Francis Uy, the recently appointed Canadian Consul and Senior Trade Commissioner in Guadalajara, is looking forward to January 2014.
That’s because this month sees Canada and Mexico commemorate two landmark anniversaries in their relationship.
On January 1, 2004, Canada entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and the United States, an entente that has helped trade between three nations to grow in leaps and bounds. And a little over 60 years prior to this date, on January 29, 1944, Mexico and Canada formally initiated diplomatic relations.
“We’re hoping to have a lot of events to promote these two dates,” Uy told the Reporter in an interview last week.
Uy is the sixth of seven siblings who emigrated to Canada from the Philippines in 1980 at the age of 13.
With President Marcos ailing and the threat of civil war looming over the island nation, Uy’s family uprooted to Toronto, where his father had cousins.
“Of all the countries that were taking immigrants at the time, Canada was the most welcoming,” Uy says.
Settling in was relatively easy, he remembers, as English is spoken widely in the Philippines and he had just finished grade school and was able to enter high school from scratch.
Uy says an early turning point in his life was taking part in the Encounters with Canada program at the Terry Fox Canadian Youth Centre in Ottawa, when he visited the Senate for the first time.
“As a new immigrant, it helped me understand what Canada was all about. It truly changed my life as from there I started getting involved with youth parliaments – regional, provincial, federal – which then helped prepare me for my current job representing Canadian interests around the world.”
The Encounters program is still active and more than 95,000 young people have participated thus far.
“It is a fantastic initiative,” Uy says. “I was able to meet lots of young Canadians from all over the country and understand them better.”
Although Uy says he was happy at Bell and could have easily “seen myself doing technical stuff for 50 years,” the chance to travel the world representing Canada was a strong pull.
In addition, he says, Canada traditionally has strong telecom companies, and at that time the Trade Commission was looking for more technically oriented people.
Uy joined the Foreign Service in 1989 and had his initial posting in Sydney, Australia, where he served as a vice consul and trade commissioner. After a spell in Minneapolis, he was sent to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where Canada’s current ambassador to Mexico, Sara Hradecky, was also stationed.
In 2003 Uy returned to Manila and the land of his birth to serve as the Canadian liaison at the Asian Commercial Bank.
It was a perfect fit, he says of his four-year posting. “I was able to be almost fully local but at the same time I was helping Canadian companies win contracts.”
While trade is Uy’s forte, he has prior consular experience in both Ho Chi Minh City and Sydney, although he says the Canadian expat population in these cities pales in numbers compared to Jalisco.
Uy has already turned out for several events involving the Canadian community in the lakeside area and read a speech at the Remembrance Day ceremony hosted by the 904 Wing Royal Canadian Air Force Association last Monday (see page 32).
Like his predecessors, Uy urges Canadians living in the area, or just visiting, to register at http://travel.gc.ca/travelling/registration.
“If people are registered we know how to find them in an emergency,” he says. “An example was with the recent hurricane in Acapulco, when we had a lot of Canadians calling us and asking us to follow up on relatives and friends.”
Uy stresses that the database is for emergency purposes only and is not shared with other agencies in Canada.
The Guadalajara consulate is only open on weekdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for consular business such as passport renewals and notarial services – call first to make an appointment – but Uy reminds his compatriots of the emergency collect number in Ottawa (613-996-8885) that is staffed around the clock.
“There is always someone there who can help them 24 hours a day. If there is a big emergency, they will call us and wake us up if necessary. If it can wait until the next day, they will send an email and we will respond the very next morning when we come in.”
On the trade front Uy will find himself right at home in a region that enjoys close business ties to Canada.
“Our major goal is to do anything we can to help Canadian companies create and keep jobs in Canada,” he says. This entails assisting companies looking for clients, distributors and partners.
“We never say this is the person you have to do business with. We’re more like a dating service – bringing people together.”
Uy adds that an important part of his job is to make sure that Canadians who do business here are good corporate citizens and are socially responsible.
After three months in the region, Uy says he feels very much at home and is getting to grips with Spanish.
“It’s the first time I have worked primarily in another language,” he says. “But I can understand the grammar thanks to French and a lot of the vocabulary because of Filipino.”
The Philippines was under Spanish rule for 300 years, specifically the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which would later become Mexico.
Since arriving in Guadalajara Uy has learned more about the close links between Mexico and the Philippines.
“Words I thought were Castillian Spanish, such as palenque, banqueta, tianguis, which are used in the Philippines, I now realize came from Mexico.”
One reason for this, Uy explains, is that many of the conquistadors who came to Mexico later went on to the Philippines. He also points out that some Mexican traditions, including Dia de los Muertos, have similar manifestations in the Philippines.
As a Canadian in Mexico, Uy admits to missing a few homegrown staples (poutine is one he mentions), but is generally happy with the availability of products here.
“When I got here I was looking for something quick to eat, microwave food, but there isn’t a lot of it. I’ve found out this is better for me because I’m forced to cook. Now I’m eating veggies, learning all the foods that are here.”
Uy has taken some dancing lessons (salsa, cumbia) with “mixed success,” to help him converse in Spanish and played a few rounds of golf. As he settles down more, he hopes to do more sports that he favors, such as tennis, basketball and volleyball. He says he needs “to build up a tolerance to tequila,” which is frequently served at official functions – “even at lunch.”
After a few months here, Uy says he can easily see why so many Canadians choose to retire inland, rather than settle at the beach.
“You have the constancy of the temperature and good infrastructure. And you can watch hockey all year round on satellite television!”