The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that Lowe's Canadian division president Sylvain Prud'homme is tasked with doubling operating profit in this country in five years. The Globe's Marina Strauss writes that already the company has identified more than $1-billion of revenue and earnings opportunities. One of Mr. Prud'homme's first assignments will be to start stocking major appliances at Rona to capitalize on Lowe's strength in that category -- so dominant in its United States home country that market leader Home Depot Canada put a bigger push on appliances when Lowe's arrived here in 2007. As well, Mr. Prud'homme is looking to use Lowe's e-commerce know-how to bolster on-line shopping at Rona while taking advantage of Lowe's significant size to gain savings in its merchandise buying and other operations. Lowe's Canada will finally get a foothold in Quebec where it has no stores and Rona dominates. Mr. Prud'homme says: "We were still only the No. 10 player in market share at Lowe's. We're still small -- we only have 42 stores" in Canada." Rona has about 500 outlets. "We're much stronger together because now we have access to a lot of different things we did not have access to before."