Asha Javeed

In 2010, T&T ex­port­ed $2,760 mil­lion in goods to Cana­da. Con­verse­ly, im­ports from were val­ued at $1,800 mil­lion. With a bal­ance of trade al­ready in T&T's favour, T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da Philip Buxo is hop­ing to now deep­en this re­la­tion­ship. To this end, Buxo has al­ready iden­ti­fied ar­eas-in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for Cana­di­an busi­ness­es and job op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cals-to nur­ture the re­la­tion­ship. "Cana­da's knock­ing on T&T's doors," said the diplo­mat, who has been on the job for eight months, in an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day evening. Buxo was ap­point­ed on De­cem­ber 24, 2010.

At 42, he read­i­ly ad­mits to not fit­ting the stereo­type of what a diplo­mat looks like. "You usu­al­ly imag­ine some­one a bit old­er and do­ing a lot of so­cial­is­ing. But a job is what you make it. I thought I'd do this while I'm young and I have the en­er­gy to give back. And I want to im­prove and up­grade the re­la­tion­ship be­tween these two coun­tries."

The Cana­di­an foot­print in T&T is eas­i­ly dis­cern­able in the bank­ing sec­tor where two of this coun­try's com­mer­cial banks-Sco­tia­bank and RBC-are of Cana­di­an ori­gin. But Cana­da, said Buxo, wants to ex­pand their in­ter­ac­tion. He ex­plained that the Gov­ern­ment's in­tent to build five hos­pi­tals, through the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott), has caught the at­ten­tion of health­care providers in Cana­da. "Hos­pi­tals are more than just bricks and mor­tar, they're more than the cheap­est in­ter­est-rate loan. They are about prop­er man­age­ment, prop­er tem­plates, qual­i­ty equip­ment, sys­tems, pro­ce­dures, prop­er train­ing in child­care. The Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment has been able to do it and do it very well. And they want to part­ner with T&T to im­prove its health­care de­vel­op­ment."

Apart from health­care, Buxo says the en­er­gy sec­tor has three po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties for Cana­di­an busi­ness­es: • Part­ner­ing with Petrotrin to in­crease ex­trac­tion ca­pac­i­ty in Trin­mar's South West Sol­da­do op­er­a­tions. • Em­ploy­ing Cana­di­an tech­nol­o­gy to ex­plore tar sands at Par­ry­lands-Guapo fields which po­ten­tial­ly con­tain two bil­lion bar­rels of oil. • Ex­plor­ing busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties in the melamine in­dus­try.

But Cana­da's en­er­gy sec­tor-one of its largest ex­port sec­tors with an in­dus­try rev­enue of Can$103.8 bil­lion- al­so presents job op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cals un­der its Cana­da Tem­po­rary For­eign Work­ers Pro­gramme. Buxo is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to take ad­van­tage of Cana­da's need for field and of­fice staff in their ex­plo­ration and pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies, pur­su­ing oil sands pro­duc­tion, by send­ing an es­tab­lished pool of ac­cred­it­ed work­ers from T&T's en­er­gy sec­tor. This ini­tia­tive would mir­ror T&T's ap­proach in coun­tries like Ghana by ex­port­ing en­er­gy ex­per­tise. Buxo point­ed out that T&T's High Com­mis­sion, which is based in Cana­da's cap­i­tal Ot­tawa and the Labour Li­ai­son Branch in Toron­to, are cur­rent­ly work­ing with the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, Min­istry of Labour, the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T and South­ern Al­ber­ta Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute to de­vel­op spe­cif­ic train­ing arrange­ments with Al­ber­ta. There's a labour short­age in more than 12 cat­e­gories which in­clude ex­pe­ri­enced en­gi­neers, plant op­er­a­tions and geo­phys­i­cal ser­vices.

Buxo ob­served that work­ers can be sourced from T&T from der­rick­hands to welders. He point­ed out that Cana­di­an busi­ness­es took ad­van­tage of re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum (CIF) and the Trade and In­vest­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), both pro­mo­tion­al in­vest­ment events held in June. Fur­ther, the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment will be en­ter­tain­ing a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty del­e­ga­tion trip to Cana­da from Au­gust 14 to 20. Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty John Sandy will head a sev­en mem­ber del­e­ga­tion which will in­clude Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, Fazal Karim. The team will meet with the Chief of Crim­i­nal In­tel­li­gence, the Di­rec­tor Gen­er­al of the Cana­di­an Po­lice Col­lege and en­gage in a work­ing lun­cheon with as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er San­dra Con­lin. Buxo stat­ed that Cana­da's reg­u­la­tions were some of the best in the world and their in­ter­est in as­sist­ing T&T by walk­ing through their own reg­u­la­to­ry process was com­mend­able.

Karim is ex­pect­ed to meet with Paul Bren­nan, vice pres­i­dent of In­ter­na­tion­al Part­ner­ships, As­so­ci­a­tion of Cana­di­an Com­mu­ni­ty Col­leges. "De­spite what's hap­pen­ing in the glob­al econ­o­my, Cana­da has re­mained strong. While the US has been down­grad­ed, Cana­da has not. And T&T is on their radar. "What we have to fo­cus on is how the re­la­tion­ship can be mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial."