Canada: More Left-Handed Traders

With Trade and Commerce Minister George Hees’s brisk assurance to the Cubans that Canada “couldn’t do business with better businessmen anywhere” still ringing in their ears, Canadian businessmen last week were playing host to two more trade missions out of far leftfield.

In Canada searching for business were one team of sales-minded Russians and another of inscrutable Hong Kong traders acting as agents for their neighbors, the Communist Chinese.

When the Russians flew in fortnight ago, a V.I.P. lounge was thrown open in Montreal’s new air terminal for a press conference. The Russian mission had brochure-fat briefcases and an expansive statement from Heavy Machinery Salesman Anatoly Prokhorov that “we are interested in selling anything in Canada.” When Prokhorov cited Moscow’s export line of Moskvich and Volga autos, added that he would like to set up a Canadian assembly plant, mayors and businessmen in half a dozen Ontario and Quebec towns rushed to announce that they had just the site. To get the trade going, Prokhorov set his sights on 500 Russian-built cars by May 1.

Ottawa trade officials think the prospects are slim for much auto business (yawned the Montreal Star: “Coals to Newcastle”), but they do think that Prokhorov’s fellow traveling salesmen, Sergei Vishnyakov (foodstuffs and beverages) and Ivan Markelov (musical instruments, watches, toys), might have better luck. Under Canada’s 2-to-1 trade pact with Russia signed last April, for every $1 worth of business the Russians drum up on their four-week tour. Canada stands to gain $2 worth of export sales.

If the Russians aimed to sell, the Hong Kong traders probably aimed to buy—although no one could be sure. All Ottawa knew was that the pair—one Liu Liang, a manager for the China Resources Co. who toured Canada in 1958. and a sidekick, Yang Lu-liang—had asked for hurry-up visas last month, and were seldom seen after they arrived all but unnoticed in Montreal aboard a Trans-Canada Airlines plane.

Briefly cornered by a Financial Post reporter in Toronto’s Royal York Hotel last week, Liu denied that China has any further need for Canadian foodstuffs or metals, just the opposite of what Canadian traders had surmised. Last year more than 1,500,000 lbs. of Canadian nickel went to Red China via Hong Kong, and Sherritt Gordon Mines Ltd. shipped another 1,039,800 Ibs. to China directly, boosting Canada’s 1960 China trade to $20 million. But in view of China’s calamitous crop losses to flood and drought, Ottawa is still betting on a major wheat sale to China —the first since Trader Liu placed a $7,000,000 wheat order in 1958.