CANDIAC, Que. – The building designated to house Canada’s largest pasta-making plant stands empty and forlorn.
Behind a Finepasta Inc. sign, it sits in a suburb south of Montreal, remarkable only for the behind-the-scenes political controversy it has stirred and the growing possibility it will never produce one strand of spaghetti or one morsel of elbow macaroni.
For Canada’s pasta industry, the building is a festering symbol of inappropriate government interference in business decisions.
If developed, the plant will receive close to $3 million in federal and Quebec loans.
Read Also
Stock dogs show off herding skills at Ag in Motion
Stock dogs draw a crowd at Ag in Motion. Border collies and other herding breeds are well known for the work they do on the farm.
Existing pasta manufacturers, including Grisspasta just a short drive away, insist the plant is not needed. The Canadian market is saturated and dreams of major shipments to the Uunited States are doubtful, they say.
“We find this decision extremely disturbing and completely unjustified,” Canadian Pasta Manufacturers Association executive director Don Jarvis wrote to industry minister John Manley. “It lacks sound economic and competitive judgment….”
Inside cabinet this year, trade minister Sergio Marchi took up the complaint, writing to Manley on behalf of Toronto-area manufacturer Italpasta.
Manley and his department have defended the aid as a job creating, food value-adding and export-enhancing decision.
Incentives more common
Increasingly in the scramble to attract value-adding investment, this type of partnership involving government incentives will be a central feature of public food policy.
Expansion of the pasta industry, promising a domestic market for train loads of prairie durum, is just part of the picture.
Investors promising all manner of food enterprise are being courted to come to Canada. The government welcome wagon features an array of financial and regulatory incentives meant to lure them away from competing jurisdictions.
As governments proclaim the end of the subsidy era, they find new, more subtle ways to entice corporate investment.
However, few projects have stirred as much controversy as the Finepasta plant.
It began in mid-July, 1996 when federal and Quebec industry ministers announced the plant and its 121 jobs. Eighty percent of the production would go south.
For the Quebec government, it symbolized a job-creating agenda. For the federal Liberals, it was a pre-election signal to Quebeckers that Canada works, and a visible symbol of the government’s determination to support the food industry.
“Finepasta’s plant will be using Canadian durum wheat, resulting in considerable value added,” said Manley.
So far, that day has been the high water mark of Finepasta. No progress is evident.
“The ball is in their (the investors’) court,” Industry Canada spokesperson Michel Girard said from Montreal. “We expect the project to go ahead. We have made an offer and our money is still on the table. It depends now on how successful they will be in raising private money.”
Industry rumors suggest promoter Luigi Civardi is trying to convince the Italian government to contribute much of the $22 million he is expected to raise.
Civardi did not return phone messages.
