ARTICLE - CANADIAN COMPANIES IN HAITI

CANADIAN COMPANIES IN HAITI, BEFORE AND AFTER THE QUAKE
(Globe and Mail) - Written by Tavia Grant; Produced by Claire Neary

More than a half-dozen Canadian businesses were operating in Haiti before the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. All have maintained their operations over the past rocky year, and some want to expand. Bank of Nova Scotia has four branches there, Air Canada makes weekly flights to the capital, Port-au-Prince, and Gildan Activewear Inc. has relationships there with T-shirt-making suppliers.

Other Canadian business people and companies have entered the country more recently to assist with humanitarian efforts. Here's a look at a few of the challenges and successes experienced by some of the companies over the past year.

S.M. Group International Inc.
The Montreal-based engineering firm has had a presence in Haiti for two decades. When the quake hit, it had two projects under way: building a naval base, so local police boats could patrol the coast, and constructing a water reservoir near the border with Dominican Republic. Both projects were largely untouched by the disaster.

Tragedy struck its staff, however. Vice-president of business development Serge Marcil, a former Liberal MP, was among the 200 people who died in the collapse of the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince. He had arrived just two hours before the quake.

Operations were put on hold for several months while the company planned its next steps. Work on both projects has resumed, but the reconstruction process as a whole is much slower than it anticipated. SM International would like to boost its presence in Haiti, by working on water treatment systems, road construction or electricity distribution. But progress has slowed to a crawl.

“We are basically waiting for reconstruction. We all thought it would move forward much faster than it did. But we’ve been in waiting mode since April,” says Jean-Simon Venne, Central America project manager, who blames the freeze on a lack of leadership in government, and political instability. “Every time I go back there, I’m amazed that nothing has been done, really, except for maintaining the camps. It’s stunning – it’s in the same state as 10 months ago.”

The money is there, and companies are ready to move as soon as Haiti’s leaders give the go-ahead, Mr. Venne says. Reconstruction plans are comprehensive and solid, he says, and could transform Haiti’s economy in the next decade. But so far, “we keep waiting,” he adds. “It’s unfortunate, because when you walk around and see the people you think, ‘Wow, we could do so much.’ But nothing is really happening.”

Somine SA
Bronchitis saved Jacqueline Monfourny’s life last year. A bad bout forced the mining company’s president to cancel her trip from Quebec to Port-au-Prince. On Jan. 12, Somine’s office headquarters collapsed. Her manager was buried in the rubble and died. Today, that office – like the rest of the city – looks much as it did one year ago.

But many other things have changed over the past year. Her Haitian employees will no longer venture into two- or three-storey buildings, preferring to stay on ground floors and close to the exits in the company’s rented space. No one works late because they don’t want to be out after dark. Traffic wreaks havoc with travel times. “There is still a feeling of fear,” she says.

Ms. Monfourny hasn’t given up. Somine will start production at its site in the northeastern part of Haiti this year. And plans have shifted. While mining for gold, her firm will now also remove aggregate from the site, which can be used to make concrete to be used in reconstruction efforts.
“It’s been very, very hard sometimes. We all hope that 2011 will be better. It certainly cannot be worse,” she says.

Getinge Canada
Calgary-based Dave Gardner had never been to Haiti before last February. But when his company donated a sterilizer for medical instruments along with a disinfecting device, worth $50,000 each, the service representative volunteered to help install them. He wound up making five visits to Haiti, partly on company time and partly using his vacation, because nothing went as planned.

Sterilizing equipment is a simple way to save lives and prevent infection. But the former marine engineer had to use all his ingenuity for work-arounds even before installing the equipment. No water lines? Take a hammer and chip through concrete. Rats gnawing at the pipes? Seal the holes when the pipes are through. No hardware store to get extra parts? Traverse the city in search of something that comes close.

Along the way, he was jolted by electric shocks, warned off jogging and – the toughest moment of all – found a dead baby in a bucket of rags. Still, he kept returning to see the job through. He vows to use part of his vacation time each year to return to maintain the equipment.

“What we’re doing there is very important and I want to see it through,” Mr. Gardner says. “I want to see the time and money we’ve invested into it really makes a difference for them, because people die there from sepsis and things like that strictly because they don’t have the sterilization disinfection standards that we have in Canada.”

Laprise Group
Laprise is supplying 7,500 temporary shelters to the Canadian Red Cross for Haiti, its first foray into the country. The Montmagny, Que.-based company is now producing one unit every five minutes out of its nearby plant, where the project has created 60 jobs.

The wood-framed shelters are specially designed to withstand Category 4 hurricanes, and winds of up to 240 kilometres an hour. They are termite-resistant, durable in moist environments and easy to install.

Martin Rodrigue, Laprise’s international sales development director, says the company had the technical capability to produce the shelters, but ramping up quickly was a challenge, as was finding enough wood.

“Such a project involves a tremendous amount of wood – thousands of truckloads. As much as possible we sourced within Canada, from sustainably managed forests,” he says.

“It was a challenge, but everyone, even competitors, worked hand in hand.”

It is a for-profit project, although Mr. Rodrigue says Laprise brought down its margins as much as it could.

The company would now like to do more work with non-governmental organizations in other countries and hopes the 60 temporary jobs will become permanent.

The wood-framed shelters are specially designed to withstand Category 4 hurricanes, and winds of up to 240 kilometres an hour.

They are termite-resistant, durable in moist environments and easy to install.

Gildan Activewear
Few Canadian companies are as tied to Haiti as Montreal-based Gildan. The apparel maker has 5,700 indirect employees in the country who sew T-shirts. On Jan. 12, 2010, 67 workers died in the collapse of a plant occupied by one of Gildan’s suppliers. Elsewhere, every employee was affected by the quake, directly or indirectly, losing family members, friends or homes.

Much of Gildan’s initial energy was concentrated on relief – making donations, shipping food, diapers and tents. Sending materials by truck from the border with the Dominican Republic was “very challenging” because of poor road conditions, says Rick Petersen, Gildan’s executive vice-president, corporate citizenship.

Efforts then shifted to rebuilding the damaged plant. Its supplier, Palm Apparel, now has 900 people back at work, and plans to return to its pre-earthquake staffing levels of 1,500 within the next few months. Working conditions and low wages in Haiti’s textile plants have often come under fire, but Gildan says its workers are paid three times the minimum wage.

“People want to be working, and have as normal a life as possible. Having a place to go during the day and a way to make a living has been really important,” Mr. Petersen says.

Gildan Activewear distributed 26,000 boxes of food and 1,300 tents to its employees and those of its sub-contractors in Haiti after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake. — Gildan

Haiti is an important part of our supply chain and it will remain so. — Rick Petersen, Gildan’s executive vice-president, corporate citizenship

Bank of Nova Scotia
Bank of Nova Scotia has four branches in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area and was able to reopen them within 10 days of the quake. Its first steps were to help its staff. A day after the disaster, it met with the country’s central bank to discuss how to get the banking system back up.

The scale of the wreckage was such that arch-competitors worked together – Citibank, whose branches were destroyed, shared Scotiabank’s premises for six months.

Maxime Charles, Scotiabank’s country manager for Haiti, who is also president of the professional banks association, worked with others to ensure word got out – by radio – that banks weren’t experiencing liquidity problems and that customers’ money was safe. He also worked with groups such as the World Bank to establish support funds for banks as loan delinquency rates rose.

He has hosted three trade missions from Canada over the past year – with investors from the tourism, mining, food and construction industries – and he hopes foreign direct investment will flow once Haiti’s elections are over.

In November, Scotiabank and a partner launched a new mobile-phone banking project, the first of its kind. Many more Haitians have phones than bank accounts, so Mr. Charles hopes mobile banking will make it easier to deposit paycheques and transfer money. “It’s about financial inclusion, and helping people save money for future needs,” he said in an interview from his office in Pétionville.

It’s about financial inclusion, and helping people save money for future needs. — Maxime Charles, Scotiabank’s country manager for Haiti

Desjardins Group
A year after the earthquake, Montreal-based Desjardins Group is bolstering Haiti’s credit union network.

“My hopes for this year: Restart the economy. Restart the agriculture, restart the business and entrepreneurship, so people can go back to some kind of work, and try to get back their life. But it’s going to be a long process,” said Pierre Turcotte, Desjardins’ project director in Haiti, who spent the past two years living there to support the development of caisse populaires.

He and his wife were in their apartment Port-au-Prince suburb last Jan. 12 just before 5 p.m.

For 35 seconds, the earth shook. Dishes fell from the cupboards, bottles broke, a huge cloud of black dust rose. Then – the sound of screams and crying on the streets.

The couple were uninjured. But six Desjardins employees died and scores of others lost family, friends, cars and homes. Operations at the credit unions were largely restarted in the ensuing days – but to date, no permanent solutions have been found.

Mr. Turcotte rattles off the problems: Eight of the financial network’s 50 buildings were badly hit. Some operations are squeezed in with other branches. Internet access and electricity is intermittent. Branches have no idea how many of their members died, or whether they have left the city. Many accounts are dormant; relatives would like access to them, but they need to prove their loved ones have died or, if identification and death certificates are lacking, have another caisse member vouch for the customer.

Solvency is another issue. The branches had about $7-million in loans outstanding at the time of the quake. Asking customers to repay them, when they’ve lost everything, is tough. Many loans will never be recovered, and new lending has been slow to resume because it’s hard to assess a borrower’s ability to repay. To alleviate the problem, Mr. Turcotte and others have created a $1.2-million fund (from charitable donations) to help cushion the affected branches.

Some microlending has resumed. Demand will likely balloon this year as the political situation stabilizes and reconstruction ramps up, said Mr. Turcotte, who expects demand for financial services will outstrip supply. “My hope rests with the small entrepreneurs.”