2023-12-16 05:00:00
It’s not every day that we see a minister on the verge of tears while talking about an entrepreneur in the National Assembly. This shows the influence that Bernard Lemaire had on Christian Dubé.
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With reddened eyes, the Minister of Health had this strong sentence during the tribute he paid to Mr. Lemaire at the Salon Bleu last week: “I wish each person to have the chance to meet a Bernard Lemaire during his life.
Mr. Dubé will always remember a visit to Italian factories that he made with Mr. Lemaire in the early 2000s. He was then head of finance at Cascades, the company co-founded by Bernard Lemaire in 1964.
Christian Dubé and Bernard Lemaire (date unknown). Photo provided by Cascades
Lying under a machine in Italy
“To see Bernard lying down under a cardboard machine, I said: cr***, how come?” launches Christian Dubé during a telephone interview with The newspaper.
“He could be very strategic, but you couldn’t remove the guy who bought I don’t know how many factories – maybe a hundred over 30 years,” he says.
Cascades was then preparing to merge its European boxboard activities with those of the Italian group Reno de Medici.
An “operator” at heart, Mr. Lemaire “spent a lot of time visiting factories before going to the office to negotiate,” underlines Mr. Dubé, who left Cascades in 2012.
René Lévesque (left) and Bernard Lemaire. Photo taken from the Cascades website
“Be the best”
Christian Dubé was head of finance at Domtar, a competitor of Cascades, when he met Bernard Lemaire and his two brothers, Laurent and Alain. The two companies were then preparing to combine their Canadian containerboard activities. The fruit of this merger, Norampac, was created in 1997. Seven years later, Mr. Dubé made the jump to Cascades.
“Bernard’s philosophy was how we can be the best to be the ones who will survive,” he says, recalling the many challenges that the pulp and paper industry has faced over the years.
“What I learned [de M. Lemaire], it’s about having a clear strategy and above all, to get people on board, it’s about respecting them. It sounds very loud, but it is experienced in everyday life. If you tell your people “be careful with your spending, we’re going through a difficult time right now”, well, you have to lead by example. It’s the best way to have the respect of your people.”
From left to right: Bernard, Alain and Laurent Lemaire. Photo taken from the Cascades website
The Cascades à la Santé model?
The minister is trying to put this approach into practice in the health network.
“I hope that in all our learning, including that which we will have with the departure of Bernard… How can we ensure, in our large organizations, to have managers who think in terms of a culture of business? What defined Cascades was decentralization, it was giving managers a lot of independence, that they were accountable, that they were capable of making suggestions.”
Christian Dubé also hopes that the exceptional life of Bernard Lemaire will encourage young Quebecers to dream big in terms of entrepreneurship.
“There is nothing better than these models to push us,” he believes. Bernard said: Quebecers can succeed […] There is nothing stopping us, in Quebec, from developing world-class businesses. Stunts, Couche-Tard, CGI, that’s it. And Quebecers must continue to think that it is possible and that it must be done.”
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