Widespread theft costing Canada’s retail industry dearly: experts
The Retail Council of Canada desires to place a cease to widespread theft inside the retail trade.
“Retail crime contributed about $5 billion in losses across Canada,” Retail Council of Canada Loss Prevention and Risk Manager Rui Rodrigues mentioned in an interview with CTV National News. Rodrigues mentioned these numbers are from pre-pandemic, and sure larger now.
Retail trade leaders are assembly this week to seek out options to reduce theft.
“Theft amounts to roughly 1.8 per cent of all retail revenues in the country.”
Stealing from retail shops in Canada has gone on for a very long time, in quite a lot of methods, however Rodrigues mentioned the issue is worse now than it has ever been.
“General shoplifting happens quite often and group theft is a growing problem,” he mentioned, as he described the apply of enormous numbers of thieves blitzing shops and leaving with giant quantities of stolen merchandise. “They are literally filling shopping carts and bags full of merchandise.”
Rodrigues mentioned organized crime is a rising concern, with gadgets stolen earlier than they even get to shops.
“Trailers stolen from yards, in transport, there is definitely an increase of that as well,” he mentioned.
Sylvain Charlebois agrees. Charlebois is a professor at Dalhousie University and director of the college’s Agri-Food Analytics Lab. He mentioned theft of retail meals has additionally escalated over the previous 5 years.
“Organized crime is a big problem,” Charlebois mentioned. “Sometimes you have internal employees involved and these thefts will probably include thousands of dollars of food product.”
The retail shops sector is presently working with legislation enforcement to handle the problem, in keeping with Rodrigues.
Store operators are additionally deploying new methods similar to elevated and better-trained safety personnel and high-tech surveillance instruments.
“It could come down to the physical design of the store and where the high value stuff is, in relation to the exit,” mentioned CTV News Public Safety Analyst and Former OPP Commissioner Chris Lewis.
“Most of the stores want it up front, so people see it when they come in. That is part of their advertising. But in other cases, they are moving items and putting them into places that makes it harder to get them out of the door.”
Lewis mentioned there are different confirmed methods to discourage thieves, like catching them within the act and delivering strict punishment by way of legislation enforcement and the courts.
The Retail Council of Canada is presently engaged on a retail crime report that can spotlight how a lot cash retailers at the moment are dropping attributable to theft.
