to shop and that is not a majo r is su e. The recent announcement, at least I thought I heard of Eaton's and The Bay looking at closing, those are in the downtown area where the bulk of our hotels are.

I mean, if we are looking at tourism attracting, when are they closing down- some of the heaviest periods, June, July and August or the end of June for July and August, the time when a lot of people come during their holidays with their kids. Here we are, the major stores saying we are not going to be open. If we are looking at this to improve our tourism business, we are barking up the wrong tree, Sunday shopping of this magnitude is not. Where they are going to go is the specialty shops, the Osborne Village, the little craft- those are the types of areas, The Forks.

The Forks is not going to be affected by this legislation. That can be open now, all those small businesses. It is the unique flavour of Manitoba that a lot of tourists go to shop for. They have Woolco stores in Saskatc hewan, folks. They do not come here to shop at Woolco. They do not come here to shop at The Bay. They come here to get Manitoban and Manitoba is small business. Mr. Sto rie: Perhaps you can clar ify the multiplication and tell me that if it is not for tourism;

145 LEG ISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA June 3, 19 93 it is not going to increase the economic pie; it is not supported in rural Manitoba: Why are we doing it? Why is it being proposed? Mr. Ziegler: It is a question that I asked also. I think there are probably three main groups that are supporting it. There are the large retailers who will be supporting it. There will be some real estate people who will benefit from that, and possibly some of the newspapers and some people from the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce. I do not know why.

I really do not know why, but those are the only ones who really stand to benefit from this. There are a lot more people, individuals who will lose and the few people who will gain, because there will be some people who will gain. There is no doubt about that. But a lot more Manitobans will lose. *

(1300) Mr. Storie: Just one or two final questions on the proposed amendment so that the clarification that the UF CW is supporting and one deals with, I guess, protecting the interests of workers who may wish to refuse to work on Sunday. I am wondering whether your proposed wording, well, two things about this proposed amendment: No. 1, whether your proposed wording would be enforceable because of its broad , general nature; and No. 2, the issue of penalties. Were there no penalties that would apply? I believe this

section falls under an amendment of The Employment Standards Act. I am wondering whether, in fact, there were not previous penalties and if there were, what is the change that you are proposing here? Mr. Ziegler: Two parts. Number 1, you are probably correct that this leg islation and the wording we are proposing does not go far enough. We really belie ve the le gislation should be scrapped, but we are not saying those should be the exact words.

We are saying that probably it should even be stronger than that, but I could spend hours and days drafting legislation, and unless certain people that control the Legislature are going to accept my wording, I do not think it was worthwhile for us to draft the specific wording to cover every possible scenario. So it is not strong enough. We think it should probably be stronger, but this is at least pointing out some of the flaws of the legislation. The issue of penalty.

Yes, there was some penalty in the last legislation, but it dealt more first of all under the old act with employers being open or being more than four employees. There was a $2,000 limit, period, per person versus-we are talking $2,000 a day. We are trying to increase the penalty and make it easier to be applied. There was an unfair labour practice talked about a $2,000 penalty per person. We are trying to make it as a deterrent, and that it why we increased the amount. Mr.

Storie: My final ques tion is on your last pr oposal reg ard ing com mercial le ases and protecting commercial tenants, and I think a very good amendment, something that we would wholeheartedly support as well. Mr. Chairperson, I know that the minister has indica ted, and indi ca ted las t night that the legislation is going to ensure that tenants have the right to close, notwithstanding the commercial leases they have signed. I think this raises an additional issue and perhaps the minister can tell us whether it is covered. But it is certainly worthwhile. Apart from that, I want to thank Mr.

Ziegler for an excellent presentation and for his work on behalf of a lot of people who are going to be affected by this legislation if it sees the light of day. Mrs. Shirley Render (St. VItal): I was not going to make any comments, but I have heard quite a number of times, a statement made by Mr. Storie and by our most recent presenter that it appears that those who support Sunday shopping are those who will never have to work. I guess I take issue with that statement because I have made a point of shopping at the Safeway stores around the city.

With a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt on, I am just a casual customer, casually asking that part-time clerk why he or she is there. In all instances I have been told because they want to be there. I have said: What about some of these other people here? Apparently, the policy, whether it is a formal policy or just an informal policy has been for the, I do not know whether you would call it the management, to simply say who wants to work on a Sunday, and there have been enough people who have opted to work on a Sunday that no part-time people have been co-opted.

So, as I say, I just simply take issue with the statement. I do not think it is wise to make black-and-white statements that all those who are working on

June 3, 1993 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MAN ITOBA 146 Sunday perhaps might not be there, they may be there against their own wishes. Quite a number of the people that I talked to were students who wished to work on a Sunday because they were studying. They were at school or at university during the week. They preferred the option of being able to work on Saturday and Sunday. I have also heard comments with reference to the small towns. Kenora, Ontario, is a small town. Safeway and Canadian Tire are open on a Sunday. The small hardwares, the small grocery stores are closed.

This has been in operation for quite a few years. The small mom-and-pop stores are still thriving. They are still there. So, again-[interjection] The new store? The Safeway has been there for a long time. I go to Kenora each summer, the Safeway has been open. My son works there on Su ndays. So I just simply make the comment that, yes, in a small town both, hopefully, can thrive. But, as I say, my bottom line is simply to say, I do not think it is smart to be making black-and-white statements that all are against or all are for. I think there is always room for both sides of the argu ment. Mr.

Ziegler: A number of things. First of all, I did not say all people. What I said was, the majority of people or most people who support or the people who su pport Sunday shopping are basically those who do not do it. I still stand by that. That is different from the people who are working on the Sunday. As well, dealing with your point about-1 do not know how many stores you go to-1 have a lot of knowledge about Safeway because we represent Safeway. There are 30-some-odd stores in the province. In some stores it works well and there is no pressure.

In other stores it does not work as well, and people are pressured there. In other nonunion places it is not as good. We have worked out, we are lucky. Some of the Safeway employees are lu cky. We have worked out procedure to deal with that. It is not going to affect most of the people in Manitoba. Yes, there are some people, the students who do like it in there. Those are the people that used to work when there was four people in the store. You may have a lucky store, but there are a lot of other stores where people do not work.

I suggest to you that the majority of employees working at Safeway do not, and they have told us through surveys, do not want to work Sunday and do not want Sunday shopping. The issue of Kenora I do not believe is a fair comparison, because Kenora lives and dies by the-does not live and die, but it is a major factor in the tourism industry of Kenora. It is not my local, but it is our membership out there. We see the growth in that food industry during the vacation period. That is a major issue to them in that community. Yes, there is room for both to co-opt, small store-big store, in that community. Mrs.

Render: I will pass. Mr. Stefa ns on: Mr. Ch air person, ju st a clarification on the point regarding leases that is in the brief and touched on by Mr. Storie. That issue is covered. It is covered on page 9 of the bill. I think the confusion arose-the

section that is quoted in your brief, Mr. Ziegler, relates to the extension of the trial period. But the provision that I am referring to relates to what would occur if a municipality were to implement wide-open Sunday shopping. If you go through the details on

section 4.1 (6) on page 9, I think you will find that that concern is, in fact, covered. Mr. Ziegler: It very possibly could be. I did not do the written brief on this organization, but it was an area that we were concerned about, because we are lucky, again. I mean, a lot of employers that we deal with are reas onable. We can negotiate with them not to be open or to give people days off. So we want those employers to have the right to say, no, I do not want to operate. We think that is an area that has to be covered. If it is covered, great. Mr. Stefanson: Mr. Chairperson, I think we all agree on that.

I just have one or two questions, and I want to go back to Mr. Storie's line of questioning of you, which is an interesting one when he keeps going back to some of the presentations last night from organizations like Westfair and Canadian Tire and so on. I think we can all put in place our own

interpretation of what we got from what they were saying last night, but my impression from them was

14 7 LEGISLATIVE ASSEM BLY OF MANITO BA June 3, 19 93 that, unless we are going to have what they did call a level playing field, then they would say revert back to a system of significantly fewer employees and create a situation where they would all have to close, where Westfair would have to close, Safeway would have to close, Canadian Tire, Beaver Lumber, the list could go on and on of those kinds of establishments that would then all be officially closed. It would be no four employees, and they would not be open whatsoever on Su ndays. Is that something that you support and your union supports? Mr.

Ziegler: Again, I was not here last night, so I cannot comment on exactly what they said. We say that the old le gis lation or the cu rrent legislation-1 keep calling it old because that is the way we looked at it-was the best scenario. If we cannot have the best, then a modification of that might be better, is definitely better, than what we have . This is not goo d legisla tio n. A modification to cover the comments made last night might be a better scenario than what we have here. Mr. Stefanson: Mr.

Chairperson, so you are sugg esting that rather than seeing changes that are proposed here that you would prefer to see those kinds of facilities shut down completely on Sundays then. Mr. Ziegler: I am not saying that they should necessarily be shut down completely. I was not here to hear all their comments. I am saying that a bette r scenario would be to massage the legislation that we have now to make a fair situation if there are inequities. I cannot comment on those; I was not here. So that is fairer. I do not know that necessarily they should be cut down. I would love to.

That is my first choice, but I do not know that that is the best balance between the two. Mr. Stefanson: That is interesting. It would be interesting to see what your membership and employees thought of that, but I want to move to an issue that Mr. Storie and you discussed at length. I was somewhat confused by it, whether or not you believed in or supported or put any merit in the whole issue of surveys or not. At one point it seemed there was not any validity to surveys, then I got the impression from Mr. Storie that maybe there was some validity to surveys.

Have you surveyed your own membership and found the results of what your membership's views are on this issue? Mr. Ziegl er: We have had a number of discussions with our membership at conventions and through different areas. They are by and large strongly opposed to Sund ay shopping. I do not have the results here, but in Manitoba and across Cana da we have had some surveys, unofficial surveys, but we have definitely discussed this at our various conventions-ove rwhelmingly opposed to Sunday shopping. * (1310 ) Mr. Stefa nson : That is interes ti ng, Mr.

Chairperson, because I have had feedback from many of your membership on both sides of the issue, and to me I think they reflect Manitobans, the kinds of things we are seeing in other surveys done by other independent organizations, showing that Manitobans are fairly split on this issue, that a small majority favour wide-open Sunday shopping. So you indicate you have had discussions, but you have no survey that in any way shows clearly the position or mood of your membership on this issue. Mr.

Ziegler: I believe that we have done some surveys either through our national office or at the time of negotia tions, and I believe that our membership has shown that they do not support it. I do not have those statistics with me, but I believe we have done some work either locally or nationally. Mr. Stefanson: That being the case, I am awfully surprised, if you have that kind of information that it would not be in your brief considering everything else that has been covered in your brief. Mr. Chairperson: Thank you very much for your presentation, Mr. Ziegl er. We call on now-1 believe Mr.

Randy Cameron is not here, but-Mr. Art Kerr , Manitoba Associa tion of Shopping Centres. The presentation has been distributed. Mr. Kerr, you may proceed. Mr. Art Kerr (Manitoba Association of Shopping Centres) : Mr. Chairperson and members of the committee, I think the association's role here is a little bit different than the other presenters in that the association is not here to take a position one

June 3, 1993 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF MANITOBA 14 8 way or the other by virtue of the aims and objectives of the association. Maybe to clarity that position a little bit for those members who may not be too familiar with the association as maybe the minister or the deputy minister is. The association is made up of members of a much fragmented retail sector, being from the city itself, the small towns in the Interlake and as far up as Thompson and those areas.

The purpose of the association is not to take a position on behalf of an owner, landlord, developer or whatever, but more in fact to pass on, simulate or gather information that might be of value to them within the industry itself. The reason that the association came about is that in the industry itself there is an association called the ICSC, which I believe is referred to in here, and there is an

article indicating some editorial as to what they feel about the cross-border shopping as it relates to Sunday shopping. The problem with the ICSC, which is the International Council of Shopping Centers, is it is more U.S. oriented. Therefore, for pol itical purposes, tax purposes their source of stats or information does not really apply to the Canadian retailer.

We felt there was a need to deal with a local, in this particular case in Manitoba, with issues of that nature because we might be-a nd I say we; there are many classes of shopping centres from super regional down to the little convenient centre that is on your neighbourhood corner-we might have more access to certain information than they would have. So I want you to understand that the purpose of the association is purely and simply to pass on information or points of interest as it might relate to those areas.

What we did in that regard-and, I might add, just before I go any further into this, that this information you have in front of you really pertains to Bill 4 in that, when this was done, Bill 23 was not at the table at the time. We, being the association, in this case Randy Cameron and myself, had met with the deputy minister and his associates on March 9, and that was prior to the determination of their decision based on the results of the November 22 to Apri14 trial period. The purpose

Document details

Collection	Manitoba — Debates (Hansard)
Citation	35-4-ed5
Type	hansard
Volume / chapter	35th 4th hansardpdf ed5.pdf
Language	en
Format	pdf
Source	PROVINCIAL
Identifier	df8188a27ebddf9726f1b29e3d7f59a49dee7049

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