Loss of TD bank will impact perception of Creemore’s viability
TD Canada Trust is sloughing off the closure of the Creemore branch as no big deal, it’s just a move up the street.
It doesn’t seem like most people in town are buying the corporate spin.
Although there may not be much we can do to change a decision made by bigwigs in some office tower somewhere, we don’t have to like it.
People we’ve talked to are taking it personally. “We are losing our bank” and “how could they do this?” are common sentiments being expressed. The feeling is that we, as a community, have been loyal to TD and that loyalty is not being rewarded. It cannot be denied that we are not enough for them.
The branch is just not profitable enough. Pfft. At the end of the last fiscal quarter, TD reported a $2.77-billion profit, up 17 per cent from the same third quarter period last year. The Canadian retail banking sector accounted for $1.73 billion of net income, up 14 per cent from the previous year. This is another example of big corporations getting richer while small communities suffer and lose the services that they helped build.
No matter the reason for the closure, it is bad for Creemore. The news has spread through the village this week like wildfire and with it comes a sense that losing a bank is a bad sign of things to come. People worry that it could have a domino effect on the village, and they are not wrong to worry.
The old model of a viable downtown included a bank but now they want us to do everything online. Unfortunately for us, TD is not proposing to set everyone up with a home computer and high speed internet. The people making the decision to close don’t care that there are people who find online banking stressful and, although it may be difficult to believe, others can’t get to Stayner easily.
Small business owners and employees will have their own concerns around how to make deposits and get cash.
There we go again, assuming the bank cares about the individual people who do their low level daily banking at TD… We are not their bread and butter, we do not matter to them.
The announcement has been poorly executed. Corporate hasn’t been able to say that there will even be a bank machine remaining in the community. They say there will be an information session before the May 4 closure but no specific dates have been set.
We are right to voice our discontent and try to get TD to stay but when that fails, maybe there is a small credit union that would be interested in doing business in Creemore.
For a number of reasons, many of the new houses on the books for Creemore have yet to be built but we are told that growth is coming. Let’s hope a little bit of growth will help secure the future of our other key services.
