Sobey’s Inc., along with a number of other retailers, apparently has found a loophole in the Nova Scotia law that prevents retailers larger than 4,000 square feet from opening on Sundays. Rather than running six of its supermarkets in the traditional sense with integrated departments and management, it instead has carved them up into individual businesses small enough to pass and opened them as mini-malls – which technically gets around the Retail Business Uniform Closing Day Act.
Canada’s Atlantic superstore reportedly plans to take the same approach, as do a number of other businesses.
Customers who shopped at Sobey’s last Sunday reportedly liked having the option of shopping on the seventh day of the week, though there are opponents upset that Sobey’s seems to be trying to countermand the will of the voters. In 2004, a referendum on Sunday shopping kept the ban in place, and another vote is not scheduled until 2007.
Canada’s Atlantic superstore reportedly plans to take the same approach, as do a number of other businesses.
Customers who shopped at Sobey’s last Sunday reportedly liked having the option of shopping on the seventh day of the week, though there are opponents upset that Sobey’s seems to be trying to countermand the will of the voters. In 2004, a referendum on Sunday shopping kept the ban in place, and another vote is not scheduled until 2007.
- KC's View:
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Listen, we understand that the world may have been a slower-paced, more civilized place when bans on Sunday shopping were common. But the reality is that this is 2006, and banning Sunday shopping across the board seems a little anachronistic and unrealistic.
That said, we’ll be curious to watch how the legal wrangling plays out. Being a child of the seventies, we sort of like the civil disobedience element to what Sobey’s is trying to do.
