TORONTO —
Two U.S.-based retailers offered Remembrance Day sales to their Canadian customers this year, a practice one retail analyst calls “horrible” and “disrespectful”.
“Canadians are very sensitive about the commercialization of this sacred holiday,” independent retail analyst and consultant Bruce Wintertold CTVNews.ca in a phone interview. “Certainly in Canada it’s been taboo to have any type of sale on Remembrance Day, for the obvious reason that we’re remembering our fallen soldiers.”
Lenovo’s Canadian-facing site says that “Our biggest Remembrance Day sale ever is coming in 2020,” and asks customers to sign up. Lenovo’s head office is in Beijing, and its operational headquarters is in North Carolina.
Customers of window blind retailer blinds.ca could get a fourth window blind free if they buy three under that company’s Remembrance Day sale, which was originally supposed to end Nov. 11.
“At Blinds.ca we have the utmost respect for military veterans, their families and their sacrifices,” wrote spokesperson Kathleen Hartnett, who is based in Houston. “We apologize to our Canadian shoppers for any disrespect that this has caused and we have removed the sale from our site.”
Lenovo did not respond to a request for comment.
Remembrance Day sales have been controversial in the past. Veterans and their organizations condemned similar sales by Eddie Bauer in 2010, and The Gap in 2014.
“While we are supportive of retailers who wish to show their thanks to our veterans, we would not want to see the actual commercialization of Remembrance Day, or of the remembrance period itself,” Royal Canadian Legion spokesperson Nujma Bond said in a written statement.
Grocery chain Whole Foods reversed a controversial ban on employees wearing poppies last week, after political leaders including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Fordcondemned it; Trudeau called it a “silly mistake.”
Winter, and Ryerson University historian Peter Vronsky, point out that Veterans Day sales are common in the U.S. around Nov. 11, and say that companies seem to have carried the concept into Canada without paying enough attention to cultural difference.
“In the United States traditionally, Memorial Day and Veterans Day are holidays in a strange way,” he says. “That’s their cultural tradition, But Remembrance Day was never really a holiday in that sense of the word here. This was a solemn memorial, a dark day. The Americans have a different approach.
“I think there’s a much more solemn sense of what Remembrance Day stands for – it’s not about going shopping, certainly.”
Winter says it’s an example of marketing practices being simply transferred from one country to another without enough attention to cultural difference, something he calls “a rookie mistake.”
“Sometimes companies just don’t do the due diligence,” he says, pointing out that “Canadians are very sensitive about the commercialization of this sacred holiday.”
“There are a number of companies that think that the way they market in their home country, they can use the exact same practices around the world. That’s something you learn the hard way, that you can’t do that – you have to be local. You have to think about local tastes and local holidays and local consumer sentiment and behaviour.”
Retail analyst Craig Patterson calls the sales “a big marketing fail” that would have been prevented by basic research that would have quickly shown previous years’ controversies.
“The bar is not high – it’s pretty easy,” he says.
“I would just shake my head and say: ‘You guys just need to do your research. Do your job. It’s not that hard to do a little bit of backgrounding. You’re operating in another country – you need to understand the cultural norms of that country.’ I don’t know that there are that many excuses.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
