Rodents gather outside of the Burrard SkyTrain Station in Vancouver on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ethan Cairns
When the sun goes down, the rats of Vancouver’s Burrard Skytrain Station emerge, in a scurrying blur of fur and whipping tails.
Dozens of them, large and small, scamper around a park in front of the downtown station, running up and down the stairs among the legs of commuters and a wary reporter.
Some appear to be feasting on birdseed scattered on the ground.
Pest control experts suggest the skin-crawling scene may be due to a provincial ban on a type of rat poison, as well as other factors including Vancouver’s unusually warm winter.
Ashley Cochrane with Vancouver pest control firm The X-Terminators said she had watched a video of the rat “party” that unfolds in Art Phillips Park.
“Unfortunately, it’s definitely not good to see that, you know, for them to be so brazen … it’s a shock,” said Cochrane.
She said rodent-related services have become a bigger part of their business lately.
“I speak with a lot of people on the phone and the consensus is we’ve never had this problem before and now there’s just a lot more activity that we’re seeing,” said Cochrane.
Bill Rough, a pest control specialist with Surrey-based Advance Pest Control, said he recently responded to a rat infestation in a downtown Vancouver duplex.
He set 30 to 40 traps. But within half an hour, he got a call from the customer saying they’d heard the traps going off.
“I came back and there were nine rats in the traps … and they were the size of a small cat,” said Rough.
He said rat-related calls have gone up 30 to 40 per cent in the past 18 months. “It has been gripping crazy lately,” said Rough.
In January 2023, the province banned some types of anticoagulant rodenticides, saying they posed a risk to animals that eat poisoned rodents, such as hawks, and owls.
Pets or children could also be at risk, the government said, and only “essential services” such as hospitals and food production facilities were exempted.
Rough said the ban was one of the main reasons for the increase in rat activity in the Lower Mainland.
He said the government should “tweak” the policy by allowing people to use the banned rodenticide with caution in infested areas.
“I don’t see why that would be a problem (but) that’s not my decision, unfortunately,” said Rough.
Jason Page, general manager with Solutions Pest Control, said many factors contributed to the increase in rodent activity, including the poison ban, milder winter temperatures providing better breeding cycles, increased food availability from backyard chicken coops and restaurant patios, and increased urban development.
Page said the poison ban was “well-intentioned.”
“However, with every action, there is always a reaction. In this case, the apparent reaction we are seeing appears to be a 50 per cent increase in rats and mice,” said Page.
Jay McIntyre, a service supervisor with Solutions Pest Control who oversees rodent work in Greater Vancouver, said he had also seen a video of the rats outside Burrard station.
“It’s not normal, but it doesn’t come as a surprise,” said Mclntyre.
He’s been in the pest control industry since 1996 — he said one of his career highlights was trapping 65 rats in one house.
Mclntyre said his company has seen a “steady increase” of about 50 per cent in calls about rats in the past several years.
Although pest control companies are confident about the spike in rodent activity in Metro Vancouver, most municipal authorities lack hard data.
The cities of Surrey, Richmond and New Westminster said they don’t have data on rat-related calls
However, a City of Vancouver spokesperson said they received 1,174 calls about rats on the city’s 3-1-1 phone line last year, compared to 1,141 in 2022.
Kaylee Byers is a senior scientist with the Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society at Simon Fraser University, who also calls herself a “rat detective.”
She said the lack of a comprehensive system for rat sightings makes it hard for wildlife biologists to tell if populations are growing.
“??The thing is, nobody actually knows and that’s because we don’t have any form of municipal systematic reporting system for rats and rat sightings in the city,” said Byers.
“The best thing we have is sort of anecdotal evidence, which is calls to pest control professionals, but that data is not perfect because not everybody will call a pest control professional.”
In 2013, Byers joined the Vancouver Rat Project, an attempt to monitor and study rat movements around the city. Her team once captured more than 700 rats in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.
She said cities in B.C. should follow the lead of rat-free provinces, like Alberta, as well as invest in rat management programs tailored differently to every city based on its rat populations.
“Rats are a part of our cities, and managing them is a complex issue,” she said.
“Part of the problem is that we’re approaching it like it’s a simple one. See a rat, remove a rat, or kill a rat, and it’s not working. We need to think more broadly, we need to address it as a complex issue in order to come up with innovative and multiple solutions to managing rats now and in the future.”
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Dollarama Inc.’s food aisles may have expanded far beyond sweet treats or piles of gum by the checkout counter in recent years, but its chief executive maintains his company is “not in the grocery business,” even if it’s keeping an eye on the sector.
“It’s just one small part of our store,” Neil Rossy told analysts on a Wednesday call, where he was questioned about the company’s food merchandise and rivals playing in the same space.
“We will keep an eye on all retailers — like all retailers keep an eye on us — to make sure that we’re competitive and we understand what’s out there.”
Over the last decade and as consumers have more recently sought deals, Dollarama’s food merchandise has expanded to include bread and pantry staples like cereal, rice and pasta sold at prices on par or below supermarkets.
However, the competition in the discount segment of the market Dollarama operates in intensified recently when the country’s biggest grocery chain began piloting a new ultra-discount store.
The No Name stores being tested by Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Windsor, St. Catharines and Brockville, Ont., are billed as 20 per cent cheaper than discount retail competitors including No Frills. The grocery giant is able to offer such cost savings by relying on a smaller store footprint, fewer chilled products and a hearty range of No Name merchandise.
Though Rossy brushed off notions that his company is a supermarket challenger, grocers aren’t off his radar.
“All retailers in Canada are realistic about the fact that everyone is everyone’s competition on any given item or category,” he said.
Rossy declined to reveal how much of the chain’s sales would overlap with Loblaw or the food category, arguing the vast variety of items Dollarama sells is its strength rather than its grocery products alone.
“What makes Dollarama Dollarama is a very wide assortment of different departments that somewhat represent the old five-and-dime local convenience store,” he said.
The breadth of Dollarama’s offerings helped carry the company to a second-quarter profit of $285.9 million, up from $245.8 million in the same quarter last year as its sales rose 7.4 per cent.
The retailer said Wednesday the profit amounted to $1.02 per diluted share for the 13-week period ended July 28, up from 86 cents per diluted share a year earlier.
The period the quarter covers includes the start of summer, when Rossy said the weather was “terrible.”
“The weather got slightly better towards the end of the summer and our sales certainly increased, but not enough to make up for the season’s horrible start,” he said.
Sales totalled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up from $1.46 billion in the same quarter last year.
Comparable store sales, a key metric for retailers, increased 4.7 per cent, while the average transaction was down2.2 per cent and traffic was up seven per cent, RBC analyst Irene Nattel pointed out.
She told investors in a note that the numbers reflect “solid demand as cautious consumers focus on core consumables and everyday essentials.”
Analysts have attributed such behaviour to interest rates that have been slow to drop and high prices of key consumer goods, which are weighing on household budgets.
To cope, many Canadians have spent more time seeking deals, trading down to more affordable brands and forgoing small luxuries they would treat themselves to in better economic times.
“When people feel squeezed, they tend to shy away from discretionary, focus on the basics,” Rossy said. “When people are feeling good about their wallet, they tend to be more lax about the basics and more willing to spend on discretionary.”
The current economic situation has drawn in not just the average Canadian looking to save a buck or two, but also wealthier consumers.
“When the entire economy is feeling slightly squeezed, we get more consumers who might not have to or want to shop at a Dollarama generally or who enjoy shopping at a Dollarama but have the luxury of not having to worry about the price in some other store that they happen to be standing in that has those goods,” Rossy said.
“Well, when times are tougher, they’ll consider the extra five minutes to go to the store next door.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
TORONTO – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered TD Bank Group to pay US$28 million for repeatedly sharing inaccurate, negative information about its customers to consumer reporting companies.
The agency says TD has to pay US$7.76 million in total to tens of thousands of victims of its illegal actions, along with a US$20 million civil penalty.
It says TD shared information that contained systemic errors about credit card and bank deposit accounts to consumer reporting companies, which can include credit reports as well as screening reports for tenants and employees and other background checks.
CFPB director Rohit Chopra says in a statement that TD threatened the consumer reports of customers with fraudulent information then “barely lifted a finger to fix it,” and that regulators will need to “focus major attention” on TD Bank to change its course.
TD says in a statement it self-identified these issues and proactively worked to improve its practices, and that it is committed to delivering on its responsibilities to its customers.
The bank also faces scrutiny in the U.S. over its anti-money laundering program where it expects to pay more than US$3 billion in monetary penalties to resolve.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 11, 2024.
