The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Canada is a stable, predictable country where “some of the rules are tough, but you know what they are,” and Brazilian companies will find it astoundingly easy to set up shop here, an audience of business leaders heard in Rio de Janeiro this week. That ringing endorsement came from no less an authority than Luciano Siani, chief financial officer of Vale SA, which has the highest-profile Brazilian investment in Canada.
Mr. Siani described his company’s move to set up potash operations in Saskatchewan in 2009: “We were promptly welcomed by a central agency of the government that provided us in a few months with a contract for gas, water, energy – there was no difficulty whatsoever to get all of the logistics for the project. And these are things that would have taken several years here in Brazil … it would be a nightmare.”
Mr. Siani made this unexpected plug for Canada at an event organized by the Canadian consulate in Rio, which brought BMO Financial Group vice-chairperson Kevin Lynch to town to talk up Canada as its “investment champion.” Canada’s trade with Brazil is currently $6-billion a year. That’s up 25 per cent from where it was five years ago, but it is still only the equivalent of four days of Canada-U.S. trade, Mr. Lynch noted.
His presentation was affably low-key (“Canada: at the intersection of stability and growth”), but could have been alternatively titled “Why Canada is better than the United States.” He presented a blizzard of pie charts showing Canada’s lower corporate taxes, stronger banking system, lower debt, better-educated work force and an array of other favourables compared to the United States – intended to persuade the Brazilians to look past the country that dominates their thinking about North America.
Mr. Lynch met business leaders in Sao Paulo earlier in the week, where, he said, he realized how much more promotion Canada must do here. “It’s not that they don’t think much of Canada – it’s that they don’t think about it at all,” he said.
His observation was echoed by one of the men who came to hear him speak: Cesar Prata runs a large marine pump business in Sao Paulo, serving the offshore oil and gas industry; he also chairs the 6,000-member Brazilian machinery association.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/business-leaders-plug-canada-to-brazilian-companies/article17620621/#dashboard/follows/