By arthur Weinreb, associate Editor,
Monday, august 21, 2006
after the recent arrests of those in the U.K. and Pakistan for their alleged involvement in a terrorist plot to blow up planes in the sky, Canada followed the lead of other countries in banning liquids and gels from the passenger cabins of airplanes. The alleged plot involved bringing liquids onboard aircraft and then mixing them to create explosives that would bring the plane down.
as a result of the change of policy, seven of Toronto's Pearson International airport's duty free shops closed their doors, putting about 170 people out of work. The stores could not survive as their captive customers were now prohibited from taking the company's best selling products; alcohol and perfume, onboard the aircraft with them.
The doors to the seven shops had barely closed when the question was raised about compensating Nuance Group North america, the stores' owners for their impending losses. This being the Peoples Republic of Canada, there was never even a remote suggestion that the company should bear the losses that resulted from the new security measures.
a suggestion that surfaced in the media was that the Greater Toronto airports authority(GTaa) was considering that an increase in landing fees or other airport services was being considered in order to make up for the lost revenue from lost duty free sales. according to Scott armstrong, Manager of Media Relations for the GTaa, the authority was not making suggestions that these fees or charges be increased. But who knows what might have happened had the duty free shops been required to close for more than a few days.
What was perhaps more troubling than possible increases in costs that would be eventually passed on to travellers were the number of people who called in to talk radio shows with the opinion that the government should compensate the owner of the duty free shops for any losses that they encountered. To those callers, giving businesses money to compensate them for business losses seemed as natural as giving people money to buy food so that they won't starve to death. apparently the notion of risk is not one that should ever enter into a business decision.
If risk was not a foreign concept to doing business in Canada, the risk in this particular case was hardly unforeseeable. It is true that even security agencies didn't seem to address the possibility of making liquid explosives while onboard an aircraft. Nevertheless, the entire business of duty free shops is to sell products to people who were required to bring them aboard a plane that is leaving the country. Since September 11, 2001, it was a natural risk that anything that is sold in these shops could be banned from airplane cabins. But the notion of compensation flowed faster than the liquor that suddenly became prohibited.
There may be some instances where compensation should be seriously considered. Large job losses in an industry that dominates a city or town and that inevitably leads to unrelated businesses going under may be a proper case for compensation to save the local economy. But this is not the case with the layoff of 170 people who were employed at the airport.
Of course the notion that businesses that sustain losses deserve compensation is restricted to certain elite businesses. When convenience stores start to go under as a result of restrictions on the sale of tobacco products, don't look for cries to compensate the owners of those stores, many of them immigrants who work 18 hours a day. So what, they can all go and drive taxis. That will be the prevailing attitude.
What was truly amazing about the calls for compensation, government handouts and larger landing fees, was that the problem was only a temporary one. all that had to be done to solve it was to devise a way where the duty free purchases could be put on the plane without the customer being able to take physical possession of them prior to landing at their destination. This has already been done (as it had already been done in other countries) and the stores have reopened.
So put your capital into a business. If you succeed, you get the money; if you don't, you get compensated and you still get the money. Is this a great country or what?
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