Mississauga asks for ban on big box stores selling non-essential items

The City of Mississauga is fighting for small businesses that are struggling to stay afloat amid a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mayor Bonnie Crombie says she will be putting forward a motion on Thursday that will ask Peel Region’s top doctor to prevent big box stores from selling non-essential items.

She says the motion will help protect the health and safety of residents, but will also serve as a way to level the playing field for small business owners.

“I know that many of our small retailers are barely hanging on. They’ve been asked to close their in-person shopping at the most critical time of year for their bottom line. It is simply unfair that big box stores can continue to sell non-essential items while small retailers cannot,” says Crombie.

This would mean stores like Costco and Walmart would be forced to rope off areas of their stores deemed ‘non-essential.’

A similar measure is already underway in the province of Manitoba.

The Gap Inc. announced it’s closing its stores – as well as its subsidiary Old Navy and Banana Republic locations – in Toronto and Peel as of Thursday.

The stores were open for business on Wednesday despite being under a provincial lockdown but the company tells 680NEWS, the locations will now all be closed.

This comes after another popular retailer, Hudson’s Bay, decided to keep its Queen Street location open on Monday despite Toronto and Peel being under lockdown.

The company said that while curbside pickup is being offered at some of its locations, they considered the Queen Street store to be an essential service because it “offers grocery.”