The recent passing of a law requiring large U.S. online digital media companies to pay for linking to Canadian news sources could restrict access to Canadian news for everybody.

Google and Meta (the parent of Facebook and Instagram) have responded to the Online News Act (formerly Bill C-18) by saying they’ll simply stop linking to Canadian news sources, rather than have to pay them anything. So your Google searches for the latest news on your business in Canada could potentially dry up when the law goes into effect in less than six months.

However, since you’re already getting Hardlines Weekly Report, you are a Premium Member-Subscriber—and your Hardlines news feed will continue unabated. Your support of us will ensure you get everything you need to understand this industry—week by week and day by day. Your membership will save you more than the cost of your subscription over a year with the discounts on the Hardlines Retail Report and Hardlines Market Share Report, plus your registration at the Hardlines Conference.

Here is a complete list of what your Premium Membership includes:

• Hardlines Weekly Report (47 times a year!) 
• Inbox alerts for Breaking News as it happens
• HHIQ: You will now be added to our postal mailing list to receive one issue per office of this quarterly print magazine. Additional issues available for discounted price
• Hardlines Classifieds: You now get one 250-word classified ad, logo included, per year for FREE. You’ll also save 15 percent on any additional classifieds.
• a 20 percent discount on our annual Retail Report and Market Share Report
• a 20 percent discount on Hardlines Conference and ORA Gala tickets

BUT: please make sure your subscription is up to date. Make sure your Premium Member-Subscription reflects the latest changes in your own team, so the newsletter goes to the correct people each Monday morning. You can manage your Premium Member-Subscription directly by clicking here. If you have any difficulty or questions, contact Jillian MacLeod at the Hardlines World Headquarters for assistance.

You and your team have access to our other information products, which are entirely free. You simply have to make sure you’re subscribed to them:

• Daily News
• Hardlines Dealer News
• Hardlines HR Advisor
• And our incredible Podcast Series, “What’s in Store”

Your support of Hardlines with your Premium Membership-Subscription is the best way to stay in touch with the changes and trends in hardware and home improvement retailing in Canada. Especially now that Canadian news links could disappear from Google and Meta. Thanks for your support—it really matters.

Why organized retail crime is scaring Home Depot, and why you should care

Two Home Depot employees were killed over the past year in separate theft incidents south of the border. One of the associates, Gary Rasor, was 83. He was shoved to the ground at a North Carolina Home Depot in December and died of his injuries. He had tried to stop a woman from wheeling three pressure washers out of the store without paying. They were worth about $800 combined.

Blake Mohs was 26 when he died in April after being shot in the chest at the California Home Depot where he worked. He had been attempting to stop the theft of a small electrical item worth a few dollars.

The recent increase of shoplifting linked to professional organized crime rings, often combined with violence, has executives in our industry sounding the alarm. The U.S.-based National Federation of Retailers has issued a report on organized retail crime (ORC) that says the problem is growing in scope and complexity. Home Depot in the U.S. has said that shoplifting at its stores is increasing at double-digit rates annually. Much of this is related to big-ticket items that are stolen and resold online by sophisticated shoplifting organizations.

Last fall, 12 people were arrested in Windsor, Ont., and charged with shoplifting more than $700,000 in products in a series of thefts from the city’s two Home Depot stores.

The Retail Council of Canada talked about the different kinds of retail shoplifting scams at its recent conference on loss prevention. Returns fraud is now a big business. Perpetrators can be individuals looking for a quick buck—or working as part of a returns scam ring.

E-commerce has generated its own types of shoplifting scams and frauds. Customers will complain that the item in their online purchase packaging is different from what they ordered. This is another type of scam occurring along the supply chain.

Independent retailers are taking steps to arm themselves against the new wave of shoplifters. Jeff Redden, shortly before selling his Windsor Home Hardware and Windsor Home Furniture stores in Windsor, N.S., to Payzant Building Products earlier this year, was in the Nova Scotia media talking openly about his town’s retail shoplifting problem.

Redden installed a state-of-the-art video security system that cost almost $50,000. “If they feel that Windsor [Home Hardware] is protected, they’re going to go where the lowest-hanging fruit is. They’re going to go where they don’t run into any opposition or any resistance,” he said last year.

B.C. port workers reach tentative 11th-hour deal to end strike

Port workers in British Columbia had been on strike since July 1, causing havoc for supply lines throughout the country. But they agreed to a tentative deal last Thursday, after the federal government brought in a mediator.

The B.C. Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) had been seeking binding arbitration to end the strike, which lasted almost two weeks and involved some 7,400 workers at more than 30 ports who belong to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada.

Maritime employers in B.C. asked for the federal government to step in and apply binding arbitration to get the workers back on the job. A federal mediator was appointed last week to help bring an end to the strike. It delivered recommendations to both sides of the dispute, putting the parties on deadline to respond by 10:30 a.m. PT last Thursday morning at the latest.

The union’s concerns included improved wages, the status of contract workers, and the rise of automation. The BCMEA says the strike caused delays which disrupted upwards of $9 billion in cargo before it finally ended.

The BCMEA says the four-year deal is subject to ratification by both sides.

Mental health challenges have taken a serious toll on both workers and managers through two exhausting years of Covid lockdowns. Now that we have work-from-home and hybrid workplaces, these issues—still unaddressed in many businesses—loom even larger.

Mental health in the workplace was the subject of a seminar at the Retail Council of Canada’s Human Resources Conference, held recently in Toronto.

The presenter was Kristy Cork, a workplace mental health consultant based in St. Thomas, Ont. Her seminar focused on “steps retailers can take today to improve psychological health and safety in safety programs.”

Traditionally, those programs have focused on preventing physical accidents. Worker and customer safety has properly been the first training that new shop-floor employees receive. A case in point: Home Depot Canada spends about a third of its roughly 20 hours of “Before the Apron” new-hire training focused on physical safety. This includes hazardous materials, working at heights, equipment safety, and customer safety protocols.

But what about the mental health aspects of today’s workplace? Between abusive or difficult customers, the urgency and stress created by digital media, and relentless demands from well-meaning (or not) managers looking for ever-increasing productivity, it’s no wonder that Cork is so busy.

“I like to talk about a culture of carelessness,” she said. “I’m sure you have physical safety provisions. It should be that way with mental health too. Because workplaces cause harm.”

Cork said that everywhere employees are struggling—and some of yours are, too. “There are employees parking their cars in the morning and they can’t come into the workplace before they sit there and give themselves a pep talk.”

Obviously, there is a problem here—one which is described by CSA National Standard 21003: Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace.

It reads, simply: “Psychological safety is a state in which workers are free from exposure to reasonably foreseeable, significant risks to their mental health arising from the acts and omissions of other people in the workplace so that there is a low risk of mental injury.”

The costs of ignoring this little-known standard are real, Cork said. She put up a slide that listed some of them: increased turnover, litigation, absenteeism, short- and long-term disability claims, incidents, and conflicts.

Absenteeism is costly but “presenteeism” is just as expensive. That relatively new HR term, Cork explained, is where the employees show up at work but are unwell. In some cases they can even be in physical pain from their mental unwellness.

At Dollarama Inc., CFO J.P. Towner will depart the company “in the coming months” to take up another position. He will helm the Montreal-based discount retailer through the posting of its Q2 results. A search process for his successor is underway.

DID YOU KNOW...?

… that, as a Hardlines Premium Member-Subscriber, you can take advantage of a Hardlines Classified Ad? You now get one 250-word classified ad, logo included, per year for FREE. (With additional classifieds, you’ll receive a 15 percent discount.) You’re getting more value than ever with your Membership-Subscription to the Hardlines Weekly Report. This is our way of saying thanks!

RETAILER NEWS

A long-delayed Canac store in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., is now expected to see the light of day next year. Groundbreaking is slated for the end of the year or early 2024 in anticipation of an opening in the fall of next year. Canac purchased the site in 2017 with a view to opening a store in 2019 but was hit by delays related to environmental regulations and then the pandemic.

Members and suppliers from AD Canada gathered for the buying group’s annual meeting recently. The meeting brought together two divisions, Industrial & Safety and Building Supplies, to leverage opportunities for in-person collaboration and peer networking. Crown Building Supplies and ADSS Building Supplies were the two members who garnered AD Canada’s 2023 Member of the Year Award. The event took place at the Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto last month and played host to over 600 participants in attendance from across Canada as well as the U.S.

Castle Building Centres has announced a new member in its commercial building supplies division. At Whitehorse’s Prefab Yukon, owner Les Walker and GM Rutvik Simediya had been navigating a local market challenged by a paucity of suppliers and available construction materials.

Giant Tiger founder Gordon Reid died earlier this month at the age of 89, following a brief illness. Born in Vancouver, he moved as a child to Montreal and got his start in retail at 13 doing giftwrapping at Simpsons. In 1961 he opened the first Giant Tiger in Ottawa’s Byward Market. His budget was so crunched that he had to build his own display tables. He stepped down in 2020 as CEO of the chain, which now numbers more than 150 stores.

At next year’s International Hardware Fair in Cologne, Germany (March 3-6, 2024) delegates will be able to connect digitally. “Lead+Meet” is a feature that brings together exhibitors and visitors on the fairgrounds with personalized push messages that are issued via the show’s newly updated app. It enables exhibitors to directly address their most important visitor target groups at the fair and send invitations to their stand directly via smartphone.

Walmart is bringing its subscription-based Delivery Pass to Canada. Customers in the Ottawa area have been able to sign up for the program, which costs $89 per year and offers free next-day delivery on more than 65,000 items. The pass will be available in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver before rolling out nationwide later in the summer.

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, has committed to buy 100,000 electric delivery vans (EDVs) from Irvine, Calif.-based Rivian Automotive Inc. by 2030. Amazon already operates about 3,000 Rivian EDVs in North America. The first 300 Rivian EDVs are scheduled to hit European roads for Amazon deliveries “in the coming weeks,” Amazon says. Customers in Germany will start seeing the vehicles first. Amazon owns approximately 18 percent of Rivian and Ford owns about 12 percent.

SUPPLIER NEWS

Richelieu Hardware reported Q2 sales of $472.1 million, down 3.2 percent from $487.9 million a year ago. Net earnings of $31.2 million were down 33.9 percent from the prior year. Net earnings attributable to shareholders amounted to $30.7 million, a 34.7 decline from the previous Q2. 

Gillfor Distribution has signed on to distribute Tando Composites’ Beach House Shake and TandoStone exterior cladding through its 14 warehouses. Bolton, Ont.-based Gillfor acquired AFA in 2022.

West Fraser Timber has reached an agreement to sell its unbleached softwood kraft pulp mill in Hinton, Alta., to Mondi Group plc. Under the terms of the deal, West Fraser will continue to supply fibre to the Hinton mill under long-term contract, via residuals from West Fraser's Alberta sawmills.

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

The total monthly value of building permits in Canada increased 10.5 percent in May to $10.5 billion. The value of residential permits rose 8.5 percent to $6.8 billion, with Ontario contributing to 45.8 percent of Canada’s residential permit values. Across Canada, permits for 3,800 new residential units were issued for single-family homes during the month, compared with permits for 17,700 new dwellings in multi-unit buildings. (StatCan)

NOTED

According to new research from American Express Canada, two-thirds of Canadian retailers agree that attracting Gen Z customers is crucial for the success of their business. That rate of response is up from just over half in 2019. The research also suggests that, while retailers have made progress in reaching this increasingly powerful demographic, they have yet to close critical gaps that drive true brand loyalty.