Chinese dollar store MINISO plans to open 500 stores in Canada

[Curious Cdn]

You know absolutely none of the product sold in this store would be made in Canada. It'd all be Chinese made and often in criminally exploitive labour conditions. It would be at the expense of Canadian jobs, what few are remaining in small manufacturing.

It's time to reinstitute fair trade laws and tariffs to ensure Canadian made goods can be competitive in their home market. We'll see how interested MINISO would be if they were forced to tap Canadian suppliers. My guess is not much.

'Free' Trade has failed catastrophically for all but a small cabal of traders and financiers.

Do you want to assemble widgets for 50¢ an hour? Why do you think that other Canadians should?

 

[Bar Sinister]

You know absolutely none of the product sold in this store would be made in Canada. It'd all be Chinese made and often in criminally exploitive labour conditions. It would be at the expense of Canadian jobs, what few are remaining in small manufacturing.

Other than food products is anything sold in this type of store made in Canada?

 

[coldstream]

Do you want to assemble widgets for 50¢ an hour? Why do you think that other Canadians should?

We have no middle and lower end manufacturing left in this country. Before the onset of Free Trade, people did all sorts of jobs in this country and made a living wage. They did not have to compete with slave colonies and Maquilladoras, whose cost of living and wages are a fraction of what they are in Canada.

The old Free Market sophistry is foisted on as inevitable 'truth'. That it is a winning situation for all. This has been conclusively disproved. We now have an economy where the workplace is inundated with insecurity, exploitation, impermanence. We have a ever dimishing class of traders and financiers who profit grotesquely from the paradigm and pay minimum regressive taxes.

The rest of the country struggles. The lauded 21st Century jobs of the intellectual, abstract, information economy AT BEST will provide jobs for 20% of the workforce. What's everyone else going to do. We need an integrated industrial economy that will provide jobs for people who work with their hands as well as their heads.

 

[Musky]

Cling to the past....blame immigrants....or robots....or whatever you like.

 

[Kreskin]

I want my 5 and dime stores back.

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

I like Dollar Tree. Shop at them, Giant Tiger and WalMart. Not a big fan of Dollarama.