BU becomes a designated Fair Trade campus

Erik Morrison, thecampus.businesseditor@gmail.com Bishop’s business students go beyond the BUbble Mika Rohac and Cleo Wulder - Contributors

On Saturday, Nov. 19, the Bishop’s Alumni Association hosted the annual Beyond the BUbble event. It’s designed to show students in the Williams School of Business what opportunities are available to them once they have become Bishop’s graduates, or in other words, move out of the Bishop’s Bubble. Hosted in the Montreal Racket Club, speakers were invited to discuss their experiences at BU as well as their experiences beyond BU. Students had the opportunity to hear details of accomplishments, insights, and lessons from five alumni speakers. Opening the speeches was former business administration student Tomas Gautier, who graduated with a concentration in finance. In his Bishop’s days, he was involved in The Campus newspaper in 2004, which kickstarted his motivation to be an entrepreneur. Since graduating in 2007, Gautier has become the proud owner of TG Capital, Liquid Crowd, and TG Consulting. He spoke to students about the trials and tribulations that come with being an entrepreneur. His main advice to Bishop’s students was to “take the risk” and to always challenge yourself. The second speaker of the event was Gina Auray. She graduated with a BA in psychology and human resources. After graduating in 2013, she worked with CAE – an aviation, defense, and healthcare company – in human resources for three years and with Bombardier, a business jet manufacturer, for five years. She spoke to students about her love for HR, and also discussed the importance of having a healthy worklife balance. Today, Auray has taken the role of entrepreneur and has started her own business, Vicci Consulting. Her HR consulting business has allowed her to have more freedom, more time with family, and time to teach two classes at Bishop’s. After a quick break, the students heard from marketing graduate Laurie Tanguay. While still a student she climbed up the ladder at PepsiCo. After graduating in 2017, she was launched into the PepsiCo corporate world as a sales leader, representative, analyst and associate with the company. She stayed with PepsiCo for seven years. Currently, Tanguay is a brand portfolio manager for the Dandurand group and remains involved with the Bishop’s University Alumni Society as the Montreal chapter leader. Her main suggestion for Bishop’s students is to always say yes to opportunities that scare them. Following Tanguay, guests heard from Anna Cutland, an accounting and finance graduate. During her time at Bishop’s, she was a part of the SEED portfolio, a teaching assistant and remained involved with other extracurriculars in her four busy years as a student. Since graduating in 2018, Cutland completed her Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) designation all while working as a senior associate on the mergers and acquisitions transactional services team at Deloitte. Today, she works at Novacap as a private equity analyst and is a board observer for Accurate Group. Her main advice for current students was that you can never be too involved at Bishop’s! To close out the event, students heard from Tyler Jensen Smith. Smith is known on campus for being very involved and for his contagious energy. During his BBA in economics at Bishop’s, Smith was involved with SEED and BUCS. After graduating in 2019, Smith completed his CPA and Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) designations with PwC Canada, a business consulting service, for two years before moving on to the tech world with Keboola as a data consultant. Alongside being immersed in tech, Smith is a Bishop’s case competition coach and an accounting professor. Smith’s presentation left students inspired and with the advice to make connections with their peers, since they are the basis of a successful personal network. Once the speeches were concluded, the event had only just begun. Students, alumni and faculty moved into another section of the Racket Club for networking opportunities, allowing students to converse with the speakers and other alumni. Along with the five invited speakers, many Bishop’s alumni were invited to attend the event to get to know current students and reconnect with fellow former students. This event was highly motivating for WSB students and left them looking excitedly into their futures.

Erik Morrison - Economics & Business Editor

Photo Courtesy of Emile Flour

On Nov. 9, 2022, Bishop’s University received the official Fair Trade designation to become Canada’s 43rd Fair Trade Campus. This movement was a part of the actions being taken within the Bishop’s University 2020-2024 Sustainable Development Plan. This plan of action involves many different objectives to create a more sustainable campus, including reducing car traffic on campus, campus carbon neutrality by 2030 and reduction of waste going to landfills.

The process of becoming a designated Fair Trade campus took about a year. A steering committee was formed by staff, directors, students, and faculty. Through frequent meetings, they discussed the steps required to obtain a designation. Many of the changes they had to complete revolved around the food services at Bishop’s. A main ally was Deborah Langford, director of ancillary services at Bishop’s University. Langford is the person who is responsible for the contract with the food service providers on campus, such as Sodexo. With her help and discussions with the managers at Sodexo, the team reached the point where all coffee served on campus is now Fair Trade.

Another requirement of the designation was that at every service point where chocolate and tea are sold on campus, there had to be Fair Trade options available for purchase. For chocolate, there is a minimum of one Fair Trade option, and for tea, there is a minimum requirement of three options. Bishop’s exceeds this at all points of sale, including Doolittle’s Co-op and Sodexo.

When asked why this matters to students, Danielle Storey, one of the sustainable development student interns stated, “I think it’s important because it promotes sustainability on campus and it also promotes small-scale organic farms to be producing at a less corporate level.” One of the challenges in becoming a Fair Trade designated campus was to find providers that fit with Sodexo’s procurement system and adapt to how their logistical sourcing system works. Since the coffee on campus is sourced from a local roaster, Faro, the process involved having Sodexo approve Faro as a provider to Bishop’s.

From an economic view, this new Fair Trade designation has a positive impact on farmers and other food producers. It is normalized in our society not to fully understand the value of food. The lowpriced chocolate bar you can buy at most checkouts may be a good price, but this fails to consider the non-economic costs of human resources, natural resources, transportation, and other factors. Laurence Williams, the sustainable development advisor at Bishop’s University, mentions how people are used to buying cheap and industrialized foods. As a society, people have lost the concept of what food is worth. The changes in price to offer a FairTrade cup of coffee, as opposed to uncertified coffee, are usually insignificant to the consumer here in North America. However, this small increase makes a big difference for coffee producers, commonly located in South America. Fair Trade producers are required to prevent exploitative labor and environmental harm, among other issues they must monitor for, such as gender inequality and poor working conditions. Exporting services must have no history of human rights abuses or violation of land rights to be considered for certification. Consumers have a responsibility to use our buying power to encourage more sustainable systems wherever we can.