True Patriot Love - IS RETAIL IN CANADA FAILING？ with Bruce Winder

00:00:00.000 Hi, and thanks for joining us. This is TPL Media. I'm Mike, Paul Micucci. Today we are talking about

00:00:06.960 retail. Paul, I drive around Ontario and frankly, across the country, we've visited a lot of cities

00:00:13.520 now. And in each of those cities, we're seeing a pattern. Major flagship stores in shopping malls

00:00:20.400 and in major shopping centers are abandoned. It looks to me when I see those that retail might

00:00:27.180 be in trouble. I see Amazon expanding in Canada and I think, oh, retail must be in trouble. I see

00:00:34.120 our GDP going down, inflation going up. And I think to myself, retail must be in trouble. But

00:00:40.240 in fact, it's not. It's up. It's up for January, 2026 compared to January, 2025. It went up about

00:00:50.400 a billion dollars to 71 billion so it is up but we're spending more for food items now than we

00:01:01.420 did last year we all know that yeah and that is the major increase in that scenario so quite

00:01:07.120 frankly anything we put in our mouth now is costing us about two billion more dollars

00:01:11.480 across canada meanwhile a lot of other sectors actually are pretty flat are pretty flatter down

00:01:18.640 You know, you look at our auto industry, which we know it's down.

00:01:21.740 We know new car sales are down.

00:01:23.200 We know people are shifting to used cars, but how much?

00:01:26.200 It's a lot.

00:01:27.480 And accessories for auto overall up across the nation, which means people are putting repairs and parts into their car rather than buying new.

00:01:36.760 This and many other sectors we're going to investigate today as we're joined by Bruce Winder.

00:01:42.520 He is a retail expert here in Canada.

00:01:49.400 Paul, I thought for today's discussion, as you heard me in the monologue intro there,

00:01:55.420 I'm a little confused by retail in Canada at the moment.

00:01:59.020 So am I, Mike.

00:02:00.220 Some of the numbers seem to be up, yet I'm going mall to mall, as you do,

00:02:05.340 and you're starting to see in these shopping centers more and more vacant space,

00:02:09.800 more amalgamation.

00:02:10.940 And I thought, okay, well, look, we can be confused and we can speculate.

00:02:14.460 We do that very well.

00:02:16.040 But instead, why don't we get an expert in?

00:02:17.760 So Bruce Winder joins us. Thanks so much.

00:02:20.760 Retail expert here in Canada and somebody you've probably seen quoted before on this.

00:02:25.360 Thanks, Bruce, for joining us.

00:02:27.020 Yeah, thanks for having me on.

00:02:28.760 So, OK, maybe, Paul, you've made the observation that I've made that it seems like retail,

00:02:36.120 especially with, you know, the Amazons of the world out there and some of the amalgamation and the shutdowns we've seen. 0.76

00:02:42.420 I don't know why, but I made the assumption out of the gate that retail was under some pressure in Canada.

00:02:47.760 Yeah, retail is a big business. You know, it's north of 600 billion a year in Canada. And it ebb and flows a little bit up and down, you know, depending on the month. Sometimes it's a little confusing, too, because some data shows it's up month to month. The data you should really look at is sort of year over year. But either way, retail in Canada right now is sort of flat to up a little bit, depending on the timing.

00:03:14.300 And, you know, it's a big industry. It's not a broken industry by any means, but there are challenges, you know, with the industry, like every industry.

00:03:23.500 And it does have a natural sort of circle of life effect where, you know, weaker players bow out and new players emerge.

00:03:34.080 What is the overall, in the sort of retail space of shopping malls, not too far from us here in Toronto is Sherway, which just lost two major retailers just up the street on the 427 on the right in the last couple of years, lost another major department store retailer.

00:03:54.840 What kind of effect are these major retailers packing up having on retail overall in Canada?

00:04:01.500 Yeah, I mean, the irony is that, you know, some of the retailers who've packed up and left, you know, you look at the international retailers like Nordstrom, who packed up and then Saks have packed up as well. They really didn't do a lot of business in Canada anyways. They had big footprints, they had big, beautiful stores, but they really, you know, missed the mark in terms of addressing, I think, the market in Canada.

00:04:27.060 They may have overshot the runway and had too many stores.

00:04:30.280 So you're going to see some of that.

00:04:31.700 You're going to see companies that come to Canada and it doesn't work.

00:04:34.780 You're also going to see longtime Canadian companies like what happened with Hudson's Bay, right?

00:04:39.660 And how they bowed out after hundreds of years.

00:04:43.420 That's a bit of a different story too.

00:04:45.460 But again, even Hudson's Bay, they didn't really do that much business in Canada.

00:04:50.060 So it's not like a giant who commanded a huge amount of market share has left.

00:04:56.160 it's very different in this regard hey bruce i gotta ask you a question so and this has

00:05:02.560 been on my mind we've been looking for some permanent space for our new studios and we've

00:05:07.120 been going kind of in and out of different uh commercial spaces retail malls and we we go into

00:05:13.600 these huge spaces you know huge spaces that target was in hudson's bay was in and they've been

00:05:19.600 sitting empty for years now you know it you know and i know it's hard to say because you can't get

00:05:27.600 in the head of the people that own these businesses but what do you you know help me a little bit what

00:05:33.920 happens to these spaces like what in when the leases run out and for the most part i think

00:05:38.880 they're kind of still living through you know the back end of these leases that you know are sitting

00:05:44.880 empty but at some point they have to re-engage these spaces and they have to subdivide them they

00:05:50.960 have to find people to go in them who comes into that market who is like who do you see being the

00:05:57.600 retailer of the future that comes in to these subdivided large spaces that have been abandoned

00:06:03.600 by these big box retailers who couldn't make it in canada and and you know i wonder i think to myself

00:06:10.160 i would be trying to actively do that now and they they seem to be these big malls that are

00:06:15.840 across canada and we were we were just in ottawa we're just in calgary we got home to ontario

00:06:21.280 and i said to mike do you notice everywhere we go we see this you know this is a challenge

00:06:26.160 across canada you know what happens to these spaces in your mind yeah it's a great question

00:06:31.840 and it's one of the biggest challenges the industry is dealing with you know particularly

00:06:35.600 if you're a landlord of some of these malls.

00:06:38.040 Now, whenever you deal with retail real estate,

00:06:39.980 it's always very case-specific.

00:06:41.860 It's location-specific, right?

00:06:43.620 So, you know, if you're in Yorkdale

00:06:45.420 or the Toronto Eaton Centre,

00:06:46.720 that's a very different conversation

00:06:48.440 versus if you're in a suburb and, you know, you're overspaced.

00:06:52.480 So, I mean, one of the things we've been dealing with

00:06:54.360 as an industry is over the last 30 years,

00:06:57.080 malls have changed a lot.

00:06:58.640 Consumers have changed a lot.

00:06:59.920 The way they buy changes a lot.

00:07:01.680 More online, more with specialty stores.

00:07:04.340 The whole department store sector has changed. It's shrunk considerably. It's in decline. That's why you saw Eaton's and Simpson's and a lot of those folks bow out over the last 20 to 30 years. So where we are now is we have all these legacy malls with big legacy footprints. When department stores were the anchor of the mall 30, 40, 50 years ago, those days are gone.

00:07:28.280 So what's happening now, depending on the property, is landlords are looking at trying to probably divide the space up at least into a few different floors, you know, and lease it to good retailers or good service providers for those floors.

00:07:44.140 You know, you look at what's happened in the Toronto Eaton Centre, Nordstrom left, some of it went to Nike, some of it went to Eataly on the side, Simons took a little bit.

00:07:54.660 So that's sort of more what's happening in the good malls. In the malls that might not be tier one or A malls, they're struggling. They're struggling to find someone who's going to go in it. And there isn't some large sort of heir apparent who's looking to sweep it, swoop in and take all that space. It's just not a market reality now for most malls.

00:08:15.020 yeah it's so interesting that you say the eataly model right because um recently i was in a

00:08:20.860 situation in a mall and it was obvious to me that a large retailer had they'd taken one floor made

00:08:27.420 it a restaurant the top floor was sort of a marketplace of different stores or shops or

00:08:33.360 specialty retailers but there was no indication that they were going to put another major department

00:08:38.660 store in there yeah we were we were in actually one uh it was a you know a basically an abandoned

00:08:45.340 big box and uh they had actually rented it out for movie storage yeah they put that was interesting

00:08:52.440 amazon's uh set storage space which you know based on the way that's going right now in canada

00:08:58.920 versus all these u.s tariffs and you know the movie industry uh that used to be uh robust in

00:09:05.420 canada and it's changing now i don't know what happens to that well we're storing our stuff at

00:09:09.880 the malls and that's any indication yeah yeah right and how much more storage you know we've

00:09:15.060 been on as this uh rapid growth in storage in canada how much more storage space do we really

00:09:20.960 need to be building you gotta wonder you know one of the things uh bruce that i i gotta commend paul

00:09:26.360 for he as soon as we hit a topic he does the numbers and he finds some some beauties in here 0.99

00:09:32.980 And I'll leave it to him to do this.

00:09:34.560 But as we went through year over year retail industry numbers overall, the increase in retail that I saw, I think was related to something that's not necessarily that wonderful for consumers and certainly something that could affect people in the lower economic realm, seniors and that sort of thing.

00:09:57.400 And I'll leave it to Paul to kind of give us the review on it here.

00:10:00.440 Yeah, we took a look, Bruce, and you've probably been through the numbers much more than I have, but we look at January 2026 compared to January 2025, kind of broke down the stats and really came up with the differences from a percentage basis and the dollar basis.

00:10:20.380 What jumped out at us right away was how much basically food, grocery accessories had gone up.

00:10:33.360 And we were, of course, we all talk about it, but it was quite a bit.

00:10:37.660 You know, food and beverage retailers, supermarkets basically made up about $710 million of increases year on year.

00:10:49.540 And then cars, which we all knew, had shifted a tiny bit to used cars and parts.

00:10:55.060 But for the most part, new car sales had just plummeted for comparing the two years.

00:11:00.760 So it's just so interesting to see that.

00:11:02.460 And then the other area.

00:11:03.480 So, yeah, there was some increases in average buying items.

00:11:08.020 But really, that was food and beverage going up in restaurants.

00:11:11.880 That was food going up in grocery stores in a lot of ways.

00:11:15.220 Then the other one that got me, and I found this a little bit disturbing, was pharmaceutical has gone up.

00:11:20.820 But it's really, I think, reflective of the cost of the items, not profitability, not consumer of cash available.

00:11:31.240 Yeah, you're right.

00:11:31.740 No, I mean, if you look at let's take the grocery sector as an example, right?

00:11:34.940 Like the grocery sector has very, very low profit margins.

00:11:39.700 I did an analysis recently, and I think it was about 4% in Canada net income, 3% to 4%, 2% to 4%.

00:11:47.260 So you're not making a lot of money.

00:11:50.040 They work on volume.

00:11:51.260 So the issue that the grocery industry had is that there's significant input cost increases around the world for different commodities.

00:11:58.700 And some of it's not around the world.

00:12:00.580 Some of it's local, like the price of beef based on herd, the price of coffee based on different weather patterns and things of that nature.

00:12:08.520 And even large consumer packaged goods companies since the pandemic have taken price as a way to meet their earnings targets.

00:12:16.860 They've increased price. So so it's a really tough industry and it hits Canadians on the front line.

00:12:22.660 That's why what you're seeing is a lot of Canadians have changed the way they've shopped for groceries.

00:12:26.860 They're buying more private label. They're shopping more at discount banners like No Frills and Maxi in Quebec to save money.

00:12:34.580 You know, they're buying more frozen food versus fresh food.

00:12:38.520 But that's sort of, you know, that's one of the things that is a big issue for Canadians right now, right?

00:12:44.280 And it's not the only thing you look at, you know, rents have come down a little bit, but you look at the price of housing, you know, you look at other input costs, insurance, etc.

00:12:53.440 It's really difficult for a lot of Canadians to make ends meet these days.

00:12:57.520 So what you're seeing is Canadians take fairly drastic approaches in terms of how they shop to save whatever they can.

00:13:06.340 And the other thing that you touched on it just just now, as we look at these numbers and Paul, maybe you can straighten this out for me as well.

00:13:15.360 Sure. We look at these numbers year over year, and it doesn't necessarily mean that we're doing good as an economy nationally.

00:13:22.760 It just means that we're spending more. Doesn't mean that we're making more.

00:13:26.800 It doesn't mean that our economy is booming. This one sector is doing very well in a number of very specific areas.

00:13:35.340 Outside of that, I don't think that spending in retail, and maybe Bruce, you could kind of touch

00:13:41.420 on this. I don't think it has much to do with how we're doing as an economy as Canada.

00:13:48.120 Yeah, it's a real tough one because, you know, we've all seen the GDP numbers. We're not

00:13:52.180 necessarily lighting it up as a country right now, right? I think our GDP was down in December.

00:13:57.420 But we are, you know, we are looking at inflation and there is a bit of a disconnect. There's

00:14:01.800 something in retail and other commodities a lot of economists talked about called the k-shaped

00:14:06.040 economy where what you're seeing is you're seeing more of more of the affluent folks call it the top

00:14:11.040 20 30 percent of income are doing most of the spending these days most of the increase in

00:14:16.300 spending and the other folks because wages haven't necessarily kept up with inflation over the last

00:14:22.240 50 years they're really sort of tightening their belt so on the surface things look one way but

00:14:27.680 when you really dig into it, there's sort of different demographics in play here. But no,

00:14:33.540 I would agree with you. I mean, even retail sales going up a little bit doesn't necessarily mean

00:14:37.680 that we're doing well as an economy. Well, you know, it's interesting, Bruce, I was telling

00:14:41.860 Mike before the show, and we were talking about how we used to shop in the early 90s, and how we

00:14:48.040 used to go from the open markets to the discount stores. So you might hit four stores to do your

00:14:57.320 shopping and then somewhere kind of around 2000 you know we got away from that and we started just

00:15:03.560 to go to one store well i find even my shopping habits now are going back to going to multiple

00:15:08.440 stores yeah but i'm still seeing the increase and you know it's it's interesting from looking

00:15:12.600 at the stats can comparison january 25 to 26 i kind of looked at it anything that i put in my

00:15:19.320 mouth that's on this chart has basically gone up almost by just a little under two billion dollars

00:15:25.800 month uh month to month year to year or year to year so it's interesting how that's kind of changed

00:15:32.680 my shopping habit so i'm in the same boat i think that many people are you you you go to the place

00:15:39.000 where you're familiar you get good quality items that are that price based on that store exactly

00:15:46.120 i i can't trust the big grocery stores to have all of the items actually in stock that i want

00:15:52.200 good quality like i like and at the price you have to really shop now but still canadians are paying

00:15:58.680 more that's the interesting part and that's you know the squeeze that i felt you know when i

00:16:03.240 mentioned the late 80s early 90s that's sort of what we felt at that time you know it's interesting

00:16:09.400 you know you take that and i looked at the gas stations expenditures were down almost you know

00:16:16.440 well that's going to change that's changing as we speak before gas prices right so now you're

00:16:24.760 going to look at this probably you know in march and april now and you're going to see this massive

00:16:29.560 spike you're going to see the swing of this which is then are going to show to your point bruce's

00:16:34.760 point on numbers for retail spans it's going to show a substantial increase but you know i'm

00:16:40.680 watching now i don't know if you're you know wherever you live bruce i know where where i'm

00:16:45.080 traveling this morning i was going between two businesses and i was using the 400 highways um

00:16:52.120 no one it was quiet it was actually my drive time was about 15 20 minutes faster you know my ways

00:16:59.000 was not flagging you know 18 minute uh delays i was moving and this has been all week long and

00:17:06.520 it's funny because most of the march break is kind of coming to an end yeah last week

00:17:12.040 so a lot of march break there is some stragglers but it's funny that you say that i thought this

00:17:16.520 morning oh this is this march breaker was it last week because it was so light on the road it was

00:17:22.280 technically so it was a lot of private schools are still out you know for a couple weeks but

00:17:26.920 for the most part we've seen you know a real difference in traffic this month gas prices have

00:17:33.640 gone up so are we going to see the counterbalancing between uh gas going up and people's you know

00:17:40.600 know number of kilometers they put on they're driving well yeah it'll affect i guess the car

00:17:46.120 parts it would then affect car sales car leasing which is interesting because that was the comment

00:17:51.620 i made to you know at the beginning of the show new car sales dropped it dropped to actually almost

00:17:57.220 700 million a year on year we start to see again used cars and so funny for their you know coming

00:18:04.380 through covid you know i used to make a comment to my wife said you know it's not like the old

00:18:09.700 days when we used to see a lot of used cars you know a lot of 10 year old cars a lot of you know

00:18:14.640 parts stores auto mechanics used to see a ton more auto mechanics now it looks like we're going back

00:18:20.800 there again right it looks like we're going back to people going to the used car lot you know

00:18:26.100 buying a used car keeping it on the road as long as they can keep it on the road all those

00:18:30.880 accessorizing rather than trading in and these stats you know are starting to tell that story

00:18:36.360 that's what i love about the numbers i you know what you do bruce is really interesting to me

00:18:40.660 because just sitting there and watching the human behavior trends that tie to the numbers is

00:18:45.780 so interesting yeah and you're right i mean i you know this i'm without dating myself i'm 59

00:18:51.200 i almost feel like we're starting to slowly go back into the 70s again where inflation was high

00:18:56.620 and consumers drastically changed the way they consumed they fixed things instead of buying new

00:19:01.160 things you know they ate at home more instead of going to restaurants etc just like you're

00:19:05.340 mentioning but yeah you're starting to see that i mean it's going to be tough if the if the conflict

00:19:09.840 in the middle east continues for much longer you know you're going to start to see more inflation

00:19:14.300 uh hitting not just the pumps but also goods and services or goods i should say on retail shelves

00:19:20.680 because the transportation cost to move those goods is going to be negatively affected by the

00:19:25.200 increase in oil so you're going to see uh probably some discretionary categories hit even further

00:19:30.540 including the restaurant industry etc it's interesting because you know double whammy

00:19:35.980 in some industries i was uh we were prepping for the show on the lawsuit with meta and youtube this

00:19:42.780 week and i was listening to another podcast and it was prior to the the court decision

00:19:49.420 and he was talking about the fact that with the um middle east having so many challenges

00:19:55.980 and the potential for infrastructure damage throughout in each of the countries

00:20:00.860 that would cost the families that control each of the countries to stop their investment

00:20:05.580 in high-tech industries in north america so it's an interesting chain they're going to have to

00:20:11.420 focus their their dollars at home they're going to have to try to fix their the you know the

00:20:15.900 the infrastructure of their own countries and they won't have as much outside investment company

00:20:20.780 you you know you you look at that and then the double whammy with what's going on there

00:20:25.100 if the tech industries drop in the us right now which is a big part of their stock markets yeah

00:20:30.780 it would cause a huge ripple effect through the stock markets at all levels which would then kind

00:20:35.980 of cause our economy on top of this lawsuit that just came you're going to watch you know these

00:20:42.060 numbers as you as bruce was alluding to you're going to watch kind of how that ripples through

00:20:47.260 expenditure numbers and what that causes and it's so interesting to see that those world events are

00:20:53.020 tying into these retail sales the other thing that occurred to me as i took a look at this list

00:20:58.140 is apparently we are all done we all have the tech we need right now uh tech sales are down

00:21:03.820 dramatically uh and i think and i really do believe that it's that we're in that place with

00:21:09.020 our own expenses in life where you've got to keep that phone the extra couple of years there will be

00:21:14.620 no trade-in because it's just not feasible that macbook that you bought three years ago is not

00:21:20.380 going to be traded in this year uh i think that we have all settled on tech that is there's nothing

00:21:25.980 fantastic and new about any technology you bring home we've all got a flat screen tv we've all got

00:21:31.180 a notebook we've got our phones and we all have chat gpt heaven help us so uh once we're all

00:21:38.700 equipped i i see this number go down and it's it's not a small drop it was somewhere in the

00:21:44.860 neighborhood of around four percent uh it fell off over year year over year the other one that

00:21:50.140 i noticed and maybe you can comment on this apparently nobody's drinking anymore and

00:21:54.380 everybody's getting high liquor sales fell off uh uh almost uh a point and a half meanwhile

00:22:02.380 cannabis retailers are reporting a 6.4 increase or 29 million dollars more in the in the industry

00:22:09.340 yeah there's definitely been a trend over the last several years uh of younger people uh drinking

00:22:14.460 less alcohol and uh and enjoying cannabis more that's definitely been a major trend uh with you

00:22:21.260 know younger millennials gen zed uh they're doing that for sure and and you're seeing that you're

00:22:26.620 seeing that in the sales of alcohol you're seeing that in the sales of cannabis which remains a tough

00:22:30.940 industry yeah it seems like there's not a lot of uh a lot of winners in that industry as well you

00:22:37.340 know the one that did interest me quite a bit which i i think i have a handle on but i'm not

00:22:42.540 sure that's why i wanted to ask bruce two of them that really did that went up which was interesting

00:22:47.900 in spend which was clothing which i was a little shocked that in january year over year we'd see

00:22:53.260 clothing increased i wasn't sure if that was a sell-off of inventory bruce or if that was just

00:23:00.380 a trend of increased you know clothing sales yeah it could be a little bit of both i don't have exact

00:23:06.380 data but it could be clearance you're right because you know if things are a little tough

00:23:10.060 for some retailers, they've got to get aggressive on clearance in January. It could also be weather

00:23:15.900 patterns too. You know, we've had a pretty tough winter in some parts of Canada where Canadians

00:23:19.980 had to buy maybe warmer clothes and things of that nature. But there definitely isn't sort of

00:23:24.820 an upward shift, you know, in apparel. You know, if anything, people have bought more from some of

00:23:30.360 the places like Sheen from China where that would deflate prices. So it's a tough category,

00:23:36.320 very profitable from a retail perspective, but fairly tough category still.

00:23:40.060 Yeah, no, and I did think of that because everywhere I go now, it looks like 40%, 60% off. The other one I thought was interesting in the numbers, the StatsCan numbers, was the e-commerce numbers for January to January stayed relatively flat.

00:23:56.540 I noticed that as well, and I was going to try to address this.

00:23:59.600 I was like, oh, that's interesting, right? They might have burnt themselves out over Christmas, right? Weren't the e-commerce numbers over Christmas really great, Bruce, or from November onward?

00:24:09.520 Yeah. I mean, e-commerce as a trend has been increasing. It went gangbusters during the

00:24:14.580 pandemic, as you know. And then after that, it sort of settled back down for a while. But since

00:24:19.420 then, call it 2022, it's been on an upward trajectory again. And e-commerce had a pretty

00:24:25.540 good fall. It just might be, it's probably a small base in January too. There's returns,

00:24:31.300 if anything, and not a lot of sales. But e-commerce is here to stay. Definitely,

00:24:36.140 you know if you're amazon they've invested a ton of money in the country they've got great

00:24:40.360 infrastructure here so it's something canadians love too and in some places within canada you

00:24:45.840 can order from amazon and get it within a few hours so it's and now now now timu is also a

00:24:53.240 service in canada i think from within uh opening up warehouses here as well so even even amazon

00:24:59.940 light as my family likes to call it uh is now available in canada which is going to make a big

00:25:05.420 difference you know i think amazon having competition to some degree um i don't think

00:25:12.620 that they lose any business i think just more more business is brought to e-commerce yeah

00:25:17.260 no i'm with you and the month-to-month increase of uh sporting goods books and hobbies which was

00:25:24.620 almost to tell you the truth 500 million dollars year over year for january i thought that was

00:25:30.620 amazing now bruce you know give me your opinion i have my own sort of thoughts on that i didn't get

00:25:37.420 any time to dig into it but is there anything in the sporting goods books and hobbies front that

00:25:42.220 you're seeing you know prior to january wait wait bruce hold on before you answer that sure i would

00:25:47.820 like to just write i'd like to write my prediction down first okay all right okay give me that give

00:25:55.020 Give me the pencil after you're done.

00:25:56.460 Okay, there you go.

00:25:57.260 Thank you.

00:25:58.140 All right.

00:25:59.980 Okay.

00:26:00.720 Okay, Bruce.

00:26:01.360 Thanks for playing along, Bruce.

00:26:02.440 And you can play along at home if you want.

00:26:04.580 No problem.

00:26:05.700 So, yeah, I mean, I don't have any specific data on that,

00:26:08.240 but my hypothesis is that there was some pretty good weather

00:26:12.500 for some outdoor sporting goods, skis, and things like that.

00:26:16.560 But like I said, you're also seeing sort of two Canadas, right?

00:26:19.320 You're seeing if you're affluent, you know,

00:26:21.780 you're spending like never before.

00:26:23.240 And some of these sporting goods categories cater more to the affluent folks who are making $400,000, $500,000 a year.

00:26:30.420 But if you're not one of those affluent folks, you're probably spending less in this category because it's more discretionary.

00:26:36.720 So, again, that's where we start to see the K-shaped economy come in where there's really two Canadas, depending on what income you have and how you spend.

00:26:44.200 Okay.

00:26:44.760 What was your prediction?

00:26:46.880 Travel.

00:26:48.200 Me too.

00:26:48.880 Did you?

00:26:49.340 We can't travel.

00:26:50.360 What are we going to do?

00:26:51.220 Well, we better get a hobby.

00:26:52.700 Exactly.

00:26:53.240 that's actually a good point too you're right that's a good point too because canadians are

00:26:56.860 traveling less to the u.s right so they might be doing more more domestic things that's a good

00:27:01.040 point oh yeah we got a pickleball that's what we got left did you i i know i i went and uh bought

00:27:06.440 new skates build a skating rink for the kids in the neighborhood and i spent a ton of money on

00:27:11.180 uh you know ice prep stuff and shovels and so yeah you know that would i got that probably

00:27:18.060 was factor into it too i think that that must be some of it you know that discretionary spending

00:27:22.900 You can't, you know, you won't spend as much on hobbies, perhaps, but they tend to listen.

00:27:28.940 I think that this has been a valuable conversation.

00:27:32.860 And as retail changes and as we get confused in the marketplace, Bruce, we will come back to you if you don't mind.

00:27:39.940 Sure, of course. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me on.

00:27:42.540 I really appreciate this. And thank you for joining us.

00:27:45.480 Don't forget, subscribe, tell a friend, and for goodness sake, don't hesitate to donate and subscribe as a paid subscriber because that's what keeps the wheels on the cart here and keeps us spending on retail.

00:27:58.440 See you next time.

00:28:06.740 Patriotic means looking out for each other and fixing things together.

00:28:11.260 True patriotism is being in a country you love, surrounded by people you love, and great weather.

00:28:17.340 Being a patriot is being a part of your community and caring for it.

00:28:20.280 It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from, patriotism is the one thing we all share.

00:28:25.480 It's okay to be critical of government and still be a patriot.

00:28:29.760 It's gratitude to your country.

00:28:31.380 Of course I'm a patriot. I'm Canadian. It's my home.

00:28:34.580 Well, actually, true patriot love is the mission.

00:28:41.260 You

True Patriot Love - March 29, 2026

IS RETAIL IN CANADA FAILING？ with Bruce Winder

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