Canada is exporting growing amounts of raw materials to China but shipments of value-added manufactured goods are actually shrinking, a new report from Statistics Canada says. The story in the Toronto Star March 15 included comments by Allan Middleton, marketing professor at the Schulich School of Business at York. Canada’s inability to cash in on China’s breakneck expansion is nothing short of disastrous, said Middleton. “We are losing share, even in raw materials.”
“Canada’s eternal problem is that we have not substantially shifted to added value in any of our export relations,” Middleton said, citing Ontario’s auto sector as the one exception. “We are not only missing an opportunity for revenue now, we are missing an opportunity for being in on the ground floor of an ongoing development of an economy.” Middleton travelled to China five times last year in his role as head of Schulich’s executive-training business there. Of all the big Canadian manufacturers, Nortel Networks Corp. is the lone standout in China, he said. As for services, insurance giant Manulife Financial Corp. is aggressive in China. “It’s only just in the last two or three years that the Canadian banks have woken up to China. And they are only going in a way that is…very timid,” Middleton said.
Student hopes ‘to keep more teens alive’ with help of York playwright
Lee Martin, a 15-year-old Barrie youth who tried to kill herself at age 11, has been awarded $1,000 to develop a play to combat teen suicide, reported The Barrie Examiner March 11. Organized through the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario’s Provincial Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health. Martin was awarded $1,000 for the project – it goes beyond a play – and a trip to Ottawa to speak to other teens. Part of the money will help hire a playwright, a York University student, to work with Martin to develop the script.
On air
- Shamini Selvaratnam, vice-president of the York Fedration of Students, and Rob Tiffin, York’s vice-president students, spoke about tuition fees on OMNI-TV News March 14 while several Toronto radio stations reported the student protest held at York that day.
- Ashwin Joshi, marketing professor at the Schulich School of Business, spoke on OMNI-TV March 14 about a program by the Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce to help young entrepreneurs.
- Veronique Tomaszewski Ramses
, contract faculty member in the Department of Sociology, Glendon, discussed the different visual representations of the Dalai Lama in the West, notably in the media, on French-language Radio-Canada’s Première radio channel, in Toronto March 6.
- Norma Sue Fisher-Stitt, dance professor in York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, joined CIUT Radio’s Evi-dance contributor Samara Thompson March 12 to talk about The Accolade Project and the Fine Arts Festival.