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Sears files for Chapter 11 amid plunging sales, massive debt
NEW YORK — Sears filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday, buckling under its massive debt load and staggering losses.
The question now is whether a smaller version of the company that once dominated the American retail landscape can remain viable or whether the iconic brand will be forced out of business.
Sears, which started as a mail order
“This is a company that in the 1950s stood like a colossus over the American retail landscape,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy. “Hopefully, a smaller new Sears will be healthier.”
The company has struggled with outdated stores and complaints about customer service. That’s in contrast with chains like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Macy’s, which have been enjoying stronger sales as they benefit from a robust economy and efforts to make the shopping experience more inviting by investing heavily in remodeling and de-cluttering their stores.
Sears Holdings, which operates both Sears and Kmart stores, will close 142 unprofitable stores near the end of the year, with liquidation sales expected to begin shortly. That’s in addition to the closure of 46 unprofitable stores that had already been announced. Edward S. Lampert has stepped down as CEO but will remain chairman of the board. A new Office of the CEO will be responsible for managing day-to-day operations.
Sears joins a growing list of retailers that have filed for bankruptcy or liquidated in the last few years amid a fiercely competitive climate. Some, like Payless ShoeSource, successfully emerged from reorganization in bankruptcy court. But plenty of others like, Toys R Us and Bon-Ton Stores Inc., haven’t. Both retailers were forced to shutter their operations this year soon after Chapter 11 filings.
Given its sheer size, Sears’ bankruptcy filing will have wide ripple effects on everything from already ailing landlords to its tens of thousands of workers.
Lampert, the largest shareholder, has been loaning out his own money for years and has put together deals to prop up the company, which in turn has benefited his own ESL hedge fund.
Last year, Sears sold its famous Craftsman brand to Stanley Black & Decker Inc., following earlier moves to spin off pieces of its Sears Hometown and Outlet division and Lands’ End.
In recent weeks, Lampert has been pushing for a debt restructuring and offering to buy some of Sears’ key assets, like Kenmore, through his hedge fund as a $134 million debt repayment came due on Monday. Lampert personally owns 31
“It is all well and good to undertake financial engineering, but the company is in the business of retailing and without a clear retail plan, the firm simply has no reason to exist,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, in a recent analyst note.
Sears’ stock has fallen from about $6 over the past year to below the minimum $1 level that Nasdaq stocks are required to trade in order to remain on the stock index. In April 2007, shares were trading at around $141. The company, which once had 350,000 workers, has seen its workforce shrink to fewer than 90,000 people as of earlier this year.
As of May, it had fewer than 900 stores, down from a 2012 peak of 4,000.
In a March 2017 government filing, Sears said there was “substantial doubt” it would be able to keep its doors open — but insisted its turnaround efforts would mitigate that risk.
Lampert pledged to return Sears to greatness by leveraging its best-known brands and its vast holdings of land, and more recently planned to entice customers with a loyalty program. But losses continued and the company struggled to get more people through the doors or to shop online.
Jennifer Roberts, 36, of Dayton, Ohio, was a long-time fan of Sears and has fond memories of shopping there for clothes as a child. But in recent years, she’s been disappointed by the lack of customer service and outdated stores.
“My mom had always bought her appliances from Sears. That’s where my dad got his tools,” she said. “But they don’t care about their customers anymore.”
She said a refrigerator her mother bought at Sears broke after two years and still hasn’t been fixed.
“If they don’t value a customer, then they don’t need my money,” Roberts said.
Sales at the company’s established locations tumbled nearly 4
“The problem in Sears’ case is that it is a poor retailer,” Saunders wrote in his analyst note. “Put bluntly, it has failed on every facet of retailing from assortment to service to merchandise to basic shop keeping standards. Under benign conditions, this would be problematic enough but in today’s hyper-competitive retail environment it is a recipe for failure on a grand scale.”
For decades, Sears was king of the American shopping landscape. Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s iconic
Store shelves have been left bare as many vendors have demanded more stringent payment terms, says Mark Cohen, a professor of retailing at Columbia University and a former Sears executive.
Meanwhile, Sears workers are nervous about what kind of severance they’ll receive if their stores close.
John Germann, 46, works full-time and makes $14 per hour as the lead worker unloading merchandise from trucks at the Chicago Ridge, Illinois, store, which has been drastically reducing its staff since he started nine years ago. Germann now has only 11 people on his team, compared with about 30 a few years ago.
“We’re doing the job of two to three people. It’s not safe,” he said. “We’re lifting treadmills and refrigerators.”
Anne D’Innocenzio, The Associated Press
Human trafficking suspect arrested in Red Deer, July 2024
From Alert, the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team
Three human traffickers arrested in Project Endgame
Three men have been arrested and stand accused of running a human trafficking operation that stretched across Canada; operating throughout Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Quebec.
Project Endgame was a year-long investigation led by ALERT’s Human Trafficking unit, and also relied on the assistance of the Edmonton Police Service, RCMP, and the Quebec joint forces Anti-Pimping team known as EILP.
Arrests and search warrants had taken place in Edmonton, Montreal, and Red Deer. A total of 23 charges related to human trafficking offences have been laid against Clyde Elien-Abbot, 31, Kevin Dorcelus-Cetoute, 31, and Jean Rodnil Dubois, 31. Elien-Abbot was arrested on January 31, 2025 in Edmonton, while the other two accused were arrested on July 23, 2024.
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From LifeSiteNews
The Liberals are choosing a new face, but all six contenders seem likely to continue forcing Canadians down the same path as the PM they’re out to replace
With the Liberal leadership election just over a month away on March 9, Canadians are examining the six final contenders and questioning if they will bring change to the Liberal Party or carry on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s radical legacy.
The six contenders for Liberal leader and consequently, the next prime minister, are: Mark Carney, Chrystia Freeland, Karina Gould, Jaime Battiste, Frank Baylis and Ruby Dhalla.
While all the above candidates are promising to turn the Liberal Party around, their policies, both past and proposed, suggest little difference from the radical, anti-life and globalist agenda embraced by the Trudeau government.
Former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney
Carney appears to be the frontrunner for Liberal Party leader, with many mainstream outlets tacitly promoting him as a solution for Canadians, and numerous MPs having endorsed his campaign.
However, as LifeSiteNews has previously reported, Carney’s history suggests he would be an even more radical version of Trudeau.
While his impressive work experience certainly raises him in the estimation of Canadians, especially compared with Trudeau’s pre-political career as a drama teacher, the former Governor of the Bank of England, like Trudeau, openly supports abortion, the LGBT agenda and many of the tax and fiscal policies of the Trudeau government, such as the carbon tax.
Carney’s endorsement of energy regulations go even further than Trudeau’s, with the candidate having previously blasted the prime minister for exempting home heating oil from the carbon tax.
Carney has also been a longtime supporter of the globalist World Economic Forum, attending their infamous annual conference in Davos, Switzerland as recently as January 2023.
Carney routinely uses social media to advocate for achieving so-called “net-zero” energy goals, and even had his team bar multiple independent journalists from attending the press conference he held to announce his bid for Liberal leader.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland
Freeland’s bid for Liberal leader came as a surprise to many as it closely followed her resignation from Trudeau’s cabinet.
Freeland is perhaps best known internationally for her heavy-handed response to anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protesters, which saw the then-finance minister direct financial institutions to freeze the bank accounts of Canadians who participated in or donated to the protest.
Freeland, like Carney, also has extensive ties to the WEF, with her receiving a personal commendation from former WEF leader Klaus Schwab.
Interestingly, at the same time as Freeland announced her Liberal bid, the WEF’s profile on Freeland was taken down from their website. Additionally, the majority of Freeland’s Instagram posts have been removed from public view.
Many have speculated online as to the reason why these actions were taken, with some suggesting that Freeland desires to distance herself from the massively criticized group.
Critics often pointed to Freeland’s association with the group during her tenure as finance minister and deputy prime minister, as she was known for pushing policies endorsed by the globalist organization, such as the carbon tax and online censorship.
Former House Leader MP Karina Gould
Gould, an avid abortion activist, is perhaps best known for telling American women that they can have their abortions in Canada following the Supreme Court of the United States’ overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Gould is also known for continually advocating in favor of state-funded media, which critics have warned causes supposedly unbiased news outlets into de facto propaganda arms for the state.
In one example from September, Gould directed mainstream media reporters to “scrutinize” Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, who has repeatedly accused government-funded media as being an arm of the Liberals.
Gould also claimed that Poilievre’s promise to defund outlets like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would deny Canadians access to important information, ignoring the fact that the Liberals’ own legislation, which she voted for, blocked all access to news content on Facebook and Instagram.
MP Jaime Battiste
Voting records show that in 2021 Battiste opposed a bill aiming to protect unborn children from sex-selective abortions. Later that same month, he voted to pass Bill C-6, which allows parents to be jailed for up to five years for refusing to deny the biological sex of their gender-confused children.
Furthermore, Battiste struck down a motion to condemn incidents of arson and vandalism of churches across Canada. In October 2023, a Conservative MP put forward a motion to denounce the arson and vandalism of 83 Canadian churches, especially those within Indigenous communities.
However, Battiste moved to adjourn the meeting rather than discuss the motion, saying, “I would like to call to adjourn debate on this if that’s what we can do, so we can hear the rest of the study, but if we have to, then I would rather discuss it in camera because it does have a way of triggering a lot of people who went through residential schools and the things they are going through.”
The Liberal government is known to be extremely lenient in their rhetoric when it comes to attacks on Catholic churches, with Trudeau even saying such behavior was “understandable” even if it is “unacceptable and wrong.”
Former MP Frank Baylis
Baylis served as a Liberal MP in 2015 but chose not to seek re-election in 2019. Now, he has thrown his hat in the ring as Liberal leader.
During his time as MP, Baylis was a staunch supporter of abortion. In 2016, he voted against a Conservative bill to provide protection to unborn children and pregnant mothers from violence.
Interestingly, Baylis is the former owner of the Baylis Medical Company of Montréal which was awarded a $282.5 million government contract for now “useless” ventilators during the COVID “pandemic.”
Former MP Ruby Dhalla
Dhalla served in the House of Commons from 2004 to 2011. Interestingly, Dhalla, born to Indian immigrant parents, has promised to deport illegal immigrants and “clamp down on human traffickers.” Dhalla’s stance sets her apart from the other Liberal candidates on the issue.
While Dhalla styles herself as an “outsider,” during her time as an MP, she worked to further abortion in Canada, voting against legislation to protect babies from violence in the womb.
In conclusion
It seems that no matter who is selected as the next leader of the Liberals, the party will remain one which prides itself on being pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, pro-euthanasia and globalist in vision.
While Trudeau may be taking the blame for the current state of the Liberal Party, with these 6 candidates it would appear that the party remains intent on pushing the same policies.
Although it is true that Trudeau’s political blunders, such as his repeated historical use of black-face or his inviting a Nazi-aligned World War II veteran into Parliament, have contributed to his popularity decline, it seems the policies behind the blunders are not his, but the Liberal Party’s itself.
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