Biggest blunders in Canadian business in 2013

10. Who’s the dummy now?

It was such a genius idea that it seems almost inconceivable that it could misfire. The plan: Randomly mix French and English words on the bottle caps of your drinks and, well, um, that’s the whole idea. Not exactly up there with “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” , but still, not without a certain goofy appeal. Bilingual bottle caps, how quintessentially Canadian. Unless of course, the English word is “You” and the French is “Retard”; then it starts to feel a little off, particularly if the person who paid for the privilege happens to have a developmentally-delayed sibling, as was the case with Blakes Loates in Edmonton this September. It’s "very, very unfortunate that this happened," said spokesperson Shannon Denny.

9. Mmm … maple bacon jam

Food and drink is apparently a tough one to get right, as we were reminded again this summer. And just as the brain surgeons at Coke bungled the bottle caps, the gourmets at the Canadian National Exhibition rolled out a meal that you couldn’t possibly envision going off: A cheese burger, slathered in a jam made of maple bacon and then served between glazed croissants. Who could want anything more? Well, other than a toilet nearby, as not only did the $10 Cronut come with a whopping 7,500 calories, this year’s version also came with the Staphylococcus aureus toxin which caused more than 200 people to fall ill. Turns out that the culprit was the maple bacon jam made at Toronto’s Le Dolci bakery. The CNE food court will survive, but we’ve likely seen the last of this deep-fried jam, bacon and cheese atrocity for a while.

8. When it hits the fan

Floods are a nasty business, but it still came as a shock to the victims of Calgary’s catastrophic floods last summer to get the bum’s rush from TD Meloche Monnex Insurance. Sewer systems get swamped, pipes are overloaded, and that which cannot go down comes straight back up, creating a god-awful mess all over the living rooms, basements and bedrooms of unfortunate home owners. It’s exactly for these kinds of situations that people buy insurance, all in the hope that when the s*&t does hit the fan, literally, that the response from their insurer resembles what’s always promised in the ads. Alas, that wasn’t the case this summer, not initially at least. It took weeks and weeks of pleading with TD Meloche Monnex before flood victims gave up and went to the media. In the end, of course, TD did the expected thing: Paid the claims, made the bad headlines go away, lowered their coverage and raised their premiums.

7. Everything must go

If you’re going to suggest a company screwed up, the very least you could be is specific. Alas, Sears Canada makes that tricky this year, as that they didn’t trip up, so much as fall down the stairs, repeatedly. Although not the first stumble, nor the most grievous, but certainly amongst the most embarrassing was president and CEO Calvin McDonald’s decision to fling himself off the ledge in the middle of his own ‘transformation plan’. In September, barely two years into the job, McDonald decided the future looked rosier at Sephora, the Paris-based cosmetics chain, where he will run the North America division. If there was any doubt about McDonald’s reasoning, it was lessened in October when Sears announced it was unloading five prime leases, including its flagship store in Toronto’s Eaton Centre. Hundreds of layoffs soon followed.

5. Reduced in the rubble

If Target thought it had a tough year abroad, its foreign affairs were wondrous compared to the world of hurt Joe Fresh found itself in when an eight-story building collapsed in the suburbs of Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing more than 1,100 textile workers. Many had been forced to remain at their sewing machines even when an evacuation order had gone out. Among the major brands that had clothes made in that building was Toronto’s Joe Fresh, a clothing line controlled by Loblaws, which is owned by the Weston’s, Canada’s second-wealthiest family. Few images could be more ruinous for a brand than the sight of a clothing label, tied by a billionaire-family, poking out of the mire and misery of a death trap in Dhaka. “Loblaws Inc. has robust vendor standards,” Julija Hunter, vice-president of public relations, told the Toronto Star. “In light of the recent tragedies in Bangladesh we recognize that these measures do not address the issue of building construction or integrity. Loblaw is committed to finding solutions.” Chief amongst those is long-term compensation for the families starting next year.

4. And the World Bank award for corruption goes to….

Somewhere Lester Pearson is turning over in his grave. Inheritors, as we are, of his peace-keeping legacy, we’ve long convinced ourselves of our benevolence abroad. All of which makes it rather awkward when Canada’s largest engineering firm, Montreal’s SNC-Lavalin, earns itself top spot on the World Bank’s running list of the planet’s most corrupt companies. Of the 250-plus companies on the dishonor roll, a shocking 117 are from the Great White North. Although perhaps not so surprising, as 115 of that ignominious lot are connected to SNC-Lavalin. The space provided here doesn’t allow for even a fraction of the SNC’s sins, though the arrest of former CEO Pierre Duhaime on charges of fraud offers some insight into some of SNC’s less salubrious work. He’s now awaiting trail, and Canada’s biggest engineering company is ineligible for any work tied to World-Bank financing until 2023.

3. Insourcing a fiasco

While its peers in the Canadian establishment ventured abroad with decidedly mixed results, RBC managed to severely stub its toe for glimpsing once too often at the world map. The issue emerged in April when the CBC broke the story that the bank was laying off 45 IT-workers and handing their work to iGate, a California-based outsourcing company with 28,000 employees, most of who work in Bangalore. However, in this instance, the work was not being sent to India, it would continue to be done in Canada, but by a smaller number of temporary foreign workers. Hardly a good-news story, but in the everyday machinations of a (US or Canada?) $30-billion operation with 80,000 employees, a couple of staffers lost or won is hardly headline news. The slight twist that stuck in everyone’s craw was the notion that RBC’s 45 displaced workers were expected to train the people set to take their jobs. That seemed a little unseemly, particularly for a bank that made a record $7.5-billion the year before. To no surprise, RBC dumped the plan as soon as the public reaction became clear.

2. On not covering your...

The problem began in March when Lululemon’s US$98 yoga pants were pulled from the shelves for being too sheer in the most inappropriate spots. Seventeen per cent of the company’s inventory was recalled, nearly one-fifth of all pants, resulting in an expected US$67 million hit in revenue, and that’s for the pants alone, to say nothing of the impact on the brand. While hardly a deal-breaker, the Vancouver-based company always had an unspoken understanding with its customers: You pay us a ton of money for yoga wear, and we’ll provide you with something stylish and comfy. By comfy it was understood that you could do the downward dog to your heart’s content without ever having to feel unduly exposed. Breaking that promise was bad enough. Worse, almost, was founder Chip Wilson taking to the airwaves in November to suggest subsequent pilling problems with the pants weren’t really a product-quality issue, so much as a issue with the women wearing them. “Quite frankly, some women’s bodies just don’t work for it,” Wilson told Bloomberg TV. Unsurprisingly, Wilson’s explanation didn’t work for a lot of customers – though it did just fine in terms of going viral. By mid-November, Wilson’s handlers explained he was no longer doing interviews.