Canada Goose should ‘outsource’ to northern reserves

Business is very good these days for Toronto-based Canada Goose. With state-of-the-art factories in Winnipeg and Toronto, retail stores in eight cities, including Beijing and Hong Kong, and an e-commerce business in 12 countries, the company’s sales have grown more than 3,500 per cent in the past decade.

But as business booms in the south for the iconic Canadian outdoor apparel maker, across much of Canada’s North, dozens of small, isolated Indigenous reserves with no economic base struggle to survive. What future do they have?

Some economists and political analysts, former Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien among them, have suggested that perhaps the only sustainable solution for these reserves is to move elsewhere. Not surprisingly, that is not something that sits well with First Nations. But how can a small, isolated reserve survive with no economic base and with no mining, forestry, hydro or any other kind of jobs to offer its young people?

Could Canada Goose play a role in helping answer this question?

Indigenous women are Canada’s original and most experienced sewers. Their skill was borne out of necessity. Harvesting moose, caribou, seal and beaver and skinning, stretching, smoking and sewing their skins are traditions passed down from generation to generation among First Nation and Inuit peoples. Moccasins, mitts, gloves and parkas have all been designed and sewn by Indigenous women for hundreds of years.

All Canada Goose products, except its gloves and knitwear, which are made in China, Italy and Romania, are manufactured in Canada. Company CEO Dani Reiss, whose grandfather founded the company in 1957, says a lack of Canadian manufacturing and technical capacity to produce these items means they have no choice but to look overseas. Perhaps.

Since 2009, Canada Goose has provided Inuit sewers across the Far North with free fabrics, zippers and buttons for clothing for their families and community.

But surely a company that did more than $590 million in sales in fiscal 2018 and has reaped so many benefits from its symbolic link to Canada’s North could do more. Couldn’t it partner with a remote reserve that is struggling to survive because of a lack of employment opportunities for its people? What about outsourcing northward and employing a group of Aboriginal women to sew some of its apparel? If workers can be trained in Winnipeg and Toronto, surely the same goes for Indigenous women.

While such an investment in Indigenous communities is unlikely to boost company profits, it would go a long way toward balancing corporate economic interests with corporate social responsibility here at home. And for remote reserves with no employment hopes on the horizon, that could well prove to be an economic lifeline.