By Christina Leadlay
www.embassymag.ca
Why Mexicans Don't Drink Molson is meant to pose a question and an answer and it's also a metaphor for Canada's missed opportunities on the global market. What I am asking here is why is it that if there is one thing Canada could have given to the world, one thing that Canada potentially could have branded and really built a global company with, was beer.
We are fairly good at making beer. We always like to put down the Americans who produce light-weight namby-pamby beers while ours are so much better. And yet by the same token, Mexico, which has nothing in the way of fresh water and actually imports its water from Europe and Canada, boasts Corona, which sells in over 100 major countries and is one of the world's leading global brands, not to mention the number one import beer in Canada.
It struck me when I first started writing this book. I was in Calgary during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and I was in a Calgary pub where everyone was outfitted with Flames t-shirts and mullets. I was sitting behind a group of three guys who really couldn't have been more Canadian, and I waited to see what beer they were going to order. Sure enough, they ordered three Coronas with a squirt of lime. It really flabbergasted me and I thought if we can't even sell our own beer to our own people, this is a real challenge for us.
I think you can draw a direct link between the case of Molson and Labatt–who are both foreign-owned now–to The Beer Store, which is a government-seeded monopoly that basically ensures these two beer companies don't have to learn how to retail or distribute their beer because they were given it, and they didn't have to package.
If you go into a Beer Store, your retail experience is a conveyer belt and rubber-gloved salesperson. And the question is: how are you going to compete abroad if that is your level of competitiveness right here in Canada? Because it is a duopoly, they have dictated how to do business. They can sell you a beer in a dirty brown bottle. They are not going to be able to go international and do that, which is why Molson failed so spectacularly when they invested in Brazil and why they are no longer Canadian-owned.
I think for a lot of our history we've grown up with that need to have some kind of protection develop a strong national champion, but I really think at the end of the day, it belies a certain level of confidence in who we are and actually to enforce it because when we're saying that we need to protect a company, it's because you actually don't believe in it, and you're saying we're not good enough to compete internationally.
