Evidence of meeting #16 for Foreign Affairs and International Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was haiti.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:50 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
No, they rebuilt workshops on the recommendation of that artisan association. Brandaid didn't determine which workshops would be rebuilt; the community did.
9:50 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
We didn't need CIDA. We thought that Brandaid Project was a very successful model. We believe in it, so we wrote a project proposal and submitted it to CIDA, because we were recommending that the Canadian government support the launch of brands for all the reasons I've cited. CIDA then got back to us and said, “Well, this isn't Canada's focus in Haiti. Our focus is professionalization of the police and judicial reform”. But when the earthquake hit and Brandaid Project got Macy's involved, we ended up on the front page of The Globe and Mail. The Government of Canada contacted us and said, “It's a good idea after all. We want to do this”.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:50 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
That's through Collections under Brandaid Project as a company.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
As my colleague, Dominic, mentioned, we all raised our eyebrows at the 90% interest rate, and so on. How do you feel, as Brandaid Collections, about those exorbitant numbers? To us, it seemed like a lot of money that people were paying in interest charges.
Does your group have a view on that?
9:50 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
Yes, I have a view on it. I think it's outrageous. That's something that started Muhammad Yunus in a certain.... Microfinance began as an action study at a university in Bangladesh. It ended up with 700,000 women depositors owning the bank. I think that's tremendous success. But, of course, this demonstrated to the private banking sector globally how lucrative this area can be. You can't regulate every moneylender in the world.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
It's listed here that you're the co-founder of Brandaid. Who is the other founder?
9:50 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
It is Tony Pigott, president of J. Walter Thompson, JWT.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you.
We're going to move to our next round.
We'll go to Mr. Dechert, for five minutes.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for appearing today. I think each of your organizations is doing some very interesting work.
I'd like to pose a couple of questions to Mr. Brohman.
I think we've all travelled to developing countries. We've gone there with the perception that there probably wouldn't be much of great quality or value in the products being produced in those nations. Then you get there on the ground and see that they have some pretty interesting, high-quality products, especially artisan products. But we don't know about these things in the west.
One of the things that's always struck me is that there's a perception in more developed countries that nothing that comes from Haiti or certain countries in Africa could be of very good quality. Therefore, you don't even bother to look at the products from those countries. How does your organization help build a perception of the quality of products coming from those regions of the world, and how important is that in your business?
9:50 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
That's a great question. It's music to my ears, because that's really what we're interested in doing. We're really committed to that.
I'll tell a little story about where I've been. I've been to London talking to Selfridges. Selfridges, for anyone who doesn't know—and you can go to its website—bills itself as the coolest department store in the world. And it certainly is. It's an amazing place. As well as selling products, they have in-store events designed to draw people into the store, to collect media attention, and be involved with the culture. They're looking for things, new ideas, for this.
We presented something to them called Voodoo Nouveau, New Voodoo. They said yes, to make a long story short. Voodoo Nouveau really speaks to what you're asking about, the problem of country brands and the impact this has, if they're negative, on the economy of a country.
I first went to Haiti in 1977. I was young and looking for adventure, and it was the scariest place on earth. I wanted to go there to see what was so scary, and I certainly found out. I saw over the subsequent 25 years how that scary reputation completely frightened everybody away from investing in Haiti, and from even going there for a holiday. That impact isolated the people, the culture, and the country. Obviously, it didn't bring any dollars into the country for people. It just contributed to an ever-declining economy and extreme poverty. Haiti got poorer over the last 25 years because of this.
Changing Haiti's brand is something Brandaid Project has really cut its teeth on. I think it has culminated in identifying what the real problem is. It's voodoo. Thanks to Hollywood's demonization program, which has been going on for decades, people think of voodoo as.... Well, we know what people think of voodoo. Voodoo, in fact, is the heart and soul of a people. It's an incredibly courageous religious tradition. In the 20th century, Haiti was occupied twice. During both of those occupations, voodoo was outlawed. It was against the law to dance or beat drums. Temples were razed, and sacred artifacts were burned. Finally, President Aristide, whatever you may think of him, created voodoo as the national religion of Haiti, by presidential decree, and all Haitians breathed a sigh of relief, because they no longer felt ashamed of this great spiritual tradition.
To take that brand problem head on and try to do something about it in an economic context is really the very exciting program we're going to launch with Selfridges during design week in London, England next September.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Do you actually advise these small artisan entrepreneurs on the design of their products, the construction and quality of their products?
9:55 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
Yes, thank you. Getting things to market includes design. Design is a huge component.
9:55 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
Packaging, but especially design.... With the CIDA project we, of course, are working with Patty Johnson, who's an internationally known Canadian industrial designer. She is designing completely new products using traditional skill sets. A modern designer comes into these environments and in a collaborative effort with artisans with ancient skills and ancient cultural traditions, they channel the combination. When modern market design meets that, the results are very exciting and you get new and very good products. So we've taken their production to a new level with a new price point and new expectations.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
Do you feel that you're creating a class of entrepreneurs in a country like Haiti? At what point do you think your organization can step back and let them go on their own?
9:55 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
Artisans are not marketers, and we've learned this the hard way despite the best expectations. So what I think is suggested by your question is that there's room for a new section, a new vocation, and new job creation of micro-marketers who service the needs of micro-producers and micro-entrepreneurs and micro-enterprise. In the day of Internet e-commerce and globalization that we live in now, I think this can work very well. We're training these kinds of people in a pilot process, and I think that by the end of the CIDA project, which runs out in early 2013, we will have created a new kind of occupation called micro-marketers, who know how to market products on the web and how to work with small producers. Artisans are artists; they're not marketers.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Thank you.
Just for clarification, before I move back to Ms. Sims, is the CIDA project then helping in this fashion? What exactly are the CIDA project outcomes, or what are they hoping to do?
9:55 a.m.
President and Co-Founder, Brandaid Project
There are formal, tangible outcomes in terms of export value. There's a figure that we need to sell this many products. Also, CIDA tells us time and again that they're very concerned about intangible benefits, about things that may not directly contribute to the export value, such as the seminars that we designed. We have designed three seminars through 2012, where people from JWT Montréal, professional marketers, the best in the world, will travel to Haiti, and artisan organizations in Haiti, Femmes en Democratie, and the like, will convene artisan-sector representatives and we're going to take on branding, micro-marketing, and all of that area.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
So part of what CIDA is doing is to help these people build capacity, whether it's through marketing, etc., finding a...?