So often success stories get badly maligned and slandered but when the charges are examined there is no basis to them.

Too often we judge on hearsay.

I like Wal-Mart. I like that they give good prices and selection. I have lived on less than 10,000 dollars a year for 11 years now (Disability).

I treasure a place where i can get some good deals and stretch my few dollars a bit. Why pay $4 for a role of masking tape when i can get six for $5? Why pay $7.80 for prune juice when i can get it for $3.80? Why pay $4 for motor oil when i can get it for 99 cents? Same products, just different store. Who's been ripping me off elsewhere?

I find so much of what i buy there is made in Canada or USA.

But what i like most is that no one has to shop there; that is a choice. No one has to work there; that is a choice too. And no one has to sell to Wal-Mart either; that also is a choice.

I value that freedom. I wish there was more of it.

And equally often we judge on superficial criteria like price. Wal-Mart's negative effects on a community are well documented. People choose to shop there because they don't realize the long-term effects on their lives.

Wal-Mart's low prices today come with a cost that is only due in years, when the fabric of a community begins to unravel. Fortunately, that lesson has been learned (the hard way) by other communities, so places like Campbell River can take action before it's too late.

Freedom. How odd that someone equates Walmart (or Mall Wort as it's also known) with freedom.

You have the freedom to shop there... until they run the small local businesses and other major competitors out of business. Then watch what happens to prices. Once they're the only game in town, watch those low prices drop. By the way, a study was done last year comparing Walmart and 3 or 4 other stores. It found Walmart did not have the lowest prices; they use loss leaders on some products but have higher prices on other items. Just makes you think they have the cheapest items.

I was shopping in Courtenay a couple of days ago in a locally-owned downtown business and the owner mentioned that this past Christmas, sales were unexpectedly down, due to the Walmart on the edge of town. The Walmart there opened two years ago. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that when a huge corporation (the largest, most profitable Fortune 500 company in the world) exercises its muscle, someone gets hurt.

Who, you ask? Well, you might wonder why ordinary families often have to have two or more jobs between husband and wife to make ends meet. Well, that's because wages have fallen so dramatically in the last 25 years. (Incidentally, the wealthy have increased their share of wealth dramatically in that time period. In the 1980s CEOs were making about about 40 times as much as workers; today CEOs make roughly over 400 times as much as workers. In the 1980s, the wealthiest in the U.S. owned about 2% of the nation's assets; today I believe the latest figures show that 2% of the population (the wealthiest) own 20% of all the assets. (My figures may be a little off, but they are in the general ballpark.)

Why should you care? One of the reasons you, and others are having to search for the lowest costs items is because your standard of living is falling. Why is it falling? Because ordinary people are seeing their earning power being diminished. Who's diminishing their earning power? The people with the clout. Who has the clout? The corporate elite. Who are the corporate elite? Well, in the latest list of the 20 wealthiest people in the world, there are four or five Walton kids, the owners of Walmart.

Pretty soon, not only won't you be able to afford to buy even cheap masking tape, you won't be able to afford to get medical care. Your disability income may be further eroded; your benefits cut. These corporate elite want lower taxes so that they don't have to share so much of what they have. (They figure they're more deserving than the rest of us.) Of course, they'll still take (your) taxpayer dollars from communities who give them tax breaks and subsidies to locate in their areas. Just so their citizens can be given "threadbare" jobs which politicians can parade around to gullible voters, meanwhile their local businesses are put at risk. Oh my, we live in an Alice-in-Wonderland world right now.

What can we do? I made a vow that I would never set foot in a Walmart store. I never have, and I never will. I go out of my way to shop local, and to buy Canadian whenever possible. I don't travel to the United States; I make a point of doing my holidaying in Canada (or other countries I respect if/when I can afford it). (I despair that so many children in Canada are brought up to believe that Disneyland is the best place on earth, or that New York City has the best arts and culture. We have lots of wonderful places to visit and culture to experience here in Canada.) What an awful thing, to teach our children to worship the United States, whether through travel, purchase of their products and immersing them in all this American television crap that surrounds us. There is lots we can celebrate and support here in Canada -- Walmart is not one of them.

Enjoy the spring sunshine.

Sunny Samson, you are a treasure. Your analysis is clear, well reasoned, and bang on! The members of the family which controls WalMart are all billionaires... that has to tell you something...and small, locally owned stores will be wiped out...jobs lost...but WalMart is only a symptom of the problem, not the only or main culprit. Gung-ho capitalism is rotting the fabric of what we thought was our society...we have less and less control over the production of food, and without the ability to feed ourselves we are at the mercy of those who do control the food...WalMart really couldn't give a fig for Campbell River. I doubt if the Walton family even knows where Campbell River IS... this is just a huge corporation moving into what they think will be a very profitable marketplace. And it will only be profitable if the small businesses fold. Period. There is only so much cash available in any town at any one time. For WalMart to corner that cash has got to mean there won't be much of it left over for any other business.

Loved your post, Sunny. The spring sunshine in Tahsis means the pink curly lilies have begun to bloom. I'd rather have them than WalMart!!!!!!!!!!!!!

low wages,harrassment of workers,gender wage gaps,illegal immigrants working 6 or 7 days a week.wal-mart has the highest number of workers on government assistance in many u.s. states,including their home state of arkansas.so those cheap prices are being subsidized by all taxpayers!five of the top ten richest people in the world,and they need to leach onto the back of EVERY taxpayer?think hard people,penny smart dollar stupid!

See the New York Review of Books to read a two page letter from WalMart ceo re a recent critique. I smiled at his charitable mention when I read that the C.R. store would invest 12 to 15 million $ & make a local donation of $15,000. Nice ratio, eh. Amongst other things!

Great post Sunny. All i'll say is that we live in scary times when people equate consumer choice with freedom!

Nice job Sunny, what can I add to that. Just as a sad sidebar, in the US Wal Mart managers were teaching their employees how to collect food stamps to subsidize their low income .
How about Quebec, when Wal-Mart was required by law to act responsibly and let workers have some control over their workplace they just shut down to send a message.
I grew up in a small town say around 50,000 people, when I grew up we had a vibrant downtown
With many movie theatres and independent bookstores, coffee shops and privately owned business etc, many visitors commented on how pleasant it was. Now 15 yrs later they have one mega mall in the suburbs of town, it has a Home Depot, Wal-Mart , Future shop and one giant 8 screen movie house in town, and all the other giant chain stores etc. Our downtown is abandoned with many empty boarded up stores, and now the prices have crept up. all for a few McJobs.

Wal-Mart has a few loss leaders but is not cheaper in anyway. After you navigate the 10 acre parking lot and find a place you have to line up for 25 min under the view of at least 40 plus security cameras(just look up) and you always pick up something you never planned on buying. I have always managed to find cheaper products locally, Wal-Mart treats its suppliers like crap, the producers of its products like crap(sweat shops)and its workers like crap(richest company in the world that pays the worst) . See how much freedom you have when Wal-Mart is the only game in town, I will not be visiting Campbell River if they go ahead, and I will tell their council and Mayor and I advise you folks to do the same. And just a interesting stat,
Canadian small and midsize business employs around 70% of the population and usually pays them better wages.

As usual, the answer to all problems in this province is to polarize opinion and be short-sighted and abstract in offering solutions. WalMart is just capitalizing on this rube mentality. Most people in Campbell River don’t give a damn if everyone who reads The Tyee never shops in a Walmart or not (let alone their Walmart) or refuses to ever go to Bellingham for cheese. They’re being left to twist in the wind while Left and Right battle over ideology as usual and it would take an unusually strong local leader to empower the community into real significant action. It’s good to see that City Council is at least stalling for time.
What is needed is a strong sense of community with an understanding of where the retail sector fits into the definition of community. Too often, small retailers sow the seeds of their own demise through inefficient overpricing (masking tape for $5 a roll), sloppy indifferent service, bad store layout and ignorance of their place as community gathering places. It’s easy for mbjc88 and others to make a hero out of Walmart if the local stores are indifferent to their customers. A group of stores that address these factors along with a city council that also understands the importance of an interdependent community would be a good start to combatting the big-box monster. A bulletproof community could make a Walmart store just an empty oddity – (You’d never see it because they would just cut and run at the first sign of trouble, like they did in Quebec.)
Of course, It would be too much to ask of our boneheads in the provincial government (either party) to help the cities and towns of this province actually thrive through innovative commercial zoning and incentives. They’re too busy buttressing up their simplistic political ideologies with our money.

Looks to me from this report that the people of CR and their Council are doing just that, Davidex.

Another issue that I read between the lines is the role of local First Nations in all this. Sounds like Wal-Mart is capitalizing on their needs for development to sustain their own community. It would seem to make sense to bring their needs into the wider discussion, so that they don't have to turn to Wal-mart.

And I agree with you about the need for real leadership vs. simplistic ideology from provincial governments. The current adversarial approach to just about every issue is singularly unhelpful. It's time that governments started bringing everyone together as social partners and building by concensus, tolerance and compromise.

Hi Davidex. You bring up excellent points. I'd just like to add a couple of things to the discussion though. You said nobody in Campbell River cares if people refuse to shop at Walmart or in Bellingham, and that what's needed is for local businesses to shape up, and for Council to offer strong leadership.

Well, you should know that Council did not originally have any problem with WalMart at all. It was only after many citizens raised hell, including a friend of mine who's a mild-mannered, quiet person who was moved to write a letter to Council saying that not only would he and his wife never vote for any Council members who supported Walmart, but that he'd actively work against them in the next election.

The other point I'd like to make is that my experience with local business owners is that they provide much better service than the big box, multi-nationals such as Home Depot. Of course, I too, would like improvements in local businesses, however they are under such tremendous pressure just to stay alive, and many of them have sunk pretty much everything they own (and then some) into their businesses. I take my hat off to local, small business owners.

Finally, I'm puzzeled about how my practice of not setting foot in a Walmart and refusing to visit the U.S. ever again to give them my bucks is "abstract" and "short-sighted." Cash is pretty concrete. As far as short-sighted, how so?

Anyway, I applaud and support your suggestions that communities draw together, along with their local leaders to create stronger, healthier futures. Problem is, there's always someone even in the local political scene who can be seduced by bigger powers to hand over their communities on a platter in exchange for whatever. However, that said, I think if Campbell River can keep up the pressure on their Council where it hurts (won't vote them in next time), I'm buoyed.

Gotta run and finish the dishes.

Sunny,
Sorry to be terse. I just meant that it bugs me to see people doing ineffectual individual protests as a replacement for powerful directed action. Your friend is an example of the latter. The people in power know that they are "in the sights" when they are directly contacted and confronted for their actions. While boycotting America or Walmart (same thinge, pretty much) may make a personal statement, it really has no effect on the immediate problem in Campbell River and just begs for a simplistic response that will just cause more acrimony.

davidex

Way to go CR! Protest works! Just ask the students in Quebec who just whipped Pinocharest's butt. Now if these sort of actions become generalized...

Can one claim to be leftist yet still find price to be a reasonable criterion for purchasing?

People haven't made Wal-Mart the dominant retailer that it is because they approve of its billionaire owners, their political sponsorships, or regressive labour practices. It's because of bargains.

Daily statement of the obvious: Frugality is virtuous. If you don't waste your money, then you have more money to invest, to retire debt, to support charities.

By all means, oppose Wal-Mart. But it's pretty useless to do so unless you make the business case for doing so. Prove that prices rise after they undercut local competition. Convince the public that their employment practices do more harm than good to the economy. Create, and cite, viable alternatives.

I'm getting off this soapbox now. I hear there's deals on new soapboxes at Costco....

Come on folks , we all know the damage that Wal-Mart does to local business and community. I would hardly call an 111,000 foot store normal retail to a small town like CR. That is what you call monster retail. But for those linear thinkers who cannot see and judge with their own eyes and experience. Just the facts.
Wal-Mart in the US , Canada has similar #'s
Wal-Mart sales clerks made an average of $8.23 an hour—or $13,861 a year—in 2001. That's nearly $800 below the federal poverty line for a family of three. (Source: Business Week)

In Georgia, Wal-Mart employees are six times more likely to rely on state-provided health care for their children than are employees of any other large company. (Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Reliance on public assistance programs in California by Wal-Mart workers costs the state's taxpayers an estimated $86 million annually. (Source: UC Berkeley Study)

In the first decade after Wal-Mart arrived in Iowa, the state lost 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety stores, 158 women's apparel stores, 153 shoe stores, 116 drugstores, and 111 men's and boys' apparel stores. (Source: Iowa State University Study)

Every year Wal-Mart purchases $15 billion worth of products from China. (Source: Washington Post)

Today Wal-Mart uses over 3,000 Chinese factories to produce its goods—almost as many factories as it has stores in the U.S. (3,600). (Source: L.A. Times)

All else being equal, U.S. counties where new Wal-Mart stores were built between 1987 and 1998 experienced higher poverty rates than other U.S. counties.

Good luck CR , Wal-Mart , why shop anywhere else,

Stuart -- see, that's what I'm talking about. Good stuff.

As an aside, my 8 year old daughter and I recently went to the Powell River Walmart and observed the long line of people at the service counter attempting to return defective merchandise.

She said, "WalMart isn't really cheap, is it? If you have to return stuff."

"How do you think they make their money?" I asked.

She thought. "They make their money from people who haven't figured them out yet."

As another aside, I went to Canadian Tire the other day to get hockey tape and a safety ladder. Is this supposed to be better than WalMart? What a zoo! It took me half an hour to locate a free clerk to tell me where to find the items, and another half hour to figure out that her directions were wrong.

I'm going to make my next roll of hockey tape out of beach kelp.

Wal-Mart is terrible in many ways but it is not the only target in taking back our
Communities from these monsters that devour independents and lower the standards of living
Both locally and abroad in their endless race to the bottom. But their the biggest and the
Best target, whatever Wal-Mart does or does not do sets standards for the entire industry. So
If we effect Wal-Mart if sends out shock waves, just like McDonalds in the not the worst fast food place but it’s the biggest and most visible and most vulnerable. After the Quebec incident Wal-Mart's true colors are starting to show. (Red, White and Blue ,LOL)

OK, target Walmart. But what are the solutions?

I think the main thing is to codify minimum income and peg it to the cost of living. That should be a standard in rich countries.

On the goods-purchasing end, there must be an "ethical production" convention somewhere that could be ratified. If not, the UN should make one. This would set a minimum standard of worker rights.

That should take care of the moral objections to Walmart and its ilk.

I applaud what Campbell River's concerned citizens are doing. In the short run, current business models can be sustained.

But you have to wonder about the future of independent retail, generally. While they can match or beat corporations on the salary end (I rather doubt that actual moms and pops pay their kids the full wage) big box retailer can buy in massive volumes, giving them an unbeatable advantage on the acquisition side.

Ultimately, the choice will not be between megastores and independents, but between megastores of competing vision.

There are parallels in every industry. At some point, a revolution comes in which wipes out a job category and turns it into a niche occupation at best. There aren't too many glassblowers, wooden eye carvers, PL1 programmers. There was no public "Save VHS!" campaign when DVDs came out.

There is more wrong with Wal-Mart than undercutting local stores via its large buying power in sweatshops abroad. Wal-Mart for years operated its own slave shops--in Burma (Myanmar, now) and other delightful spots. Yes, shoppers, Wal-Mart used slaves or virtual slaves in the Phillipines--and had them sew on Made in USA labels! This was on 6o Minutes. Those of you who don't know htis about WalMart have got to start reading better stuff than the ASPer media. Even after getting their products so cheaply, Wal-Mart still charges Canadian prices and pockets the billions in difference.

Anytime I see anyone shopping in Wal-Mart, I want to slip a ball and chain around their ankles and chain them to my sewing machine in my basement, right next to the cat litter...

First Nations People who support Wal-mart should give their heads a shake! Where in hell do they think they're going to get decent jobs out of this? Weal-Mart does not pay decent wages, anywhere! $8 an hour is not a liveable wage. Hello????

I would like to see an economist and/or geographer map out the radius of a single Wal-Mart store's negative impact on local small businesses. Then we could have city councils across the land order that any new Wal-Mart must be built so that that radius does not overlap with the town centre. In other words, far enough away that the lower prices there would not necessarily be sufficient enough reason for consumers to make the further trip. OK, I know it sounds kinda like a hokey planned economy, but just something to think about.