The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Victoria's Secret casts an eye at Ontario
February 3, 2007
BYLINE: MURRAY CAMPBELL
Tom Katzenmeyer has learned to shun controversy and to embrace environmental values. He's also got $100-million of business that he wants to do with people who think the same way and he's looking in Ontario's direction.
Mr. Katzenmeyer is senior vice-president of Limited Brands, the $10- billion U.S. fashion company that operates, among other brands, the Victoria's Secret lingerie business.
Last December, prodded by – and working with – the environmental group Forest Ethics, Limited Brands said it would stop using paper from a B.C. company that logs in Alberta. It pledged that by the end of the year, the 350 million Victoria's Secret catalogues sent out annually would contain at least 10 per cent recycled paper or paper from forest operations certified by an international group, the Forest Stewardship Council.
The move could open doors for Ontario's struggling forest industry since nearly 30 per cent of the allocated Crown logging lands operate under FSC principles. But Limited Brands, which endured an imaginative protest campaign from Forest Ethics about "Victoria's dirty secret," is striving to be even purer. Like many large companies, it wants to steer clear of anything controversial. As one U.S. executive told Tzeporah Berman, Forest Ethics program director: "I just want to know that my wood is coming without a protester hanging on." This could pose problems for Ontario.
Mr. Katzenmeyer and Ms. Berman were in Toronto last week to meet officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources and from Premier Dalton McGuinty's office to tell them about the huge market for "controversy- free" paper. Mr. Katzenmeyer said the contract for $100-million of paper would go only to a jurisdiction that was committed to Limited Brands' conservation philosophy.
Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay (who wasn't at the meeting) told the newsletter Inside Queen's Park that the company "is seeking an Ontario supplier." Mr. Katzenmeyer offered a more measured judgment.
"I think it's promising but there is clearly work to be done," he said in a telephone interview from Columbus, Ohio. "There's a lot of business to be had and I hope that's the message they're getting."
Limited Brands has a couple of concerns about Ontario, that go beyond FSC certification. It has accepted the environmentalists' analysis that the woodland caribou are a vital indicator of the sustainable health of the 400,000-square-kilometre boreal forest that sprawls across Northern Ontario (nearly 90 per cent of which is owned by the Crown).
The caribou need great swaths of territory to elude their prey and each incursion by logging road or hydro corridor forces a retreat northward. At Confederation, caribou ranged as far south as Georgian Bay, but now they are found only north of Lake Superior. The company wants assurance that the caribou's habitat will be protected by the government.
The species is on both federal and provincial endangered-species lists and environmentalists are pressing for dramatic preservation efforts in areas where logging is currently allowed. Ontario has been working on a strategy since 2002, but it will be a couple of years at least before it is finished.
In seeking to avoid controversy, Limited Brands will also want to look closely at the government's relations with native communities, which, in many cases, are fraught with tension.
Above the 51st parallel, where no logging is allowed, about a dozen remote native communities are in disputes over proposed mining operations. Last spring, for example, four protesters walked 2,000 kilometres from Big Trout Lake to Toronto to publicize its tussle with a platinum mining company.
South of the 51st parallel cut line, a number of native communities are in disputes with logging and mining companies. For example, the Grassy Narrows community near Kenora is calling for a moratorium on all industrial activity and is backing it with a blockade (now in its fifth
year) of a provincial highway that passes through its territory.
The backdrop of all this is pre-election pledges by Mr. McGuinty "to protect the ecological integrity" of the boreal forest. For the most part, we're still waiting.
Meanwhile, Mr. Katzenmeyer has a message to the government about his environmental mission: "We are very serious about this."
