Chinese multinational breaks hiring promise

A giant Chinese multinational that collected $13-million in federal and Quebec government grants to build a factory that promised to employ 360 by June 2002 has still just 150 workers on staff, admits an official of the company. In October 2001, China Worldbest opened a technologically advanced knit-and-dye plant in Drummondville thanks partly to government handouts and other breaks that have calculated to total $40-million. The plant was meant to compensate the 400 jobs lost with the closing of Celanese Canada and Cavalier textile plants.

Although opened with much fanfare, Worldbest’s $45-million plant—which immediately made it Canada’s largest Chinese company—has been denounced by Montreal’s needletrade industry. The Montreal shmatte folks, already a bitter lot, having seen their industry eviscerated by the effects of free trade, have complained that China Worldbest uses Chinese labourers and that the multinational received the grants in return for a secret promise to eventually build a pharmaceutical plant on Canadian soil. Company rep Qi Yang concedes that 10 Chinese workers are currently on staff for training purposes. He says that Worldbest, which runs pharmaceutical plants in China, is indeed planning to open more pharmaceutical factories, but not necessarily in Canada.

“If Worldbest finds a better place to invest in another country, we’ll do it there,” he says. Yang describes our provincial and federal largesse as “completely normal.”

“When a Canadian opens a firm in China,” says Yang, “they also gets a lot of advantages from the government there.” : » Kristian Gravenor

Can’t Beat Condos

Ask anyone in Centre-Sud if they love the CBC as much as the network loves itself, and chances are they’ll answer with a resounding No. The corporation that produced such memorable, hotly anticipated and well-loved classic television series as Random Passage, Pit Pony, Nothing Too Good for a Cowboy and The New Beachcombers evicted thousands of low-income tenants and local merchants to make room for the sprawling complex it now occupies in the shadow of the Jacques-Cartier Bridge three decades ago. Now it turns out that they’ll be selling off some of their spare land to developers, who, it is feared, will proceed to build high-priced condominiums where factory workers once lived. Local community groups are angry and will be picketing outside the Ceeb’s HQ today, Thursday, at noon, and demand that any new developments include some social housing.

“In some ways, it’s almost like a lost cause,” says Thomas McKeown, a liaison worker for Alerte Centre-Sud, a coalition of 40-plus local community groups. “It’s a big frustration to realize that Radio-Canada and the CBC can take over a piece of land, evict thousands of people and businesses, and think people will forget about it. They’ve left the neighbourhood poorer for it.”

He says politicians passed the proper legislation without properly consulting the local citizenry, and as a result, the groups were caught off-guard when they learned of the plan. : » Patrick Lejtenyi

Canada’s death sentences

Prisons are never fun places to be, but a report released last week shows them to be an even less appealing place to spend time as an unpaying guest of Her Majesty. The Montreal-based Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network describes the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C in prisons as dreadful, and not getting any better.

In Action on HIV/AIDS in Prisons: Too Little, Too Late—A Report Card, only British Columbia and federal prisons received halfway decent grades—a “B” and “B-minus” respectively. Newfoundland and Labrador received a “D.” All other provinces failed. The ranking was based on a 30-point system, with Quebec awarded only 14 points.

Ralf Jürgens, the Network’s executive director, says government inaction on the spread is due in large part because the general population doesn’t regard treating prisoners with health problems a high priority. “But what people often don’t realize,” he says, “is that prisoners are in prison for a short time, and have spouses or partners on the outside. If prisoners are at an increased risk, then the government is failing to meet its legal and moral obligations to all Canadians.”

Jürgens has been urging a pragmatic solution to the spread of infectious diseases in prisons for 10 years, to little avail. He advocates making available to prisoner addicts bleach, condoms, methadone maintenance treatment and, yes, needles.

“Studies in Europe have shown that making needles available to prisoners does not lead to an increase in drug use, and they are not used as weapons,” he says. : » Patrick Lejtenyi

Angel >> Sympathy for Michel Jalbert A weekend fundraiser for the resident of Pohénégamook, a town straddling the Quebec-Maine border, raised $2,000, helping to defray some of the cost he incurred after posting $5,000 (U.S.) bail for his release after over a month in an American jail. His crime: on Oct. 11, he crossed the border to fill his truck’s gas tank at a station 15 metres inside the States, a common practice for Canadian residents, but without checking with border guards first. He was finally released Nov. 14 after promising to return to the U.S. to face trial.
Insect >> Tenant discrimination Pierre Marois, the president of the Quebec Human Rights Commission, says he only realized the true extent of the problem of landlords refusing to rent apartments to families with children once he saw the results of a commission survey of 2,000 classified ads, many of which contained “no children” warnings. He said he would pursue all grievances (the commission wins 90 per cent of its cases). Too bad it takes a formal study, a housing crisis and unprecedented tight rental markets before someone actually wakes up to a widespread, and nasty, business practice.