More than 300 families are burying their dead, or trying to recover their bodies after a building containing sweatshops collapsed in Bangladesh.
The victims spent their last day alive making Joe Fresh garments for sale in Canada.
This isn't international news simply because of a high body count or poor building standards in the Third World. It's news because we are likely all somewhat complicit in these deaths.
The Joe Fresh brand has several locations on the North Shore and more on the way. But before you go patting yourself on the back for not shopping there, you'd better check the tags on your shirt and jeans.
The garment industry is notorious for relying on sweatshop labour in deplorable conditions.
While the companies could easily offer a better quality of life for their employees, or at least minimum safety standards, for just pennies on the dollar and pass the extra costs on to the consumer, they don't.
Canadian consumers, especially if they aren't wealthy, often have little choice but to be a party to this.
It's too late to put the globalization genie back in its bottle but it isn't too late to demand better.
Consumers have to speak up and demand that the major brands we buy insist themselves on adequate safeguards and standards in the factories that supply them, rather than the wink-wink audits which have existed for far too long.
By continuing to buy these products, without caring how they are created, we give our tacit approval to the practices which led to this week's tragedy.
