The Bay department store chain, also known as Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), is nearly $1 billion in debt. This week, Canada’s oldest department store began liquidating 90 of its 96 locations, triggering widespread distress among workers and affiliated small businesses.
While HBC is preparing to pay up to $3 million in retention bonuses to 121
managers and executives, it will not pay severance to more than 9,300 frontline workers, most of whom will soon lose their jobs. Also at stake are pensions, health
benefits and long-term disability support. According to the lawyer representing the employees, these benefits affect a group of people who are “extremely vulnerable as they cannot work and are highly dependent on their long-term disability benefits for their livelihoods.”
Hudson’s Bay filed for court protection on March 7 to shield itself from creditors while it seeks financing. Unfortunately, under the federal Wage Earner Protection Program Act, workers are only entitled to a maximum of $8,800 in severance—no matter if they’ve worked there for 50 years. That’s a pittance. Disabled employees may also be cut off from the support they’ve relied on. In addition, small businesses that operated inside Bay stores also face losses.
HBC has all but given up on saving the 90 stores slated to close and is barely holding onto hope for the remaining six. As it stands, the courts will close the last stores by April 8. Several of Hudson’s Bay’s senior secured lenders—Bank of America, Pathlight Capital and Restore Capital—are eager to recover their debts first.
Why are patriotic Canadians allowing the Bank of America to shut down North America’s oldest company? The federal government should step in—just as it did during the 2008 financial crisis overseen by Mark Carney, when it bailed out the banking sector with hundreds of millions of dollars in temporary loans.
Robert Nelly,
DAVIDSON, QC
Published in the Pontiac Journal on April 23, 2025.
