In a volatile world, François-Philippe Champagne is making the case for boring — selling Canada, one deal at a time.
At the Paris Air Show, under the piercing roars of fighter jet demos, Canada’s silver-haired, Canali-clad industry minister sells one executive after another on an unexpected pitch: Amid global disorder, boring is best for business.
“One CEO told me recently that their board spends 40 percent of their time now on geopolitics,” Champagne said in an interview. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne persuaded Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna to spend hundreds of millions of its own money to build a vaccine facility in Montreal with undisclosed funding from the government.
When the pandemic hit, Champagne led a rush to rebuild bio manufacturing in Canada. His fixation on scoring new investments overrode any flags from grumpy bureaucrats, reluctant to join the chase for pharmaceutical companies with whom they had prickly relations. Champagne carved a win; Moderna signed a deal to build its first mRNA manufacturing plant outside the U.S. in Canada.
“Canada is a great counterweight to all that because we’re stable, predictable, we have the critical minerals, we have the talent, we have the renewable energy,” Champagne said.“We have an aerospace industry, we have an automotive industry, we have a pharmaceutical industry, we have a defense industry,” Champagne says between bites of a ham and cheese baguette between meetings at the air show.
The Swedish executive credits his company’s C$470-million decision to expand in Canada to Champagne’s “unusual” political overtures to business — something he’s never seen before. “The personal engagement that he gave, gave us comfort to further expand our presence,” Ekholm said.During a meeting at the air show, he takes the notebook of an aerospace executive and scribbles his number in the corner of a page.
Champagne is no stranger to business, nor to the ways of Americans or Europeans. He has a law degree from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and worked in the private sector in Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.Two decades in Europe taught him more than Italian. He was immersed in the politics of regulation in the European Union and took notes on stakeholder consultations that are an abbreviated relative to the process in Canada.
He tells a story from his first campaign when during a diner meet-and-greet a biker rejected his handshake, saying he doesn’t shake hands with thieves. “Really?” Champagne said, “Do we know each other?” He pulled up a chair and it ended with selfies, he says. About 10 hours after his plane landed in Paris, Champagne arrived at the Canadian ambassador’s residence to host 850 people at a reception. First though, he commandeered an upstairs room for a meeting. The mood was tense, a stark contrast to a scene that would unfold 30 minutes later where he was mobbed for photos in the garden.
After details of the Volkswagen deal were made public, multinational automaker Stellantis made noise and demanded to renegotiate its $2.8-billion deal with the Canadian government. Worries that Stellantis would walk compelled the Ontario government to up its C$500-million commitment. Champagne’s win streak comes after some high-profile losses, which led him to conclude that industry is a better fit for his skills and global connections.
“The Liberal party has always been the party of the center,” he said, sharing his political vision. “In the world where you see more and more polarization, even coming a bit from the United States, I think Canadians are squarely in the center.”
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