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LAVAL – On Monday, Target Canada president Tony Fisher showed off the new retail store in Ste-Dorothee Laval like a proud papa.

“It’s a bright clean store. Wide aisles, short check-out lines, incredible guest service,” he told reporters Monday.

On Tuesday morning, seven locations will open to the public:

Brossard (Place Portobello)

Laval (Mega Centre Highway 13)

Levis (Galeries Chagnon)

Montreal (Place Vertu)

Saint-Georges (Carrefour Saint-Georges)

Saint-Jerome (Carrefour du Nord)

Trois-Rivieres (Les Rivieres Shopping Centre)

Another nine stores are scheduled open in mid-October including three in the Greater Montreal area.

HEC Marketing professor JoAnn Labrecque says consumers are the biggest winners. Target’s arrival will mean on-going price wars with Wal-Mart, the other U.S. retail giant.

“The Quebec consumer is different from the rest of Canada and different from Americans, but Target is a banner that is well known by Quebecers,” Labrecque told Global News.

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One group is not putting out the welcome mat for Target – the union representing former Zellers employees.

“They came in with their American boots and say we’re flushing everybody”, Filato says. “They said we’re starting off in Quebec, we’re starting from scratch”.

Filato says roughly 5,000 former Zellers workers were promised employment opportunities with the U.S. retailer, but were largely ignored.

“We’re gonna be in front of the labour board trying to get these people their jobs back,” Filato says. “It’s totally insulting”.