Bring on the Sunday Shopping!

Whoo! News just in that the Nova Scotia Supreme Court has struck down the Sunday shopping ban here. The court issued a ruling today on the case taken by two major grocery chains against the provincial government, for introducing special regulations in June that specifically prevented them from opening on Sundays. Predictably, the court ruled that the government had overstepped the mark in issuing the regulations - much the same judgment that was made in 1999 when another, smaller grocery chain here took a similar case to court.

The premier has stated that the province won't be appealing the ruling, or seeking alternative ways to enforce the ban on Sunday shopping. This means that starting this weekend, all retail stores in NS can open on Sundays if they want - though I can't imagine that too many beyond the grocery stores will do so immediately, seeing as how it's a holiday long weekend coming up.

I suspect that this outcome has been planned for some time. Now, when rural Nova Scotians and religious types (who voted overwhelmingly for the Sunday shopping ban during the last provincial plebiscite on the issue, in 2004) start yelling and complaining about the ruling, the government can throw up its hands and say, "Oh well, we tried." I'm quite sure the government knew it was only a matter of time before the courts struck down the ban as arbitrary and unfair to the business community. The Sunday shopping issue has been a political hot potato in NS for years, and I'm sure that many in government will be quite relieved to leave it behind.

I'm delighted by the ruling, myself. Having lived many years in other countries where Sunday shopping is permitted, NS seemed puritanical and backward in comparison (and is apparently the last jurisdiction in North America to keep such a ban in place). Not to mention the fact that Sunday is the only day of the week that A. and I both have off from work. Spending our Saturday nights doing grocery store runs was a drag, to say the least.