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Steve Chats with a member of the Vancouver Board of Trade, Part 1

Part 1

Steve: I'm speaking today with Jack Wong, who is the Comptroller and the Director of Administration at the Vancouver Board of Trade. Good afternoon, Jack.

Jack: Good afternoon, Steve.

Steve: Now, we're going to discuss a variety of subjects, but to get warmed up, I thought we'd talk a little bit about business opportunities in Asia, because as I mentioned to you, I sell lumber in Asia, and you mentioned that you had looked at investments in Asia, sort of personal investments. You had comments on- I guess you had some trepidation, but certainly that is a part of the world that is becoming a bigger and bigger economic factor for everyone.

Jack: Well, I was first starting to tell you, about ten years ago-this is before the Asian market, the Asian stocks, the equity markets there-and at that time, I said, "No, you know, I'm going to stick with economies and markets that I know and I'm familiar with," even though the Asian markets were doubling or tripling the returns that some of the North American markets were doing, I just wasn't-I don't know too much about the political environment in China. To me, at that time, it was fairly unstable, it was uncharted territory, so I decided, "No, I'm going to play safe, and I'll put my monies in the North American markets." I guess it turned out to be a wise decision, but now that the Asian economy has been in the doldrums for the past ten years-this is going back ten years, here.

Steve: Well, of course, the Asian economy-we look at sort of the established economy of Japan, which is actually recently starting to come back quite a bit. And then of course, the big new-I guess we talked about "the four tigers," now there's the new "big dragon," which is China. I read in the paper that the Bank of Montreal is promoting the Canadian stock market as a place to take advantage of growth in China, because the Canadian stock market is so heavy, sort of resource-based, and as the economies of China and India heat up, they're going to require the minerals and the energy resources and the forest products that Canada has. But, I think a lot of people have also done very well in China, but it is not for the weak-hearted.

Jack: No, it isn't. I was just reading an article just the other day about productivity, and the Chinese market, as we all know, the advantage that they have is cheap labor, they have very cheap labor. But at the same time, it's probably a more productive labor force, because you have here, the local assembly line-average assembly line worker might not have a university education, but in China, I would bet that there is a lot more university-educated people that are operating on this end of the line, the lower-level, lower-skilled work, because it's just that there's a lot of educated citizens in China that are not employed in higher-skilled work. Steve: Yeah, although I still believe that sort of the unsung heroes of the Chinese economic miracle are all the basically not-so-well-educated people who have come in from the farm, who have learned new skills and work for very low wages, but work very well for very low wages. Up until recently, most of the university graduates were working in offices and that kind of thing, but there is now a problem there, too, as they start to crank out more university graduates. Just a few-percentage-point increase in the number of graduates puts a lot of people on the sidewalk looking for work. But I'd like to turn now to the Vancouver Board of Trade. Can I ask you how long you've been with the Vancouver Board of Trade? Jack: Well, let's see. I've been here since November of 2000, so that's a little over four years, almost four and a half years now. Steve: So, is your background in-when I think of "comptroller," I think of "accountant." So is your background in accounting?

Jack: Yes, I'm a professionally-certified management accountant, CMA, but I'm one of those accountants that hates accounting. I'm not an accountant accountant. I fell into accounting when I graduated from university. Actually, I took the CMA course from scratch. You know, I went to night school for six years, taking the CMA course while I was working at the same time. My major in university was organizational behavior and industrial relations. I flunked a couple of accounting courses when I was in university. [laughter] When I graduated-it was in '79, 1980-the economy back then was not as well as it should be, and people in the personnel-related or industrial relations-related positions, our jobs are hard to come by. I thought to myself, "Well, find something that's recession-proof," and I thought undertaking a management/accounting course or program, would be something that would also assist me in my career objective. You know, I wanted to get into a management role, and the financial end of any organization requires some understanding of basic accounting principles and rules, and so it provided me a good base. From there, I was looking for-my career path was to look for positions that kind of built on just a basic understanding of accounting. I didn't want to stay in accounting, for sure.

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Part 1

Steve: I'm speaking today with Jack Wong, who is the Comptroller and the Director of Administration at the Vancouver Board of Trade. Good afternoon, Jack.

Jack: Good afternoon, Steve.

Steve: Now, we're going to discuss a variety of subjects, but to get warmed up, I thought we'd talk a little bit about business opportunities in Asia, because as I mentioned to you, I sell lumber in Asia, and you mentioned that you had looked at investments in Asia, sort of personal investments. You had comments on- I guess you had some trepidation, but certainly that is a part of the world that is becoming a bigger and bigger economic factor for everyone.

Jack: Well, I was first starting to tell you, about ten years ago-this is before the Asian market, the Asian stocks, the equity markets there-and at that time, I said, "No, you know, I'm going to stick with economies and markets that I know and I'm familiar with," even though the Asian markets were doubling or tripling the returns that some of the North American markets were doing, I just wasn't-I don't know too much about the political environment in China. To me, at that time, it was fairly unstable, it was uncharted territory, so I decided, "No, I'm going to play safe, and I'll put my monies in the North American markets." I guess it turned out to be a wise decision, but now that the Asian economy has been in the doldrums for the past ten years-this is going back ten years, here.

Steve: Well, of course, the Asian economy-we look at sort of the established economy of Japan, which is actually recently starting to come back quite a bit. And then of course, the big new-I guess we talked about "the four tigers," now there's the new "big dragon," which is China. I read in the paper that the Bank of Montreal is promoting the Canadian stock market as a place to take advantage of growth in China, because the Canadian stock market is so heavy, sort of resource-based, and as the economies of China and India heat up, they're going to require the minerals and the energy resources and the forest products that Canada has. But, I think a lot of people have also done very well in China, but it is not for the weak-hearted.

Jack: No, it isn't. I was just reading an article just the other day about productivity, and the Chinese market, as we all know, the advantage that they have is cheap labor, they have very cheap labor. But at the same time, it's probably a more productive labor force, because you have here, the local assembly line-average assembly line worker might not have a university education, but in China, I would bet that there is a lot more university-educated people that are operating on this end of the line, the lower-level, lower-skilled work, because it's just that there's a lot of educated citizens in China that are not employed in higher-skilled work. Steve: Yeah, although I still believe that sort of the unsung heroes of the Chinese economic miracle are all the basically not-so-well-educated people who have come in from the farm, who have learned new skills and work for very low wages, but work very well for very low wages. Up until recently, most of the university graduates were working in offices and that kind of thing, but there is now a problem there, too, as they start to crank out more university graduates. Just a few-percentage-point increase in the number of graduates puts a lot of people on the sidewalk looking for work. But I'd like to turn now to the Vancouver Board of Trade. Can I ask you how long you've been with the Vancouver Board of Trade? Jack: Well, let's see. I've been here since November of 2000, so that's a little over four years, almost four and a half years now. Steve: So, is your background in-when I think of "comptroller," I think of "accountant." So is your background in accounting?

Jack: Yes, I'm a professionally-certified management accountant, CMA, but I'm one of those accountants that hates accounting. I'm not an accountant accountant. I fell into accounting when I graduated from university. Actually, I took the CMA course from scratch. You know, I went to night school for six years, taking the CMA course while I was working at the same time. My major in university was organizational behavior and industrial relations. I flunked a couple of accounting courses when I was in university. [laughter] When I graduated-it was in '79, 1980-the economy back then was not as well as it should be, and people in the personnel-related or industrial relations-related positions, our jobs are hard to come by. I thought to myself, "Well, find something that's recession-proof," and I thought undertaking a management/accounting course or program, would be something that would also assist me in my career objective. You know, I wanted to get into a management role, and the financial end of any organization requires some understanding of basic accounting principles and rules, and so it provided me a good base. From there, I was looking for-my career path was to look for positions that kind of built on just a basic understanding of accounting. I didn't want to stay in accounting, for sure.