Unfair rules mean some retailers must remain closed

Frustration is mounting for Ted Barkun with each passing day and each prospective customer that passes by his family-run Cozzy Coverings blinds shop, where he’s operated for 27 years in the lower level of the Westgate Shopping Centre.

With no exterior-facing entrance and no exterior storefront, Barkun and his staff have had to turn away customers from the mall’s front doors during the lockdown, and more recently he’s been answering the phone and correcting some assumptions people are making about this Friday’s provincial reopening.

“A lot of people are still thinking that, as of Friday, they can come in,” Barkun says. “But, no, you can’t.”

Provincial lockdown restrictions still apply to Cozzy Coverings and other retailers, principally those in shopping centres with no storefront, who must continue to rely on curbside pickup or deliveries.

That makes it difficult for businesses like Barkin’s, especially with so many of his direct competitors either remaining open during the lockdown or set to open up shop Friday.

“The first lockdown, I had people come to the door, and they’d ask to see our blinds, and I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t let you in.’ And they say, ‘Well, how come I can go into Home Depot and look at the blinds there?’

“This is what’s happening all the time. Now, with this lockdown, of all the stores in Ottawa that sell curtains and drapes, we’re the only ones in a shopping centre. Everybody else has a storefront, so customers can go in there, buy fabric, buy drapes and blinds, they can buy what they want.

“And I’m still having people come to my door,” Barkun says. “And I still have to tell them they can’t come in.”

Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses president Dan Kelly called the situation “deeply unfair.”