Traitorous Trudeau supports local small business
Tim’s gets short shrift
By Isaac Tamlin, Contributor
On Jan. 20 Justin Trudeau was seen buying doughnuts for a day full of cabinet meetings from Oh Doughnuts, a local business located in Winnipeg. However, some people were outraged that this doughnut shop sells their doughnuts for a whopping $35 per dozen regular, or an even pricier $47 per dozen for specialty doughnuts. With the growing deficit, people were outraged to see Trudeau buying expensive doughnuts when the good old Canadian staple, Tim Hortons, was just down the way for a much more sensible $10 a dozen.
But how bad was buying from Oh Doughnuts? As Oh Doughnuts pointed out in a response on Twitter, they are a locally owned business and they employ 30 people who have a benefit plan. They pay their employees a liveable wage, not a minimum wage. They buy all their ingredients locally, and make their doughnuts fresh, in store, daily. They even do their part for the environment by composting their organic waste and recycling their packaging. They could be the poster child for an ethical Canadian small business.
Tim Hortons on the other hand, can hardly be called a Canadian business. After their 2014 takeover by Burger King, merging into what is now known as Restaurant Brand International, Tim Hortons is 51 per cent owned by 3G Capital, an American-Brazilian firm. While their headquarters are located in Toronto, only a third of their board has to be made up of Canadians. And it’s only a little suspicious that Burger King merged with Tim Hortons involving a tax inversion into Canada at a time when the business corporate tax rate in America was 39 per cent while Canada had a lower tax rate of 26 per cent.
That’s not the only issue with Tim Hortons. They have been removing breaks and benefits from their staff in order to cut costs. They continue to pay their employees minimum wage, and not a dime more, and they are constantly fighting against unionization. There’s even been a recent controversy in Winnipeg where Tim Hortons locked out their own employees over a 10-cent raise. They also do not compost, and their cups continue to have a plastic film in them, so they cannot be recycled, resulting in them creating literally tonnes of trash every year.
In short, the decision to buy doughnuts from Oh Doughnuts may have been a simple decision from a snacky Prime Minister, but he made a choice to go with a more ethical and environmental company, and supported a growing small business. That was an important sale to the small business, whereas a similar sale would mean nothing to Tim Hortons. Sometimes, doing the ethical, environmental thing costs a little more. Now if the government would apply that decision-making strategy to their politics as much as they do their doughnut purchases, then we might get somewhere.
