Boxing Day in Canada: Small retailers fear big shopping day won't make up for tough year

It’s one of the busiest shopping days of the year: Boxing Day sees thousands of people head to malls and big box stores to find great deals.

“We are expecting a lot of customers,” said Hashmeet Singh, the store leader at Best Buy in Calgary. “This is going to be one of the biggest Boxing Days I have seen in a while now.”

“Give or take, between 8,000 to 10,000 people will walk into the store today,” he estimated.

But, while the bigger chain box stores are seeing the masses, for some smaller businesses, it’s been a hard holiday season.

“It’s still going to be slow, said Judy Weselowski, the manager of Book Fair in downtown Winnipeg.

2024 was full of disruptions for retailers – two port strikes, the railway dispute, and most recently, the Canada Post strike – which heavily impacted holiday deliveries. Weselowski says they have been feeling the pinch.

“The strike didn’t help,” she said. “Our comic shipments were delayed because all the couriers are trying to deliver all the mail too.”

“People were trying to find a different way to get their parcels out, so we had delays that way.”

The federal government has tried to help small businesses through this difficult time.

Ottawa waived its five per cent GST for certain products, which started on Dec. 14 and will last until Feb. 15. The two-month tax holiday was proposed to make life more affordable for Canadians struggling with the high cost of living.

However, this tax break has caused confusion for many as to which products are tax free.

“Something that just came up last minute like this and thrown at us, is completely a curveball in our eyes,” said Ryan Gobeil, a sales and service manager at Eliminator RC in Winnipeg. “No matter how you look at it, there is no easy way of doing it,” he told CTV News on Dec. 12.

Boxing Day traffic has seen a decline over the last few years, but retail analyst Doug Stephens says this year could be a little different.

“Number one, we continue to see gift card sales increasing, sort of bucking the trend,” he said. “More and more consumers are getting gift cards and more of those cards are going to be used after the holiday on a day like today.”

“But in terms of: ‘are consumers sort of beating a path back to the mall?’ we are not seeing that just yet.”

An RBC Economics report from earlier this month showed retail spending slowed in November, with holiday spending slightly below 2023 levels over the Black Friday weekend.

But even with the decline, the report says Canada is likely on track for a slight uptick in per-person retail spending in the fourth quarter for the first time since mid-2022.