Newsstand: January 19, 2015

Target is dead! Long live Walmart. (French monarchic references should probably be avoided on a Monday morning, but too late for that now.) In the news today: Canada's immigration laws might be hurting people with or at risk of contracting HIV, Stollerys is being demolished, and Target is leaving Canada and its Canadian employees in the lurch.

By Tannara Yelland • Illustration by Matthew Daley

The director of the University of Toronto International Human Rights Program wants the federal government to reconsider how its resettlement and refugee policies impact people with HIV or at risk of contracting HIV. Renu Mandhane and the program she directs, run through U of T’s law school, are launching a project intended to research and then advocate for changes to Canada’s immigration policy. That policy has led to the creation of the “designated countries of origin list,” made up of countries deemed less likely to persecute their citizens, and thus less likely to create refugees. But contracting or living with HIV can pose serious risks to people even in those designated origin countries, as Mandhane alleges. The new project will conduct research in the field over the summer and present its findings in the fall.

First the iconic Stollerys menswear shop closed down, and now it appears the building is being demolished before anything can be done to declare it a heritage site. Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam (Ward 27, Toronto Centre – Rosedale) asked the site to be considered for heritage status at city council’s January 13 meeting, the first time since the election that she was able to do so. Developer Sam Mizrahi, who bought the building in October, applied for a demolition permit earlier this month. It was approved on Friday. Because of the timing, Mizrahi is within his legal rights and the building may end up being torn down before anyone can determine if it should be saved as a heritage site.

In the wake of Target’s decision to pull out of Canada, nearly 18,000 employees will need to find new work. Target has announced that it will provide a minimum of 16 weeks of pay to its employees via a $70-million trust, but that won’t be enough time for all those people to find new jobs: according to economists, the number of people employed (until recently) by Target is roughly equivalent to the number of jobs created in the entire country in a given month.