[LINK] "The art of investing dangerously"

Report on Business Magazine features in its latest issue an article by Doug Steiner, "The art of investing dangerously", that explores the difficulties of doing business in Haiti. The country as a whole, the article argues, is caught in a bitter economic catch-22, with the influx of tourists and business investments needed to revitalize the Haitian economy depending on the establishment of the needed security which in turn depends on the establishment of a prosperous Haitian economy, et cetera. Some businesses can thrive in particular niches, still, such as Canada's Scotiabank.

The bank now operates four branches in Port-au-Prince and two bank mach-ines. The branches were closed during Carnival, which is basically a week of national holidays, but just walking around the exterior of one of them was intriguing. It looked the same as suburban Scotiabank branches in Canada: red signs outside, grey countertops inside, and a drive-through.

But a small building out back housed diesel-powered emergency generators and dozens of batteries. Stuck to the window of the main door, in addition to a sign with hours of business, was another with an outline of a handgun with an X through it. Back in Toronto, Scotiabank CEO Rick Waugh later told me that checking guns at the door is indeed a service provided by the bank in many countries.

The branch was also by far the tidiest building in the neighbourhood, and we only had to drive down the street for a few minutes to see how impoverished the retail customer base can be in Port-au-Prince. We arrived at a dusty open-air market with dozens of stalls that were no more than bits of cloth or plastic held up with tall sticks. A dozen ragged-looking cows were tethered near a refuse pile. As traffic roared past, a dog drank out of an open sewer across the road.

Any talk of cash in Haiti also brings up the question of drugs, corruption and money laundering. Charles is firm and polite, but short on details. "There are a lot of clichés about this country," he said. He and other bank executives also note that the operations in Haiti have to conform to Scotiabank's corporate rules on cash transactions, as well as Canadian law and international standards. Charles is also chair of a Haitian commission on money laundering.

The more familiar and immediate risk for Charles is personal safety—his own and that of his 79 employees. Two of them have been kidnapped. Both were returned safely after their families paid ransoms, and they are still working for the bank. Charles has two armed guards around the clock at his family's own elegant three-storey house in the hills. However, the only robbery of a Scotiabank branch in Haiti that anyone recalls was 30 years ago. In Canada, on average, one Big Six bank is robbed every day.

Are the risks in Haiti worth it? And would the bank ever leave? These are questions for Waugh and Rob Pitfield, Scotiabank's executive vice-president of international banking back in Toronto. They point out that Scotiabank has been active in the Caribbean for more than 120 years, and now operates in 25 countries in Central and South America. "We're an international bank that happens to have its head office in Canada," said Waugh.

Sure, Haiti and other developing countries look daunting, said Pitfield, but "people manage these issues." A global bank needs a broad mindset. "Canadians are somewhat insular and not aware of the countries out there with wonderful people trying to get what we have," he added. "It's taught the bank to be open to ideas and to be tolerant."

Without any available capital and a skilled workforce that's concentrated in the Haitian diaspora, Steiner argues, one of the only things Haiti can work with is the very low wages paid out to the workforce. This particular comparative advantage does little to address Haiti's unerlying issues.

[LINK] "The big stuff gets away from PM"

Veteran Canadian politics journalist Susan Delacourt has a new article, "The big stuff gets away from PM", that might explain why there have been so many interesting press scandals surrounding the Conservative govenrment of Prime Minister Stephen Harper lately.

It has been a bad week for a government that prides itself on secrecy and communications control.

A cabinet minister has been dumped because he left secret, internationally sensitive documents at an ex-girlfriend's house.

Yesterday, in the midst of an official European tour, there was a mad scramble aboard Prime Minister Stephen Harper's plane to reverse yet another "misspeaking" incident from a communications official – this one, revolving around what Canada and Italy had agreed upon in regard to troop commitments in Afghanistan.

And one week ago today, a report was issued on the way Canada got embroiled in the Democratic presidential race in the United States. The report, and subsequent revelations in the Star this week, have painted a picture of this government, at its top levels, being reckless in the handling of information in a way that could seriously harm future relations with a potential U.S. president.

Taken all together, these incidents point to what seems to be a glaring irony surrounding the Harper government and its communications strategy. To wit: this capital is locked down tight when it comes to small, domestic, even trivial minutiae. But on the big important stuff, the kind of information that could affect Canada's relations with the world, people have seen a side of the Harper communications-management machine this week that appears to be a little loose, if not chaotic.

The danger of the fallout from the past bad week is that it will reinforce and strengthen the tight-fisted approach, while doing nothing to fix the ham-fistedness.

A more complicated reading of this week's communications disasters might show, in fact, that the pressure cooker of Harper's message control is starting to show signs of wear and leakage – that one can only keep the lid on information so long in government before the effort explodes in strange and unexpected ways.

For anyone interested in Canadian politics, this article's exploration of a major element in the current federal government's self-representation makes it worthy reading.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] West Norden in action?

Björk's performance of "Declare Independence" got her in trouble twice, when she called for a Kosovo in a Tokyo performance and more famously supported a free Tibet in a Shanghai concert. None of that comes out when you watch the video, which features Björk wearing decals of the flags of Greenland and the Faroes on either shoulder of her jumpsuit. Might that have been, as one commentator suggested, West Nordic solidarity in action?

First, an explanation. The term "West Norden" when applied to the North Atlantic region seems to have first referred to divisions within continental Norden, between an East Norden consisting of Sweden-Finland and a West Norden centered on Denmark-Norway but also including Schleswig-Holstein and the various North Atlantic holdings. Perhaps as a result of the continentalist thinking behind projects like Nordek and, later, the European Union, continental Norden might now be thought of as a whole, leaving "West Norden" to the three Nordic islands and island groups of the North Atlantic (from west to east, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes), in the early 20th century all under Danish rule.

These three all have many points in common. All were initially settled, in the 10th and 11th centuries or so, by Norse migrants mixed with Celts, Greenland's Norse population famously becoming extinct and replaced by Inuit migrants. All three territories became relatively weak and fell under the jurisdiction of the Norwegian Crown, which in turn became weak and fell under Danish domination. When Norway suddenly switched from rule under Copenhagen to federation with Sweden, Norway's former North Atlantic possessions remained under Danish rule. Iceland and the Faroes experienced national renaissances late in the 19th century, reviving local cultural forms and languages and translating this into a desire for political self-government. The German occupation of continental Denmark in the Second World War and the use of Denmark's North Atlantic territories by the Anglo-Americans destabilized Danish rule. Self-governing Iceland gained independence in 1944. It would have been followed by the Faroes which voted for independence by a slim majority in 1946 but this was overturned by the Danish government and instead a home rule agreement was established. Greenland, with its Inuit population, followed a different trajectory, in 1953 being absorbed fully into Denmark and then in 1978 being constituted as a self-governing entity so powerful that it could secede from the European Union.

What's so fascinating about the former Danish North Atlantic to me, apart from the fact that it's relatively close to Atlantic Canada, is the extent to which cooperation between the region's sovereign and semi-sovereign governments seem to be growing. Iceland's notable success might be a model. In the informative and well-designed if occasionally terribly superficial Monocle, articles have appeared speculating as to whether or not Nuuk is going to becoming the next Reykjavik and promoting the Faroes ("THE FUNKY FAROES," the line on the masthead said, "WHALE AND GAY BASHING ARE OUT OF FASHION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC"). As Ívar Jónsson's 1995 West-Nordic Countries in Crisis argues convincingly, these three territories are forced to use their strong dependency on natural resources in such a way as to ensure their high living standards, a task made all the more difficult by--as this May 2003 Nordic Council report argues--their relatively marginal positions in the world, in terms of their geography and their climate. It would make good sense for these three governments to share best practice, especially as climate change shakes things up.

That seems to be what's happening. For starters, there is a West Nordic Council and a West Nordic Council interparliamentary bloc. More, there have been suggestions that these governments are interesting in discussing the exchange of consulates and the establishment of regional free trade. I was rather surprised to find out about the 2005 Hoyvik Agreement, which set up free trade between Iceland and the Faroes, promoting the free movement of goods (and services and people and capital ...) across their borders and institutionalizing inter-governmental cooperation.

This may well not come to much. Björk might be in favour of independent Greenlandic and Faroese states, and the Greenlanders and Faroese might want to emulate Iceland's success, and the shared history and possible futures of the islands might encourage cooperation, but it might well not. Competition might be as likely an outcome as cooperation, and the European Union might ultimately swallow the entire region up. If nothing else, it's a trend worth keeping an eye on.

("Will Reykjavik become the capital of a Greater Iceland? Stay tuned!")

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