My meeting was in the heart of Mississauga, Toronto's largest suburb. It was a cold early morning as my business partner and I traveled along the highway, the mist of Lake Ontario hovered over the water like smoke from an immense fire. We were going against the rush-hour traffic; on the other side of the highway, cars were at a standstill like a river choked with chunks of ice waiting to explode and flood. I rarely leave the downtown core where I rely on the TTC to get me from appointment to appointment. I am still in awe of the Great Commute that people endure everyday.
I am a part-time copywriter, and this meeting was to help a manufacturing company develop a new website and marketing plan to promote their products. I was going to spin their medical products into something more, something better. That's what we do.
We arrived at the factory, deep inside an industrial park where nameless industries manufacture widgets from behind facades of glass and steel: row upon row of boxes on manicured streets. We took off our coats and shook hands with the executives. They sat us down in the boardroom and provided a jug of coffee and Styrofoam cups on a tray. We started to talk business.
"We want to be known as the number one manufacturer of ________ supplies," said the president.
"Ok," I said, waiting for more input.
"And, I think we can say we are the world's biggest."
The president of the company started to talk about the advantages of doing business with them; I took notes as he talked: they were close to the US for easy transport, they were able to customize their products, they were ISO9000 approved, they had advanced technology, and they produced 24 million ________ a year.
As he talked, I was truly being convinced that this company was great. They even let me play with some of their products (they are squishy).
Then he continued with his pitch.
"I was recently in China, and the advantages we have over The China's is that we actually live by our standards -- we don't just buy a certification for ten thousand bucks," he said. "When our clients come to us instead of, lets say, the Chinas, they don’t have to pay cash up front, they can be sure of our quality. The Chinas aren't always up to snuff. And our products don't have to come over by container in 8-10 weeks. So we even have an edge there."
...The Chinas... The Chinas... The Chinas
That phrase stayed in my mind as he continued to talk. Last week, Prime Minister Paul Martin was in China on a desperate trade mission: he signed several new trade agreements that will further open our borders to their imports. That is, their cheap imports. After years of ambiguous and clumsy policies, Martin wants to boost our dependence on their labour force. With every new integration treaty, the barriers will drop. Soon, The Chinas will be able to trump any Canadian manufacturer based on price, and eventually, on comparable quality. They are already our 2nd largest trading partner. If the Pacific Ocean was not in the way, they would likely beat the US to be #1.
When China becomes #1, that means our #1 manufacturers will play role #2 to consumers... and eventually it will be out of the numbers game entirely.
I continued to sit in the boardroom as he talked. I pictured a similar board meeting in the future in this very same room. But in that meeting the president announces that he is moving to china, or closing up permanently.
Then I thought: if The Chinas close this company -- and every similar company -- there will be many new vacant lots in this industral park.
And no more rush hours.
