City pushed to adopt equal holiday rules for all retailers
New Year’s Day can be a busy shopping day, but that’s useless to the general manager of Toronto’s second largest mall.
“We know that 17,000 people show up at our shopping centre when we are closed. It is their expectation that we are open,” said Claire Santamaria, general manager at Yorkdale Shopping Centre, which is second in area to the downtown Eaton Centre. “This is a difficult situation.”
Yorkdale, as well as many other shopping centres in Toronto, are bound by a bylaw preventing them from opening on most statutory holidays — including New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. But not every shopping centre must be closed. When the bylaw was passed in 2006, city officials granted an exception to small retail establishments, art galleries, restaurants and entertainment businesses. They also granted an exception to some downtown tourist areas, the Hudson’s Bay at Yonge and Queen Sts. — and the Eaton Centre.
Since 2013, the Eaton Centre has been opening for business for 364 days a year, closing only on Christmas Day.
Santamaria said she’d like the city to establish an “equal playing field” for all shopping centres. She said the status quo is a big loss to individual retailers at Yorkdale and its nearly 7,000 employees, who would otherwise benefit from the hours worked during the holidays.
“We’ve actually got traffic that’s leaving the city and going and spending their dollars elsewhere,” she said, pointing out shopping centres in other GTA municipalities where such bylaws do not exist.
“We attract global brands that chose to open in the Toronto markets, and they just don’t understand why they’re not open on these holidays. Brands like Nordstrom who are allowed to open at the Eaton Centre and yet their Yorkdale store needs to be closed.”
Bri-Ann Stuart, general manager of Upper Canada Mall in Newmarket, said they are “fortunate” to be able to open on statutory holidays simply because it makes good business.
York Region allows businesses to open on statutory holidays if they so choose, while it’s against the law in Peel and Durham regions.
Toronto council has grappled with this matter several times without much success, often encountering opposition from religious groups and workers’ unions opposed to changing the rules. Following yet another series of extensive public consultations on the issue, the city voted in the fall of 2017 against amending the act. Across the country, there are no such restrictions in Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C., Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
Councillor Michael Thompson said he’s “very supportive” of the opportunity to review the existing holiday shopping act.
He said Toronto has a “tremendous” amount of cultural and religious diversity, and there should be a way to accommodate the needs of shopping centres.