Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson

by Andrea Mandel-Campbell

  “Commerce is not a separate entity. It’s entwined with who we are as human beings and who we are as a contemporary society. You can’t separate it.” Many observers believe that the education system should begin fostering a greater awareness, not only of business and branding, but of the world, long before university. “If kids don’t demonstrate an inclination to be entrepreneurs or leaders by the time they are seventeen or eighteen, there’s very small chance they will ever be,” says Schulich’s Dean Horváth. “Leaders and entrepreneurs, you develop early on.” International business courses should be offered in high school, and international trade should be included in the curriculum as early as Grade 5, suggests SNC –Lavalin’s Michael Novak. Schools also need to do a better job of teaching world history, and more emphasis needs to be placed on teaching a uniquely Canadian brand of marketing.

  To make up for the shortfall in university-level business education, government should either lift tuition freezes or promote the creation of private universities.* Otherwise, business schools will have no choice but to stuff their rosters with higher-paying international students or open campuses in other countries, where they can charge higher fees. In an ironic twist that short-sighted politicians fail to see, tuition freezes, intended to ensure that education remains accessible, actually impinge on the universities’ ability to help train homegrown business leaders.

  Limited funding is not the only problem. Lorna Wright, the former assistant dean of Schulich’s international mba program, admits that only five hundred students have graduated from the highly regarded program in fifteen years. Of those, most have been new Canadians and foreign students. Why? Because Canadian-born students are unable to fulfill the requirement for a second language. Official bilingualism is evidently not working and seems to have turned Canadians off a second language altogether. The policy is also increasingly archaic in the wake of the rise of new global languages like Mandarin and Spanish. “The major business machine of the next 30 to 40 years is going to be China,” says Leo Seewald, who spent summers as a teenager working in a Chinese toy factory and now, fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese, works as a lawyer in Hong Kong. “If we start learning Chinese now, it will create a natural bond and in fifteen or twenty years we’ll be so ahead.”

  The government should follow the lead of the Edmonton public school system, which offers seven bilingual programs and is widely considered one of the best school systems in the world. Unfortunately, the prospects aren’t promising. According to Ontario provincial legislation, it is illegal to offer bilingual programs in languages other than English and French. When the Toronto school board was asked whether it was open to introducing a similar program, the answer was that it would be “difficult,” because it wouldn’t be fair to the hundreds of other world languages that weren’t chosen. “Equity is a big thing at the school board,” said one rep. “Which language would you choose?”141 (Gee, maybe the one parents ask for?) That’s almost as much of a disservice as the one done to Quebecers who are denied the right to learn English, which is still the world’s predominant business language. Several Quebec entrepreneurs I spoke with told me that their lack of English-language skills had been a huge disadvantage, and as a result they had made sure to send their children to English Canadian universities.

  “We need a better education system. We need to celebrate multilingualism. You should be able to learn the language you want, not the one dictated by the school system or by politics — it creates an awareness of the world, and it will create competitiveness,” says Pierre Alarie, a Quebecer who is trilingual, as are his children. “We messed up as a society because we decided everybody had to be bilingual, while in Quebec there was no quality English teaching available for so many years. Unfortunately, it is still too often the case, so you can’t compete.”

  At its core, the system needs to do something it has never done before: prepare a new generation of internationally oriented, culturally fluent, strategic-thinking leaders. “When what you want to change is the export culture, you need a new breed of leaders,” says Victor Garcia, a manager with Hewlett-Packard Canada. “How do you fix that? Education. You need to start preparing a new generation of leaders so that the next level of CEOS , leaders and managers has an ingrained sense of globalization.”

  THEY ARE DOING IT DOWN UNDER

  Does all this sound pie-in-the-sky? Do you read these recommendations for changing the way Canada operates and think, there’s a better chance of pigs flying or a woman being elected prime minister again? Well, before dismissing these prescriptions altogether, you should know that there’s a country very much like Canada that has already taken most of them to heart. Dubbed the “Lucky Country,” Australia also suffers from an embarrassment of riches — a sprawling, resource-rich territory and a small population — that seemed to seal the country’s fate as a commodity producer with few world-class multinationals. Up until a few decades ago, one could hardly distinguish between Canada’s and Australia’s industrial policies, they were so similar. But then, Australia woke up.

  It didn’t have much of a choice. With several states teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in the 1980s, Australia was forced to revisit many of its protectionist policies. The federal government essentially privatized large swaths of timberland, got rid of supply management in the dairy industry, opened up the banking sector to foreign competition and allowed the domestic banks to buy insurance companies. The Australian Wheat Board was largely deregulated and listed on the stock exchange (although it still has an export monopoly),* and the export credit agency was reformed. As Australia gets set to scrap foreign-ownership restrictions on media companies, it boasts the most deregulated economy in the Western world, according to the oecd, with the least amount of government ownership and fewest restrictions on markets.

  At the same time, it has doubled the annual rate of immigration and attempted to speed up the integration process by pre-approving professional qualifications before new entrants arrive. It promotes multilingualism as part of an aggressive trade strategy, encouraging government officials to learn an Asian language, while companies like Qantas airlines fund scholarships to study Chinese and Japanese. More people now study Japanese in Australia than anywhere else in the world outside Japan and South Korea. Arguably the world’s leading proponent of free trade, Australia in recent years has clinched a number of high-profile deals and is expected to ink an agreement with Japan in 2007. In 2005, it rang up us$25 billion in exports to the world’s second-largest economy, compared with us$9 billion for Canada, which is physically closer to Japan than Australia is. Even more notably, Australia, with its twelve trade offices in China, saw its merchandise exports to the mainland jump 45 per cent year-over-year in 2005, compared with a 6 per cent increase for Canadian exports. Australian prime minister John Howard has been to China nine times in the past ten years.

  “Australia is beating Canada to the gun in China all the time, and yet we are a Pacific Rim nation, we have a larger Chinese population and a larger economy than Australia,” says BMO’s Neil Tate. “It doesn’t seem appropriate that we should be playing second fiddle.” But we are, and in more ways than one. The Australians’ growing trade might in China, combined with their heightened profile in the United States, has turned the Aussies into the new kids on the block that everyone wants to be friends with. Thomas d’Aquino, president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, came to that realization during an apec summit in 2003. After the meeting, Chinese president Hu Jintao flew to Australia, marking one of his first official visits since assuming power the year before. When d’Aquino asked a senior Chinese official why Hu had chosen to call on Australia, the answer was that “if Australia was a close friend of Washington, then it was a close friend of China.”

  But beyond influence, the reforms introduced under Howard and his predecessors have also brought Australia unparalleled economic growth and prosperity. Considered one of the “miracle economies” along with Finland and Ireland, since 1992
it has averaged an annual gdp growth of 3.5 per cent, representing the longest period of uninterrupted expansion in Australian history. It has outstripped Canada in productivity growth, while net household income has more than doubled in the past decade. According to the oecd, Australia edged past Canada to claim the world’s ninth-highest gdp per capita in 2005, up from seventeenth spot in 1990. At the same time Australia has become one of a handful of privileged countries to eliminate its net debt. Perhaps most importantly, according to Prime Minister Howard, “the country is more assertive and confident.”142

  So how was Australia able to do it? It comes down to a few key factors. Most importantly, Australia, adrift as it is, a massive island marooned in the middle of the South Pacific, doesn’t have anyone to rely on but itself. In other words, it does not have the United States, the world’s richest and most dynamic economy, at its doorstep, ready to snap up whatever it dug up or cut down. Second, it is has a more powerful federal government, which allows for more concerted and coherent strategies. “Australia doesn’t have the luxury of coasting, so they have to work at it more coherently than we do,” says Derek Burney. “They don’t allow individual states to peddle their products; they have a single Australia focus, while we’re willy-nilly all over the place.”

  Australia also has political leadership in the persona of John Howard, an unapologetic free marketer who has not shied away from confronting politically delicate reforms head-on. As he noted in an interview with the Financial Times: “I have a profound revulsion for political correctness.”143 Lastly, the Aussies seem to have a much greater sense of who they are, which allows them to trumpet their own unique brands, whether they are bikinis, shampoo, steakhouses or shiraz wine.

  IT ’S UP TO US

  Jeff Swystun isn’t often flummoxed, but he was a few summers ago in New York, when an American mba student asked him a seemingly innocuous question: “What is Canada all about?” The branding executive, who usually has an answer for everything, stuttered. (He admits, “I don’t stutter often.”) It’s a question Swystun still grapples with, as do many Canadians, and it’s at the heart of our ability to confidently take on the world. Pablo Breard immigrated to Canada fifteen years ago and went on to a successful career as an executive at Scotiabank; yet, after all these years, he admits: “I don’t know what being Canadian is.” It has made him question not only his own future in Canada, but the country’s future. “In order to understand how to compete, you have to have a massive overhaul of what Canada is and what it means to be Canadian,” he says.

  To do that, Canadians need to come to terms with what, until now, have been the two defining features of the national psyche that ultimately prevent them from claiming their rightful identity. On the one hand, for most of its history Canada has been a reactionary and defensive country, reacting to and defending itself against the United States. Canadians define themselves by what they are not — American — which is not only disingenuous but also destructive. Canadians have more in common with Americans than with any other country in the world. They share many of the same values: freedom, democracy, rule of law, a Judeo-Christian ethic and an (at times grudging) belief in a market-driven economy. With all that great inheritance, why focus on the negative? Doing so creates the impossible task of trying forge an identity in a vacuum that inevitably leads to feelings of inferiority.

  It’s equally difficult to say what you stand for when your country promotes the cult of “middleness” as if it were a religion. From Canada’s choice to become a Dominion, which is neither a fully independent country nor quite a colony, to its willingness to sacrifice a strong central government on the altar of national unity, the nation has attempted to present its middle-way approach as an act of virtuous compromise, something to be admired. But this reflects nothing more than a patent inability to make a decision or take a stand, and what we end up with is a country of fence-sitters and a watered-down identity that eschews boldness in favour of blandness. No wonder Canadians suck at branding. “Branding Canada is about branding people, and that is hard,” says Jeff Swystun. “Especially if you don’t know who you are, but who you aren’t.”

  That seeming lack of identity, in turn, has serious ramifications for Canada’s ability to project itself into world markets. Think of Jamaican rum or Italian leather— exports are closely tied to their country of origin, and a national brand confers a certain reputation, either for excellence or for knock-off schlock. Right now, Canada’s image is “completely flat, like a jellyfish,” says one European observer. Schulich’s Alan Middleton agrees: “Canadians are invisible.” The Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada came up with similar findings in its surveys of Asian businesspeople. “Nothing about Canada stood out,” says former president John Wiebe. “We’re seen as this bland country. We’re nice people, we have beautiful scenery, but we don’t stand for anything.” And that is a pretty hard sell. “I’m sorry, but how many times have you visited a nice but boring country?” asks Middleton. “Canadians are in danger of boring the entire world to death.”

  Marketing gurus Swystun and Middleton argue that Canada needs to go through a major rebranding exercise to develop a “master brand” that not only patents our uniqueness, but also clearly defines what we want to accomplish as a country. If Nazi Germany and Fascist Spain can remake themselves, so can Canada, which begins with a tremendous head start. According to the 2005 Anholt-gmi Nation Brands Index, Canada came second behind Australia, with the best brand reputation for liveability, landscape and investment. “It’s a demonstration of market potential. What the survey points to is that there is the potential, the goodwill on the part of consumers around the world to buy a lot of stuff from Canada,” said survey co-author and branding strategist Simon Anholt. “Canada could be playing a much more significant role in world affairs on many, many fronts.”144

  A great place to start would be a television ad celebrating some of Canada’s greatest business successes and most internationally renowned exports. It could showcase an array of innovators, entrepreneurs, workers and artists, from the originators of the Blackberry handset to scenes of Cirque du Soleil’s dazzling acrobatics and the opulent luxury of Isadore Sharp’s Four Seasons hotels (even if the company is no longer Canadianowned). I’d juxtapose hardrock miners and Prairie ranchers with Bombardier planes and Céline Dion. It would be all about what Canada is, instead of what it isn’t, and it would introduce the world to what Canadians can do. More importantly, it would show Canadians what they are capable of.

  Ireland has done something similar, hiring Bono, the lead singer of the rock band u2, as the country’s spokesperson for attracting foreign investment. But while Ireland has taken out full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal to promote itself as an ideal manufacturing hub, it has also backed its glitzy campaign with a fundamental restructuring of its economy. Canada is very good at talking the talk without walking the walk, though, and any attempt at rebranding will be a fruitless exercise in semantics unless the federal government is able to unplug the country’s economic bottleneck and unlock its potential. Otherwise university graduates and internationally trained executives will continue to migrate abroad in search of opportunities, and companies will continue to transfer their headquarters south.

  There’s just one catch. For Canada to embark on such an ambitious endeavour, it needs something that for most of its history it has sorely lacked: leadership. In many ways, the vacillation and defensiveness that has plagued Canadian leadership is a product of our history. Canada is a nation of workers and labourers, and since most of its big companies are owned or managed by foreigners, there is little opportunity for Canadians to learn to think strategically. We have largely abandoned the top spots to foreigners, and as a result our government is like an oversized union chief with the keys to the till. It’s preoccupied with making sure its members have decent pay and benefits, even contracting out some jobs to sympathetic “brothers” in the banking, media and telecommunications sectors, but it couldn’t com
e up with a forward-looking tactical strategy to save its life.

  That’s why the government is constantly caught up in interminable interdepartmental consultations, white papers, Royal Commissions and policy reviews. It’s not about seeking compromise — nobody knows how to make a decision. And that can be dangerous. If you stand in the middle of the road long enough, you’re liable to get run over, warns Kimon Valaskakis, Canada’s former ambassador to the oecd. As a Texas senator once explained to him: “The only thing in the middle of the road is a dead armadillo.”

  China, India and others are barrelling down the highway, with their economies at full bore; Canada’s time to act is now. And that action must begin with its leaders. If Canadians don’t believe in themselves, it’s largely because government is sending them signals that it shouldn’t. If Canadians think big business is bad, it’s because government is confirming their suspicions. If Canadians glorify the middle of the road, it’s because that’s what government espouses. If Canadians are indecisive and risk-averse, it’s because that’s how they see government behave. If Canadians don’t know their place in the world, it’s because their government is lost.

  Everybody has to grow up sometime. Either we cut through the mythologies we have spun around ourselves, or we risk being ensnared in them forever. If we need any proof, look no further than Argentina, a country that, like Canada, once brimmed with potential. “Argentina was the one country in Latin America that should have succeeded,” says Victor Garcia, an Argentinian-born manager with Hewlett-Packard Canada. “What failed was at the top. Like Canada, it lacked strategy and leadership. Just as a company is a reflection of a president, a country is a reflection of its prime minister.” And vice versa. A government is nothing more than the sum of its parts, and ours is a direct reflection of who we are; how far it is able to peer out ultimately depends on the vision of the Canadian people. “If we aren’t careful, we’ll end up a country that’s so watered-down, there’ll be nothing to save,” says Eamon Hoey. “There’s a lack of leadership in government, a lack of leadership in our corporations. We need a revolution in thinking. If not, Canada will end up a broken country.”