The feature below highlighting Trinidad and Tobago's new High Commissioner to Ottawa, Philip Buxo, has been reproduced from the publication, Embassy
Philip Buxo practically bursts with energy as he walks through the door and shakes hands with his guest.
“Call me Phil,” the new high commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago says, quickly dispensing with formalities.
A short while later he is giving a tour of the large mission just south of downtown Ottawa that he has been appointed to lead. Gone will be the old posters of beaches, the shelves of products manufactured in the Caribbean state, the pictures of his predecessors.
Instead, interactive displays will be erected, extolling the benefits of the twin island state he calls home—and where he built a fortune as a successful businessman— as well as the whole of CARICOM.
This, he says, is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the numerous ideas he has for the mission.
“I have a specific agenda, to raise the profile of trade and investment opportunities in Trinidad and Tobago with Canada,” he says, adding: “I don’t believe in a quick fix. I think the way we can improve is by working hard. I don’t believe in winning the lottery to build our house.”
It’s this attitude that helped Mr. Buxo go from being a 22-year-old oilrig worker with a young family to owning a multi-million dollar logistics business serving some of the largest oil and gas companies in the world by the time he was 35. It’s also one of the reasons SNC-Lavalin made him a director, and why he has become his country’s high commissioner to Ottawa at age 40.
Mr. Buxo was raised in the southern part of Trinidad, where many foreign energy companies operate offshore rigs and other facilities. The son of an Ernst & Young accountant, he was surrounded by foreigners and business. He studied for a short time in Quebec and London but then, when he was 22, his wife became pregnant with their first child.
He found himself drawn to the world of offshore oilrigging. “I always want to value my time and maximize my time,” he says. “And I felt I would get a good reward working offshore. You work a week on, you get paid a lot of money, and then you work a week off.”
It was at this time that many foreign firms such as British Petroleum were expanding their presence in Trinidad and Tobago. It didn’t take Mr. Buxo long to see an opportunity.
“I could clearly see that there was a need for a good logistics supplier,” he says. “Just based on my five years experience working offshore, I felt very good that this would be a winner and someone with my personality and my understanding of the needs, we ended up developing that.”
Scrounging what money he had, borrowing from banks and making what promises he needed to, he bought 30 acres of industrial real estate near the southeastern tip of Trinidad.
Then, on the advice of his father, he signed contracts with some of the most important and reputable companies operating in the country, agreeing to provide them equipment, supplies, workers and even buildings where needed.
“Eventually I recommended that the government build a port there because there was so much activity,” he says.
At the same time, Mr. Buxo’s family continued to grow. In 2006, with the education of his four young daughters in mind, he and his wife Kearene decided to move to Canada. The decision was made easy as Mr. Buxo’s brother had studied at the University of Western Ontario and married a Canadian woman, and his mother was in the country as well.
To facilitate the move, Mr. Buxo sold part of the business, while his father took over managing it. He says when the family settled in Oakville, an affluent community outside Toronto, he had no immediate plans to work.
“I was thinking about maybe opening a Tim Horton's or something,” he says with a laugh. But there were no plans to retire permanently. “It’s nice to have the ability, if you want, to relax and take a holiday. But it’s not nice having nothing to do.”
Eventually SNC-Lavalin came knocking, offering to make him director of the company’s CARICOM energy and infrastructure division.
Mr. Buxo believes this experience working in a senior position at a Canadian company will be invaluable in his new role as high commissioner. And from that perspective, he would like to see Canadian companies “get back into the game” in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as the Caribbean as a whole.
One key contributor to this would be the completion of free trade talks between Canada and CARICOM. A third round was to be held in Ottawa in early April, though it’s unclear how the election will affect things.
Either way, Mr. Buxo says his country is strongly in favour of a deal. “That’s part of a chain of activities that need to take place,” he says. But perhaps more importantly, Mr. Buxo plans to go directly to Canadian businesses themselves, to highlight the potential his country has and why they should encourage the government to make it a priority.
“We in Trinidad and Tobago and CARICOM need to go to your private sector— the SNC-Lavalins and the Suncors and the rest of your heavyweights, the blue chips—and be able to market a good story,” he says. “Those are the guys who need to go to your ministers.”
The story he’s planning to market? “That here is a friendly place where you can invest, and this is a much more palatable risk than going into some of these other environments,” he says.
“Canada wants to invest in Brazil. Where is your safe zone? Where’s your base? And that’s why Trinidad is logistically positioned in the right place. We’re set up for that, we’re set up as a hub for that kind of activity.”
A new trade office is being established in Toronto and Mr. Buxo, who still lives in Oakville, plans to spend half his time there and half in Ottawa.
“I really sense the private sector is where we’re going to spend a lot of our time, to raise Trinidad and Tobago’s profile up on the radar.”
By Lee Berthiaume lee@embassymag.ca
