SASKATOON – Cape Breton women came out of their kitchens and church halls to stare down an American corporation.
Keynote speaker Gregory Mac-Leod told a prairie community development conference how of Catholic, Anglican and United Church women demonstrated in front of a bankrupt rope company in Atlantic Canada to prevent the American manufacturer from removing machinery. He quoted the American: “Tell those cake bakers to go home. We want to get our trucks in.”
The women stayed and the equipment stayed and the American sold the assets to a local development company that reopened the plant. It now employs 30 people and sells 30 percent of its green-colored rope to British Columbia and 25 percent to the state of Maine.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
MacLeod used that story to show how people and towns looking for jobs and successful businesses should focus on local opportunities. Don’t rely on big international corporations to save your town, he said, because they are driven solely by profit and will leave town when the dollars are better elsewhere. Besides having no local commitment, international companies are beyond government control.
MacLeod believes in profits and backs his words with action by running a $1 million development agency that in its seven years has invested in seven Cape Breton businesses.
People before profit
But he warned that local economic development must be worthy of the money invested in it. It must put people’s needs ahead of more profit. MacLeod said business people blush when he talks about their moral obligations and he finds more dogma in economics than religion these days.
In every success case he has studied MacLeod said there has always been one or two strong leaders. He urged schools to build in more examples of leaders who have succeeded while working for their community.
“We need to encourage it and talk about it more and give young people examples. The only model they have is the president of Chrysler.”
