Posted by When was the last time you saw the “Made in Canada” emblem on anything you bought? Think long and hard because sightings of this badge are about as rare as glimpses of Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster. A few weeks ago, I made a quick comparison of Vancouver and Seattle; two cities of similar size and geographical location separated only by an invisible dotted line along the 49th parallel. Think about Seattle and you get Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon, Boeing, and Costco. Think Vancouver and you get… Lululemon. Which brings me to this question raised by someone on the Quora Forum:
Why is there no Canadian global company? I cannot think of any globally known Canadian companies. There is RIM that made Blackberry popular for 1 or 2 years. I saw TD in the corner of Wall Street, but I do not think they operate much else where. Canada might have major resource companies like lumber or sand oil that I am not just aware of, but Canada is a member of G7 after all. With its size of economy and population, shouldn’t there be more Canadian global companies?
Bad grammar aside, it’s a great question. One would expect more from the 10th largest economy in the world with a GDP of US$1.7 trillion. Our 35 million people also occupy over 9 million km2 of land, a huge area second only to Russia in the world. A few hardy souls (I presume all Canadians) took to answering it:
- Small Population. Though Canada is a member of G7 and the world’s second largest country by land area, keep in mind the Canadian population is relatively small. A 33,000 population places Canada at 1/2 that of France, 1/4 of Japan, or a little under California. For a company to go global, you need a solid domestic market to fat up first. Canadian companies find it hard to obtain this critical mass of consumers at home. This limits their potential to become globally competitive companies.
- Socialist economic structure. High taxes on personal earnings, and a good social welfare system, needless to say, are anti-entrepreneurial by nature. Canadians, arguably, are not extremely motivated to work hard.
- Lack of a marketable national heritage. Many successful consumer brands get endorsed by the long-held popular image about their host country. For example,
- Germany is known for reliable machinery (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, etc),
- France is associated with romantic and/or luxurious stuffs (Louis Vuitton, Chanel, etc),
- U.S.A. is famous for its leisure and fun-seeking consuming lifestyle (Coke-Cola, etc.)
- Canada, unfortunately, doesn’t quite have a “unique selling proposition” as a country that can be commercialized.
- Brain-drain to the U.S. makes it worse. Many of Canada’s brightest high school grads go to the U.S. for college education. Only a small portion of them return to Canada for their careers. These ambitious, intelligent, and entrepreneurial people later essentially become part of the American workforce, a big loss for Canada’s employers.
- Canada’s major resource companies are less known to consumers. Canada has a large resource sector, and it does have some well-known resource companies, but since resource companies are not consumer-facing, you may not have heard of them.
- Canada also has a large services sector, but again, many of these companies/organizations are not consumer facing (at least not international consumers). Companies like Bombardier for instance, makes many of the airplanes and subway train cars that you’ve probably been on. SNC Lavalin – one the largest global engineering firms around – probably designed or built something that you’ve seen or been inside of. But most people will not have heard of them.
I admit I copied and pasted the last two arguments (for the sake of making things easier to follow) as they were made by different authors and/or expanded on by others. I will address these factors in order:
First is our small population. True, Canada’s population is the smallest of the G7 and there is likely some truth to the speculation that we are only in the group because the Americans wanted someone by their side when they met with the Europeans and Japanese (the original G6 founded a year earlier in 1975 comprised of America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan). Roughly, Canada’s population is 1/10 the size of the USA, 1/4 Japan and 1/2 of each of the Europeans. The problem is that Sweden, with less than 10 million people (i.e., less than 1/3 of Canada), has Volvo, SAAB, Electrolux, Ericsson, IKEA, H&M, AstraZeneca, Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), Stora Enso, Skype, Spotify… the list goes on. There is probably some merit to the small population argument but it only goes so far.
Second, our socialist economic structure. Also true but then there’s that stupid Sweden example again (see above). Plus, it is hard to make the argument that Canada is more socialist that France or even Germany or Italy or Britain. So yes, but again this reason is not 100% compelling either. Socialism sucks, but it can’t be used to explain the complete failing of Canadian businesses on the global stage. Other even more socialist countries have manage to develop large multinationals with global brand awareness and reach.
Third, lack of marketable national heritage. This is a point that only an academic could bring up as all these examples fall short because the so-called national heritage he cites are both relatively recent (less than 100 years) and are artificial constructs built around something that occurred. Its a chicken or the egg thing. You think Germany got BMW and Mercedes because they had a reputation for machinery or do you think Germany got a reputation for reliable machinery because of the quality work from so many companies like them? I tend to believe the latter, Germany built that reputation because the companies created that image for the country as a whole, not the other way around.
Fourth, brain drain to the USA. This doesn’t apply to just educated doctors, engineers and scientists – it applies to just about everyone including entrepreneurs and entertainers. How many Hollywood actors or singers are Canadian? The answer is a lot, even if many people don’t know it. The simple reason is that not only is the infrastructure (including financing) and critical mass missing in Canada, the culture is lacking. Whether we realize it or not, Canadians are far too egalitarian for our own good. While paying lip service to excellence, our society is based on mediocrity. We do not merely want to level the playing field, we want to equalize the results as well. We do not celebrate greatness, we crush it under our boots every chance we get in the name of propping up the disadvantaged. You can see it even in the way wealthy Canadians act. In America, many uber wealthy businessmen are larger-than-life; celebrities even. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, even Donald Trump are household names. In Canada, our billionaires tend to be reclusive, staying in the shadows, away from the limelight because the rest of the population secretly loathes and hates them – and they know it. So is it any surprise that anyone with intelligence, education, and ambition moves to America? A place that will let them shine as bright as they are capable of instead of trying to drag them down into the morass of mediocrity?
I know this from bitter personal experience. I was made a Managing Director of the Bank of China at the ripe old age of 32; pretty good given I have no connections and couldn’t even speak Mandarin at the time. I retired from investment banking (mostly based out of Hong Kong… yes I’m part of the brain drain) when I was 40. My upbringing in Canada was modest, lower blue-collar middle-class with an immigrant father who fixed trains at CP Rail. My adult life was anything but typical, jet setting around the world multiple times a year in first class making multi-billion dollar deals. Like the Roman Emperor Diocletian, I thought to retire to a simple and less stressful life by coming “home” to Canada. Once at a birthday party for a school friend of one of my daughters, the hostess, whose arrogance and stupidity could only be matched by her weight asked me if I was a genius after I crushed some of her inane liberal thoughts. Technically, I am and I don’t hide the fact. The disdain and scorn in her demeanour and voice when I answered in the affirmative was palpable. Welcome back to Canada, where intelligence and knowledge are characteristics to be scorned, not lauded. How many Canadians have I met who, when finding out I retired at such an early age, tell me I am lucky. Not smart, clever or insightful. Not hard-working. Just lucky. Canadians don’t reach for the stars which, by itself, would be fine. But Canadian culture isn’t content with that; like Icarus being punished by the gods for flying too close to the sun, Canadians strive to pull down those who want to soar until they come crashing back to the ground with everyone else. They don’t realise it, they don’t even think they are doing it, but unconsciously they do it; it’s in our society’s DNA.
Fifth, yes Canada has huge resource companies. The likes of energy giant Suncor or Barrick Gold. They sometimes reach beyond Canada’s borders but most are heavily invested in the domestic industry. But that is kind of the point of this article; Canada’s great competitive advantage on the world stage is as hewers of wood and drawers of water. I’ll be focusing on this in a second but lets finish the list first.
Sixth, Bombardier? Seriously? The same Bombardier that just went cap in hand to the federal government to get a $372.5m loan this month on top of the US$1bn that the Quebec government threw into the pot last year? Lets ignore the Ski-Doo (snowmobiles which Bombardier invented) and rolling stock (trains for mass transit) business for the time being as that’s not what most boosters of Bombardier focus on. It’s the aerospace business or more accurately, the aviation business where Canadair (CRJ), deHavillan (Dash-8), and Learjet (private jets) are its marquee brands. I know a bit about the aviation business having worked on the IPO for AviChina (China’s civil aviation branch for its AVIC group). I remember coaching the CEO how to answer possible questions from fund managers by using practice questions like, “how safe are AviChina’s planes?” He would then ramble on for 10 minutes about the history of AVIC and when they made their first two-engine plane and on and on. I told him that was great but too long. All he has to say is, “we have been manufacturing planes for over 50 years and to date there has never been a single incident resulting in a fatality.”
Essentially the world of civilian plane manufacturing rests on two duopolies. For most large passenger jets (100-500 seats), everyone basically uses either Europe’s Airbus or America’s Boeing. For regional jets (50-100 seats), there has historically been a duopoly between Brazil’s Embraer (E-jets) and Canada’s Bombardier (CRJ). The problem is that Bombardier decided to expand directly into the bottom-end of Airbus’ (A320) and Boeing’s (737) business sphere by developing the CS100 (133 seats) and CS300 (160 seats). In 2016, after 8 years of cost over-runs and delays, Bombardier finally delivered a total of five CS100 and two CS300. The cost of development, delays in bringing the jet to market, and poor initial sales has put Bombardier in a very precarious financial position – hence all the government money to bail it out.
The news gets worse as China is finally starting to produce their own regional jets (ARJ21) as well. Like Boeing, AVIC gets the benefit of government assistance in the form of major military contracts and like Airbus, AVIC gets even more benefits from direct government assistance, support and bank loans. Plus, the domestic Chinese aviation market is the second largest in the world making it a great place to get orders to ramp up production and economies of scale. To top it off, the ARJ21 is a lot cheaper than the CS100; maybe even less than half the price (Bombardier CS100 versus Comac ARJ21-700). Maybe Westerners wouldn’t want to fly on a Chinese made plane but, like we have seen in so many industries like telecoms and rail, a lot of the rest of the world reckons the much cheaper price is worth a little less in the quality department. Even that argument is suspect as Embraer seems to have done a pretty good job of kicking Bombardier’s butt in the regional jet market (Embraer outpaces Bombardier) and you could ask the same question about the quality of Brazilian planes. Plus I haven’t even mentioned the Russians and the Japanese who have also just recently re-entered the world of civil aviation manufacturing (Battle of the regional jets). Sorry to say it but Bombardier is probably doomed regardless of how much money Canadian taxpayers throws into that giant black hole; its just a matter of time.
I guess Canadians still have Lululemon… OK, I’m being a jerk. There are a few others like IMAX, Cirque du Soleil, and Lionsgate Films (even though they moved to Santa Monica, they were founded in Vancouver). But none of these come even close to the likes of Coca-Cola, Apple, Samsung, BMW and Sony.
Which brings me back to my original point about Canada basically being a country full of hewers of wood and drawers of water. Nothing drives Canadians more nuts than to say we are a natural resource based economy. Just say these three words (resource-based economy) to an educated Torontonian liberal elitist and the vitriol of spite that will rain down on you could power the Hoover Dam. We are highly educated and innovative! We are services driven! We have great manufacturing! We have technology! The clichés fly fast and furious if you say Canada is nothing but a giant farm, cutting down trees, pumping oil, and mining minerals, to feed our gigantic industrial behemoth neighbour to the south. Unfortunately it happens to be true for the most part. Monty Python got it completely right in their Lumberjack song – right down to the cross-dressing liberal British Columbian who will decide whether to re-elect their left-wing Liberal government this year or trade-up to an even more socialist NDP government.
Economics is called the dismal science because it is often depressing. It is also because most people, especially trained economists, don’t have the slightest clue what they’re talking about when they comment on the economy. I am not an economist although I did study about the European Union at the Stockholm School of Economics and have written quite a lot about economics – particularly China when I was the Chief Global Strategist at the Bank of China. I would also probably consider myself more a monetarist as I did follow money supply a lot in my role as the head of Asia-Pacific banking research in my previous jobs in investment banking. Its all a lot of bunk in any case.
Take this article in The Economist about the Canadian economy. Once again, I implore the editors in London to sack whoever you are using in Canada as your correspondent as he sucks. Not only is he a liberal Toronto-centric twat (you can tell by how and what he writes… read the article yourself), but he is woefully incompetent in his analysis. This article is dated (it is almost two years old) but to put it into perspective, it is addressing the angst in Canada about faltering economic growth due to the collapse in oil price. It also was written before the election, one that the author’s favourite substitute drama teacher, Trudeau Junior, won. He trundles out the usual canards like “Production of crude oil represents just 3% of Canada’s GDP… Ontario and Quebec, which account for more than half of Canada’s GDP, see less reason to worry. They are home to large manufacturing industries, such as cars and aerospace… Ontario is set to replace Alberta this year as the growth leader.” In other words, suck it Alberta, you had your little petro-bubble and now its time for economic power to return to its rightful home in Toronto and Montreal. He also offers this great graphic:
Oh where to start? Well, first of all, using his own chart, you will notice that Alberta (population 4.1m) contributes almost as much to GDP as Quebec (population 8.1m). Ontario’s economy (population 13.6m) would be expected to be more than three-times bigger than Alberta but it is not even twice as large. British Columbia (population 4.6m) should be larger than Alberta but its economy is only about 70% the size.
As for the fallacy of oil production only accounting for 3%, I’ve seen this argument ad nauseam used by economists elsewhere in the world in different countries. Put it this way, even in Saudi Arabia, petroleum accounts for only 55% of GDP even though they pretty much don’t produce anything else (unless you count sandstorms as product). Here’s a dirty little economics secret… in most developed countries, one industry almost never accounts for a huge proportion of GDP. It’s just mathematically impossible because all the other industries and “services” ranging from healthcare to McDonald’s generates the most “economic activity”. In the United States, the epicenter of most technological revolutions for the world, technology (and that’s a very broad category) accounted for 7.1% of GDP. I don’t think anyone would try to make the argument that technology is not important to the United States economy because it makes up less than 10% of GDP but somehow, when it comes to oil and gas, Canadians (especially in Ontario and Québec), tend to discount its importance. Plus the 3% of GDP number is suspect to begin with as the energy industry as a whole generally accounts for some 7-10% of GDP.
What economists fail to understand is that most service industries are called “tertiary” for a reason. They don’t and can’t exist without the primary and secondary industries being robust. In other words, once a country automates and is efficient enough in its farming to feed its population (and maybe even export a little), the “primary” economy is done; freeing up labour to go flip burgers for the factory workers. In a modern developed economy, agriculture only accounts for a few percent of GDP. We then move on to manufacturing or “secondary” economy which accounts for 20-30% of most developed country’s GDP which seems to be enough to make all the widgets and doo-dahs that people want to buy and use. Everything else is “tertiary” or services. which make up 70-80% of virtually all developed economies. Even within the service categories, there are huge distinctions that don’t show up in the statistics. There is certainly a big difference in high value-added services that are exportable (i.e., Hollywood entertainment, software technology, bio-tech and pharmaceuticals) and low-value added services that just float around the domestic economy (i.e., car washes, burger flipping, trash collecting). Here are the 2016 estimates of GDP breakdown from the CIA World Factbook:
| (% total) | Agriculture | Industry | Services |
| Canada | 1.6 | 27.7 | 70.7 |
| United States | 1.1 | 19.4 | 79.5 |
| United Kingdom | 0.6 | 19.2 | 80.2 |
| Germany | 0.6 | 30.3 | 69.1 |
| France | 1.7 | 19.4 | 78.8 |
| Italy | 2.2 | 23.9 | 73.8 |
| Japan | 1.2 | 27.7 | 71.1 |
| Russia | 4.7 | 33.1 | 62.2 |
| China | 8.6 | 40.7 | 50.7 |
| Cuba | 3.9 | 23.9 | 72.2 |
Of course this is a percentage breakdown, it doesn’t take into account absolute GDP or GDP per capita. Otherwise, you might come to the conclusion that Cuba is not that much different from Canada. You would be very very wrong. But structurally, at first glance, one might also be tempted to say that Canada seems more similar to manufacturing power houses Germany and Japan. One would also be very very wrong if one jumped to that conclusion. One might also be tempted to say who cares about agriculture if its only 1% of GDP, lets return the land to a natural fallow state (this being the age of eco-hippie, tree-hugging, gaia loving liberals) and just import our food. They would also be very very wrong.
Lets get back to bashing that idiotic correspondent for The Economist. Two years ago, he basically said oil wasn’t that important for Canada so the collapse in oil price wasn’t a catastrophe for the economy. Moreover, the decline in the Loonie (Canadian Dollar) due to the drop in oil prices meant that the manufacturing juggernaut that is Ontario (and its trusty French-speaking sidekick Québec ) would save us all by exporting more cars and regional jets to the Americans. Thus completeth the cycle where the soy latte-drinking intellectuals in Toronto regain their rightful place as the center of the Canadian universe having put the redneck beer-swilling simpletons in Calgary back into their box. An exaggeration? This is what our Liberal Prime Minister, Trudeau Junior has to say on the topic (prior to being elected):
“Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda. It doesn’t work.” When asked whether he thought Canada was “better served when there are more Quebecers in charge than Albertans,” Trudeau replied, “I’m a Liberal, so of course I think so, yes. Certainly when we look at the great prime ministers of the 20th century, those that really stood the test of time, they were MPs from Quebec. There was Trudeau, there was Mulroney, there was Chrétien, there was Paul Martin. We have a role. This country, Canada, it belongs to us.” And people wonder why “je déteste” Junior… If he had studied Canadian history instead of drama (I am slightly embarrassed that he is a fellow alumni from McGill) he would know that pretty much all the prime ministers of the 20th century came from Québec because that’s where you needed to win (along with Ontario) to form a majority government. But demographics have changed substantially in the last few decades which means that old faustian pact between Ontario and Québec has eroded substantially. In 1951, the population of Alberta (939,501) and British Columbia (1,165,210) combined was only half that of Québec (4,056,000). Fast forward to today and there are actually more people living in Alberta (4.1m) and British Columbia (4.6m) combined than Québec (8.1m). Add the fact that the economy in Alberta has been the prime driver of the entire country for the past decade and it is not surprising that political power would eventually slowly move westward; much the same as it happened earlier in the United States with the rise of California and Texas.
What is that old saying again? Oh yeah, “after hubris, comes nemesis.” The recently released winter report from the Conference Board of Canada predicts that, “Alberta will lead the country in terms of real GDP growth in 2017… the engines of 2016, British Columbia and Ontario, will lose momentum in 2017″. Ouch, that was the shortest lived structural shift in history. And the Toronto Star (a left-wing publication which is saying a lot in Canada where the media is liberal-biased to begin with) has just released this little gem. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has run out of money so more help for the middle class will have to wait.” Quoting an unnamed Liberal source who is attempting to explain why the government doesn’t have any money, “People forget that when Stephen Harper balanced his budget, he didn’t do it so much through cuts — though he did some of that — but he mostly did it when oil was at $100… We need a bit of luck that we haven’t had yet. More global growth. Oil going up a bit. Something to give us a boost.” Wait a second. I thought the Liberals said that oil was not that important to Canada so screw those rednecks in Alberta but don’t worry, our good friends in Toronto would manufacturer our way out of this problem. Now that Ontario has failed to rise to the challenge (it was doomed to fail given the crappy and expensive labour laws, high price of electricity from ill-conceived green power subsidies, poor productivity… well the list goes on), the Liberals are actually hoping for higher oil prices to save their fiscal butts? Yeah, I guess they miss the $20bn a year Alberta sends to the rest of Canada (mostly Quebec).
Here’s another lesson in economics that most financial reporters tend to screw up. There is merchandise trade (physical goods) and balance of trade (includes services). Canada tends to run a merchandise trade surplus with the United States and a services trade deficit (we watch a lot of Hollywood movies and American TV) resulting in a reasonably balanced total that is sometimes in surplus and sometimes in deficit. As a result, trade is almost never a substantial part of Canada’s GDP because we subtract imports off of exports (the Balance of Trade) when calculating GDP. Clearly this is the wrong way to think about it as trade is hugely beneficial, law of comparative advantage and all that stuff, but that’s how the numbers work. Calculating raw exports as a percentage of GDP also is fraught with danger as liberal reporters from Toronto are fond of quoting that automobiles (US$64.3bn or 16.5% of exports) are Canada’s number one export, not oil (US$62.3bn or 16% of total exports). The problem is Canada exports a lot of auto parts (Magna International) and imports a lot of finished vehicles from America meaning we actually run a US$3.3bn trade deficit in vehicles. Despite the fact that the jerks in Quebec don’t want to build a pipeline for Alberta oil to go east (they’re more than happy to suck voraciously at the federal government’s transfer payment teat though) and thus import their oil from overseas, Canada runs a massive US$37bn trade surplus in oil and gas to the United States. Here are the top 10 NET exports from Canada to the United States in 2016:
- Mineral fuels including oil: US$37 billion (Down by -11.7% since 2009)
- Wood: $10.3 billion (Up by 156%)
- Gems, precious metals: $8.1 billion (Up by 270.1%)
- Oil seeds: $6.3 billion (Up by 53.2%)
- Woodpulp: $5.4 billion (Up by 25.3%)
- Cereals: $4.9 billion (Down by -10.6%)
- Aluminum: $4.5 billion (Up by 11.2%)
- Ores, slag, ash: $3.4 billion (Up by 6.3%)
- Aircraft, spacecraft: $3.3 billion (Down by -19.3%)
- Fertilizers: $3.2 billion (Down by -13.3%)
You have to go way down the list to number nine to find our friends at Bombardier and our good pals in Ontario that were supposed to pick up the slack when oil prices faltered are nowhere to be seen. You will also notice that virtually all of Canada’s top net exports are commodities. This reflects where Canada’s true comparative advantage is – as hewers of wood and drawers of water. That’s why this paper titled “Towards a More Innovative Future” published by Canada’s Public Policy Forum is so unique. Despite its title, it is not about trying to resurrect Nortel or BlackBerry or dump more taxpayers money into Bombardier or some green energy product. It’s about how we can be super-efficient, super-clean, high-tech, value-added, well-educated, hewers of wood and drawers of water. It warms my jaded heart that at least some people in Canada are still honest about who we really are and what we do best.
Before I sign off, there was one more news item that cropped up related to this discussion that was too fun to ignore. It’s about maple syrup of which Canada is the Saudi Arabia of (not surprising since our national symbol and flag is the Maple Leaf – even though there are virtually no freaking Maple Trees west of Southern Ontario). “More than 90 per cent of the record 73 million kilograms of maple syrup made in Canada last year was tapped in Québec… Despite a 30 per cent increase in production over the last decade, Québec’s share of global output has fallen from a high of about 82 per cent in 2003 to nearly 71 per cent last year”.
Now maple syrup tapping (the harvest season, the end of winter just before spring, is almost here) is probably the single most mind numbingly boring activity invented by man – well maybe second most boring after ice-fishing. I was conned into participating in this ubiquitously Québec activity as a mind broadening cultural event when I was a student at McGill University in Montréal in 1992. What do we do to get that great maple syrup for my breakfast pancakes I wondered as we trekked through knee-high snow in the boreal forest. First you take this little tap and bang it into the side of the tree with a mallet. Bang, bang, bang… Then you hang this bucket under the tap to collect the sap that drains out. Drip, drip, drip… Now what? We come back tomorrow and empty the bucket. That’s it? No, we must take the clear sap back to the sugar shack and evaporate the water by boiling it off. Forty litres of watery sap gives us one litre of thick and rich maple syrup… Tabarnac, pass me a bottle of Maudite, s’il vous plaît.
The maple syrup industry is big business, and modern-day sugar shacks don’t waste time collecting the sap in buckets. They have huge zip-line like tubes and pipes running through the forest to centralise their tapping efforts. Strangely, they have no qualms about running all these pipes through pristine forests but one pipeline for Alberta oil… yes, I’m being sarcastic and also I digress. Maple syrup is a big business, accounting for almost half a billion dollars in sales last year. Québec wants to add 5 million taps over the next two years on top of the 43 million taps already operational to meet strong demand from urban hipsters who want pure and natural maple syrup on their Belgian waffles and not the caramel-coloured high-glucose corn syrup pancake syrup sold in supermarkets. And they’re willing to pay a premium for it.
But Québec is slowly losing its battle against the Americans in Vermont and New York that are ratcheting up production to meet this new demand. “The problem, some say, lies with the tight grip that the Québec Maple Syrup Federation has over the province’s maple syrup producers. The group sets quotas and prices that Québec sugar shacks have to abide by, requires they sell to authorized buyers and pay an administrative fee on their output”. In other words, the French, even in Québec, love their dirigiste government control over everything, even maple syrup pricing and production. And even though the American producers are starting to eat their “déjeuner” (in Québec they don’t add “petite” in front to denote breakfast unlike in France), they are rigidly standing by their corrupt state-sanctioned monopoly that is slowly strangling their own industry to death. The Maple Syrup Federation doesn’t seem to be terribly different from the Canadian Wheat Board which was a monopsony on all wheat produced in the Prairie Provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) from 1935 to its eventual dismantling in 2012 after decades of pressure and lobbying. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the Québec government to remove the Maple Syrup Federation’s dictatorial power over the maple syrup industry any time soon… because it is an institution that’s so typically Canadian.