Ethical Sourcing & MEC: Globalizing Supply Chains & Equality

Witnessing the foreign take-over of iconic Canadian companies or the migration of local factories to overseas is unsettling.  It makes us feel vulnerable.  It suggests that we’re a bit less “Canadian”.  These feelings are real.

I spent my childhood in one of Canada’s prettiest cities, Victoria.  During the 1970’s, it was a quiet town full of mom and pop shops and Canadian chain stores.  Rush hour along the commercial core started at 4:55 and ended at 5:05.  Today, some thirty years later, Victoria remains painfully sedate and drivers in the downtown core can still expect to be idling in traffic for a full 10 minutes but what has changed though is the demise of local shops and retailers.  The independent electronic stores that dotted Yates and Douglas Streets have been replaced by an American big box chain.  The three department stores, which anchored the city, have faded.  Eatons and Woodwards were buried in the 90’s and the remaining one is moribund but lingering thanks to the life support of a foreign investor. 

The changes in Victoria’s retail landscape and our national economy are driven by globalization.  Globalization is foreign companies buying local ones and vice versa.  It’s also the amendment of Canadian laws and practices to conform to international ones.

Probably the biggest impact of globalization on MEC is on its supply chain.  From 2004 to 2006, the percentage of MEC labelled merchandise made in Canada dropped by almost 10% to 37.5%.  This portion will likely drop further in the years ahead as local suppliers relocate their operations overseas and prices become even more competitive. 

In 2007, two long term local suppliers gave MEC notice that they will not be accepting any future orders because they’re shuttering.  Others have not been that explicit but are instead running their operations on a short term basis as if they have one foot out the door.  The movement of production offshore is tough.  Workers (read Asian immigrant women) will lose their livelihood and the local tax base and economy will dip albeit temporarily.   

Economists call this painful transformation structural adjustment.  It’s the ongoing shift of low skill and labour intensive industries, in wealthy nations like Canada, to more value added and knowledge intensive ones.   Translating this to the lives of factory workers, it means this: lose your job, collect employment insurance and eventually find another low pay occupation in a fast food restaurant or hotel.  However, your kids will likely enjoy the fruits of structural adjustment by taking positions in the banks or computer companies.  (This is exactly what happened to my family and those of my Asian cohorts). 

Living through the transformation of Canadian industries or the foreign take-over of domestic companies makes many of us uncomfortable.  It implies uncertainty, weakening of Canadianism and vulnerability to “outsiders”.  That’s how I feel especially when I witness the shift of MEC’s supply chain to overseas.  But on the flip side, does it really matter?  Whether an Asian immigrant woman in Winnipeg sews a button hole or changes bed linen in a fancy Montreal hotel, it’s really all the same.  They’re both  in low status and low pay jobs.   Maybe the real issue is not the shrinkage of the local textile trade but it’s shrinking the number of women (and the impoverished) in occupational ghettos both in Canada and abroad.  Let’s be daring and thoughtful by fighting for the latter and less so for the former.