Thursday, March 29, 2007

Chunder city.

This story from the business section really gets my goat. Loblaws buys up Atlantic Wholesalers a few years back, closes their operation in Lewisport this year, cuts loose 300 small to medium retailers a few weeks later, but all the while paying out these multi millions to their top people. Makes one want to puke.

Still silence from elected officials up this way, when I think the bar can not get any lower, it does.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have given this whole issue a dollop of thought, certainly not enough to claim I know the solution. But...I see a window of opportunity for the Nunatsiavut government to step in and start getting their share of the proverbial pot of everything that is ever shipped up here. With a little organization and money (of which they have copious amounts, at least until it is squandered away on government buildings and salaries, but that's another story) they could line up their own suppliers in quebec to truck the supplies into Goose Bay. They can build a shipping terminal in Goose Bay for less than a million dollars, and use this facility to ship goods to all their beneficiaries on the coast. The benefits to this approach are numerous, not the least of which we would not be at the mercy of some wholesaler who can't run his business well enough to profit so we all suffer (Atlantic Wholesalers Inc has not been a member in good standing with the provincial gov nor has it filed any corporate documents since 2004 with the governing body, so anyone who was paying attention should have seen this coming). Another benefit is that instead of just dolling out money, the Nunatsiavut Government would actually be in business, earning profits, or alternatively, passing savings on to the beneficiaries. Another benefit is that there would be more say and control of what is actually shipped up here. If you talk to the manager at Bigland, he will say they just send him whatever they want and he has to put it on the shelves. True or not, the idea that we could control the quality and quantity of the things we really want and need up here should be good incentive. Those are my two cents worth.