Canada’s oldest company is shuttering over 90 retail stores across Canada and laying off at least 9,000 workers. The Bay cited Trump’s tariffs as the nail in the coffin for the decision to close Canadian operations and proceed with its bankruptcy.
The press has been quick to whip up patriotic support for the apparently failing company. This is done to reinforce the notion that Canadian workers and Canadian capitalists are in the same boat. We are told we must lament the loss of this Canadian icon.
However, though the Bay / la Baie stores will close across Canada, the Hudson’s Bay Company will continue to make its profit just fine. This is because Canadian department stores account for less than 15 per cent of the company’s overall operations. The vast majority being holdings of U.S. real estate, department stores in the U.S., and investments in retail technology.
The company holds 42 million square feet of U.S. real estate worth over US$7-billion. And just this past December, the HBC signed a US$2.65-billion deal to buy luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus. Hardly the picture of the failing underdog that is being portrayed!
In fact, HBC CEO Richard Baker said in a 2023 interview that he thinks the company “has its greatest ever value and financial strength since 1670.”
There is no Team Canada
Like many companies, HBayC has consciously shifted investment to the much larger and more profitable U.S. market over the last two decades. Now that the prospect for making profits in the Canadian market has dried up, the company has carved out its Canadian operations into its own sub company (the one currently facing insolvency) and abandoned ship.
This maneuver allowed the company to justify the layoff of its 9,000 staff with no severance pay (while the outgoing executives are set to receive $3 million in bonuses). There are also a myriad of smaller Canadian vendor companies which rely on business contracts with the HBC who are set to lose massive amounts of promised money per the company’s creditor protection. So much for “we’re all on the same team”! In the trade war there are two sides. Not Team Canada vs. the United States, but rather the bosses vs. the workers.
The huge amount of capital accumulated by Canada’s preeminent colonial company will move on to exploit a more profitable market without regard for its workers or for any supposed “national pride.”
This trend isn’t unique to the HBC. Forty-eight per cent of Canadian executives said they are planning to shift some or all production to the U.S. in response to Trump’s tariffs. The working class will be left jobless—once again paying for the crisis created by capitalism.
Canadian big businesses have no loyalty to workers, in Canada or anywhere else. They’ll let you “buy Canadian” (i.e. “buy from us”) and then close up shop anyway.
Capitalism is a globally interconnected system; the working class response to the trade war must be united internationally along class lines as well.
