Non, pas Black mais Yakabusky ! Il a souvent la plume acérée, le commentaire juste. Encore ce matin, sur la question de la fusion des bourses de Montréal et Toronto, il ne mâche pas ses mots : Montreal can kiss its exchange goodby. C’est raffraichissant d’entendre quelqu’un dire clairement les choses, sans tenter de ménager les susceptibilités, les rêves, la chèvre, le chou… Raffraichissant mais pas nécessairement drôle ! Si la logique économique transcende les différences culturelles (parce que nous voulons que nos investissements et nos pensions rapportent le maximum), amenant l’inexorable concentration des centres de décisions… il nous reste quoi ? Le quartier des spectacles ? On se met tous à danser la claquette !

Sur un autre sujet, le même journaliste du G&M, traçais récemment un portrait très intéressant : le poids des Finlandais dans le monde des forestières et papetières. Comparant le dossier canadien à celui de cette petite nation innovatrice, il mettait en lumière certaines pratiques qui permettent à ce petit pays se tailler une place disproportionnée dans ce marché : investissements et recherche; coopératives dans le domaine de la gestion forestière; concertation nationale des efforts…

But our forest companies have frittered away every competitive advantage they once enjoyed—mostly, it seems, out of laziness. (…) Canada’s forest industry, once the envy of the world, is now a laughingstock.

(…) The average Canadian pulp mill has a capacity of about 200,000 tonnes; our newsprint mills average 280,000 tonnes. Compare that with the one million-tonne Finnish-owned mills that are either already operating or are being built in Latin America.

(…) Metso, one of only three large-scale manufacturers of paper­­making machines left in the world, is also based in Finland. Canada has no paper machine makers. The world’s biggest man­ufacturer of the chemicals used in papermaking, Kemira, is also Finnish. Canadian-based chemical makers? None.

(…) They drew on their so-called small-country advantage—characterized by a homogeneous, highly educated population with a unique language (practically unlearnable, for a foreigner) and culture—and took their place in a rapidly globalizing market.

(…) Technically speaking, Canadians own their woods, too, but through their provincial and federal governments, which possess 93% of this country’s forests. (…) In Finland, however, almost 60% of forest land is owned by about 400,000 families. Their plots are small, averaging about 35 hectares, compared to the hundreds of thousands of hectares typically covered by a single forest tenure licence in this country.

Finalement, peut-être qu’il y aurait autre chose que la claquette ?

Profitez-en pendant que l’article est encore accessible…