Lack of diversity: Only white men, this doesn’t work anymore

Have you seen the photos of the Northvolt mega plant project press conference in the past few days? The lack of diversity was glaring.

On Friday I saw a photo by photographer Pierre-Paul Poulin on a website Newspaper. In the photo we see from left to right the co-founder of Northvolt, Paolo Cerruti, the Minister of Economy and Innovation of Quebec, Pierre Fitzgibbon, the Prime Minister of Quebec, François Legault, Justin Trudeau, Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and finally the CEO of Northvolt, Peter Carlson.

As François Legault said, this massive battery cell factory represents the largest investment in manufacturing in the entire history of Quebec.

I’m frustrated by the fact that during this press conference, white and male decision-makers were brought up.

Everyone’s money

The federal and provincial governments are funding Northvolt up to $3 billion to build the massive plant. Our governments will also grant more than $4.5 billion to the Swedish Production Company.

Would women and people of color have decided to allocate these public funds differently? We won’t know.

But what I do know is that in 2023, we can no longer consider this lack of diversity to be normal at such important moments in our history.

For better representation

I find it difficult to imagine that a person in 2023 would not feel uncomfortable seeing a panel of decision-makers without any diversity.

Just because it’s been this way for a very long time, doesn’t mean it’s normal.

I find it important to emphasize the anomalous nature of the lack of diversity, and it is a matter of moving towards better representation of all people in our society.