At Wed-Night 1321 with Andrea Mandel-Campbell vs Me Julius Grey OWN She is the author of "Why the Mexicans don't Drink Molsons" also Michel KELLY-GAGNON

Wednesday Night #1321 - Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson

• Posted by Diana Thébaud Nicholson
• June 27, 2007

This Wednesday we have a very special guest: Andrea Mandel-Campbell, author of Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson: Rescuing Canadian Companies From the Suds of Global Obscurity, which has been stirring up a lot of media excitement since its appearance. In it she examines why Canadian companies have failed to compete on a world stage and why they must,- a topic not unfamiliar to many around the Wednesday Night table.

Friday 06 July 2007 Mouse antibodies may offer way to save troops
One of the inventors of the Black-Berry says he and U.S. colleagues have developed a biological sensing device that could sniff out the IEDs that have taken such a bloody toll on soldiers in Afghanistan, but says the Canadian government has shown little interest.

What is the government reason?

Research in Motion, the BlackBerry inventor, said yesterday that he and scientists at Georgia Tech university are in talks with the U.S. Marines and are about to sign a deal with a Pennsylvania company to manufacture the hardware.

Why not Canada?

Attempts to interest various federal officials in Canada have been unsuccessful, he said. "We haven't heard boo from the Canadian government."

..."open to new ideas" and urged the engineer to submit a proposal.

At Defence Research and Development Canada in Ottawa, meanwhile, $72-million has been redirected over the past year to work on combatting IEDs. On what?

Monday 02 July 2007 Chasing the iPhone Asian manufacturers fear Apple may repeat in wireless communications what it accomplished in portable music with the iPod: changing the industry.

Monday 02 July 2007 Argentine First Lady Seeks Presidency President Nestor Kirchner has tapped his wife, Sen. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, to take his place as the ruling coalition candidate in October presidential elections.

Mexicans do drink Canadian beer
While we can’t answer “Why Mexicans Don’t Drink Molson,” the catchy title of a recent book on Canada’s global trade performance, we can tell you that Mexicans do drink Moosehead.  Produced by Moosehead Breweries Limited of New Brunswick, this beer was among some $4 billion worth of Canadian merchandise exports to Mexico in 2006.  Since the signing of NAFTA in 1993, Canadian companies have invested roughly $5.3 billion in Mexico and merchandise exports have more than quadrupled. Last year, exports to the country were up 25 per cent from 2005. More... EDC

From Wednesday Night #1317
A short clip was played of Michael Enwright's interview with Andrea Mandel-Campbell, author of Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson (andreamandelcampbell.com/), which generated discussion of the timidity/conservative approach of Canadian investors. Canadians tend to be cautious and conservative when buying, but want top dollar when they sell. We have been investing in foreign countries for years, but now that our resource companies, and corporations such as the quintessentially Canadian Hudson Bay Company, are foreign owned, a red flag has gone up.

Speaking engagement - June 27, 2007
Andrea will be speaking at the University Club of Montreal.
Location: 2047 Rue Mansfield, Montreal

Author Andrea Mandel-Campbell: Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 | 12:27 PM ET

CBC.ca welcomed journalist and author Andrea Mandel-Campbell on Thursday, May 24 to answer your questions about Canadian business and her new book Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson.

• Download the audio of the interview mp3 (Runs 22:17)

Mandel-Campbell is a business and financial journalist specializing in international markets and global competitiveness.

In her 10 years in Latin America, she wrote for The Miami Herald, The San Francisco Examiner, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and The Globe and Mail, among other publications.

Please Listen to Andrea’s interview with Michael Enwright
see her website

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The Book

Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson (Hardcover)

The Current for Thursday, June 14, 2007 CBC

Canadian Innovation: Ann Golden If Canada was a high school student, we might not be making it to this month's graduation. Yesterday, the Conference Board of Canada released a 'report card' on Canada giving the country marks on a wide range of subjects from education and healthcare to the economy and the environment. We earned our lowest grade, a 'D', when it came to innovation. In fact we ranked number 14 out of 17 industrialized nations. And according to the Conference Board, that's a big problem because innovation contributes to everything from a high-performing economy, to environmental protection and an inclusive society. Anne Golden is the President and CEO of the Conference Board of Canada and she was in our Ottawa studio. Canadian Innovation: Andrea Mandel-Campbell Anne Golden isn't the only person worried about Canada's ability to innovate and compete creatively. Andrea Mandel-Campbell is the author of Why Mexican's don't Drink Molson: Rescuing Canadian Companies from the Suds of Global Obscurity. And she was with us in our Toronto studio. Listen to The Current: Part 1 (Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

her Q&A with listeners at cbc yourinterview

Friday, June 08, 2007 Adam Smith and Canuck beer prowess
.... The main point is that Molson had some really crappy management, and its shareholders paid the price.
...Ms. Mandel-Campbell uses beer as a jumping-off point for a lament about the alleged lack of Canadian multinationals, internationally recognized Canadian brands and general business dynamism, but we might reflect amid all the doom and gloom echoing around Sleepy Hollow(ing) that Canada isn't exactly on the international breadline. Corona may be a whiz-bang success internationally, but does it make you want to suffer the Mexican average per capita income?

Corporate Canada, proud and ... parochial
JEFFREY SIMPSON
June 5, 2007

Andrea Mandel-Campbell asks a disturbing question in her provocative new book: Why do Canadians drink Corona, a beer Mexicans don't consider their best, whereas Molson never even tried to crack the Mexican market and is now a subset of an American brewing conglomerate?

With Algoma, Ipsco and Dofasco being sold to foreigners and now Stelco up for sale, with Alcan a takeover target, with most mining companies under foreign control, and yes, with both major "Canadian" brewers gone, what's been happening to Canadian capitalism?

The answers are not pretty, and Ms. Mandel-Campbell explores them mercilessly and a trifle breathlessly in Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson.

Canadians, although believing the world loves and need them, seldom think globally. They lack confidence. They are instinctively protectionist in too many areas. They think small. When they lift their commercial eyes, they see only the U.S. market.

Not many capitalists in the Canadian Council of Chief Executives or the Canadian Chamber of Commerce are going to like Ms. Mandel-Campbell's book. She's hardly a predictable, anti-globalization, head-in-the-sand leftie. If anything, she's a free-enterprise kind of analyst.

She therefore lists the usual government policies that shield Canada from global pressures: supply management, a social welfare fishery, unemployment benefits (10 weeks work for 42 weeks of benefits). She adds the list of complaints from business about corporate taxes and excessive regulations.

But her more telling criticisms are directed at business itself.

Few business leaders travel. When they do - and she used to work as a journalist in Latin America - they don't speak local languages and familiarize themselves with local cultures. They are parochial Canadians who, like so many of their fellow citizens, seem to think that just being Canadian will be enough to impress the world.

Canadians fool themselves into thinking they are big traders, whereas more than half of all trade that crosses Canada's borders is between different parts of the same company. Canada has very few companies with a Canadian brand name. Some that had or have a brand name changed it to hide their Canadian roots, as Northern Telecom did.

Mining ought to be a Canadian strength. Take away Barrick Gold and a couple of others, and the rest have all sold out to foreigners.

The same for steel, hotels, beer, energy, and just about every other industry. She writes: "While Sweden has Ikea, Finland has Nokia and Italy has the fashion triumvirate of Armani, Gucci and Prada, Canada does not have, nor has it ever had, [italics hers] a single global brand name."

That's an exaggeration, but not by much. Our banks - the ones Canadians worry are too large - are actually international pygmies.

Sheltered from foreign competition, they worry much more about grabbing small bits of additional market share in Canada than trying to become bigger international players.

The same sheltering behind government protectionist policies has led to small mindsets for telecommunications companies, agricultural producers, manufacturers (in most cases). Corporate Canada's instincts, she argues, are far too directed at running to government for this or that advantage, a mindset that reflects a deeper sense of insecurity in Canada.

Ms. Mandel-Campbell's argument can be taken much further. For Canada's level of prosperity to continue, let alone increase, the entire country has to become more global in its thinking, educational systems, political culture, business philosophy.

Almost every government policy, and the political debates that accompany them, should ask a basic question: How will this enhance Canadians' ability to thrive in a global world?

Instead, our politics is about carving up revenues between federal and provincial governments, beseeching governments for more industrial subsidies, worrying obsessively about the United States, pouring money into equalization and health care, and avoiding even the word "productivity." It is a recipe for slow relative decline - a decline made comfortable by the ease with which Canada can export its storehouse of natural resources.

Worse, we defiantly refuse to learn from others: from Iceland about how to organize a fishery, from Finland about how to educate young people, from Europeans about learning languages, from Denmark about how to make green technologies work, from New Zealand and Australia about reforming agriculture, from every other country (except the U.S.) about how to manage health care, from Japan about telling car companies how they must reduce emissions.

We are Canadians, proud, parochial and, in Ms. Mandel-Campbell's words, entering the "suds of global obscurity."

jsimpson@globeandmail.com

Saturday, April 07, 2007 Canadians seen as nice but lazy

... Canada has opted to squander resources and leave the country vulnerable to the flux of an increasingly globalized world.
...Business leaders are ineffectual, undereducated and ignorant. Politicians are human roadblocks standing in the way of economic success. And everyone else just wants to go home by five o'clock. ...In the 1970s, Molson Canada was roughly the same size as Heineken, the Dutch brewing company. Three decades later, Heineken is the fourth-largest brewery in the world and Molson is relatively insignificant outside of Canada. Where Molson has foundered, for example, Mexico's Corona has flourished. Corona is the leading imported beer in Canada, and is the fourth best-selling brand in the world.

The world is changing, apparently too fast for Canadian businesses to keep up. New economic powers seem to pop up almost daily, and the fight for smaller and smaller pieces of the economic pie is becoming increasingly fierce. By mid-century, Asia is expected to be home to three of the six largest economies and yet a Canadian presence is virtually imperceptible. If Canadian companies continue their passive ambivalence, Mandel-Campbell warns, we will face a "slow, stealthy slide that will sneak up on us while we snooze."

According to economist Glen Hodgson, Canada's trade and investment share has fallen almost every year since the end of the 1970s. Canada has one of the highest levels of foreign ownership in the developed world, including more than half of its manufacturing base and almost half of the oil, gas and coal-mining industries. While we have huge oil reserves and swaths of forests, we have no big players to compete on the international scene. Mandel-Campbell laments the lack of Canadian global brands. Where, she asks, is Canada's IKEA?

We are seen as a nation of business leaders with slow reflexes who years ago decided to hit the snooze button and roll over. Worse, we are characterized as arrogant in our dealings with developing countries, cheap when it comes to wining and dining potential clients, and crass when it comes to the all-important social aspects of building business.

Government is portrayed as a didactic burden. On one hand, it plays the role of an overprotective parent, shielding Canadian companies from the kind of competition that might turn them into sharper tacks. On the other, politicians are ignorant of the needs of business and incapable of devising a sensible industrial strategy, trade policy or tax regime. Add to that the conflicting barriers imposed by differing levels of government, and Mandel-Campbell outlines the inhospitable environment for Canadian businesses.

I....n a nutshell, Andrea Mandel- Campbell thinks that we're nice but a little lazy. And she believes that we can do much more with our potential. My third-grade teacher couldn't have said it any better. Financial Post

more

© National Post 2007

Links

• Leaving Canada behind
• interview with Michael Enwright
• CBC | mp3 audio
• Google

Thursday, March 1, 2007Can Canada Take China Seriously?

Thursday, March 1, 2007Mr Dion’s Wheat Board Woes
Less than three weeks after winning the Liberal Party leadership Stéphane Dion hopped a plane to Winnipeg to pledge his support for the Canadian Wheat Board. It was the prime ministerial pretender’s first bid to cut a swath between himself and Stephen Harper, whose government has pledged to dismantle the state-sponsored grain marketer, on things non-environmental.
Unfortunately, Dion’s debut in the less familiar terrain of economic policy also marked his first big mistake.