As the province ponders introducing a stat holiday in February, you won’t be able to count the Retail Council of Canada among the supporters.
That’s according to Atlantic Director Jim Cormier who tells us it’s an extra day you have to close your doors, but you still have to pay your workers their wages and benefts. He says it affects small retailers through to the big box stores.
Cormier says, “It’s just an extra day where the government would be saying to the business community that we are going to make you close your doors but yet you’re also going to be paying your wages to your workers.”
He does concede that there are some positives, saying it is kind of nice to have a holiday in the middle of winter and there’s also the harmonization of politices in Atlantic Canada. Nova Scotia began marking Heritage Day in 2015—it falls on the third Monday in February.
