Category: Chairman’s Desk

Executive Chairman Jaime Watt joins Vassy Kapelos to discuss the ongoing Conservative Party of Canada leadership race and how it has been impacted by COVID-19.

This article was originally posted on LinkedIn on May 6, 2020.

This month, Canadian provinces start hanging out the “open for business” signs. From retail stores in Quebec to restaurant patios in Manitoba, golf courses in Alberta to garden centres in Ontario, thousands of companies are welcoming back their customers. Each province has its own list, rules, and timetable, depending on how well it is “planking the curve” of COVID-19. And entrepreneurs face unprecedented challenges, as they consider how to comply with government strictures and still stay afloat.

Many business owners are confused or crying foul, about rules that complicate service or disadvantage certain firms. Manitoba, for example, does not permit gatherings of more than ten people. But how does this affect a restaurant? Are servers counted among the ten, even though they are not always present on the patio? Until May 8, Ontario’s garden centres were limited to curbside pickup and delivery. Yet grocery stores, some of which also sold plants, could have customers walk through and smell the roses. Why the double standard?

And even if businesses follow the rules, how do they reassure clients that it is indeed safe to return? Medical professionals, many of whom can now resume their practices, face an uphill battle. Because of this pandemic, hospitals have seen a dramatic drop in emergency room visits. If people are not seeking help for serious issues including heart attacks and appendicitis, are they really going to get in the dentist’s or optometrist’s chair for a routine cleaning or eye exam?

And then there are employees. Unless they feel their workplace is safe, many may not report back. Some unions, such as the United Food and Commercial Workers’ union, which represents employees at the Cargill meat processing plant in Alberta, have sought stop work orders. In other cases, workers may choose to remain on CERB or student aid rather than risk workplace exposure to the virus. Labour now commands a premium, even though business income is down.

In this new environment, your business needs to do more than just reopen. It needs a reopening strategy. You need to anticipate the expectations of your customers and employees. You need creative thinking to outperform the competition — just because coffee shops can open does not mean clients will patronize your coffee shop. You need to know what will draw them in – and what risks might be keeping them away.

Think of the debate around masks. Will mandatory masks make customers feel safer in your establishment or simply put them off? Already two grocery chains, T and T and Longo’s, have announced that shoppers will need to cover their faces. Should your business follow suit – and if so, what will the protocol look like? Will clients be expected to purchase masks if they don’t have one? Will they be physically turned away if they refuse?

As with every successful strategy, the key is information. With it, you can avoid costly mistakes like a public relations disaster or spending on unnecessary precautions. Thorough research, including focus groups, polling and analysis, can help shape your road map to recovery. But how do you obtain this information, particularly if you are a small to medium sized business already closely watching your bottom line?

That is where strategy and public affairs firms can provide a distinct advantage. Because they work with clients across a variety of industries, public affairs firms can conduct multi-sector research which is cost-effective and comprehensive. They can tease out the information for a specific business without losing sight of the big picture. They monitor trends in government and the private sector which impact your industry. They can connect you with other firms or institutions looking for partnerships which could benefit your business in the short or long term. They can advise you on how to best engage your employees so they feel safe on their return to work – and choose to stay on the job.

This type of strategic thinking is also crucial for supply chain management, which can make or break your reopening strategy. The worst possible move is to over-promise and under-deliver. Getting back to garden centres, many of their websites in Ontario feature plants which are not yet available, due to backlogs in the supply chain. To keep money coming in the door, a company could offer incentives—such as free delivery or bonus items—for customers who pre-purchase certain products. This would set them apart from the competition, as well as avoid frustrating customers who assume the products are already in stock.

Finally, it is crucial to remember that reopening is not a one-shot deal. What works one week may not work the next, and your business must have the agility to pivot as the pandemic runs its course. You need strategies for today but also for tomorrow, including contingency plans in case you are forced to close shop again for a second wave of the virus. The right advisors can help navigate the “new normal”, keep your bottom line healthy and ensure your customers and employees are safe. Everyone can use a hand as we stay apart – but move forward – together.

This article was originally published in the Toronto Star on May 3, 2020.

It’s not right, nor is it fair to compare one tragedy with another. To claim some grief more poignant than other grief.

But it is equally wrong to let new grief submerge the pain and memory of grief past.

As we come to grips with the devastation that COVID-19 has wrought on our communities, our health, our finances, our very way of life, it has also, for some of us, brought back painful reminders of another pandemic: HIV/AIDS, which has infected 74 million and killed 32 million people.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is one that I remember well. It decimated my community; robbed an entire generation of unrealized promise, sowed terror among us, changed how we lived and how we were intimate with each other.

Like COVID-19, it began in a seemingly far away place. A mysterious illness that started manifesting itself in otherwise healthy young men.

I remember reading about it for the first time in “The Body Politic,” sitting on the steps of the Second Cup at Church and Wellesley. I also remember paying it no mind. Those were glorious, carefree days. Days filled with the certainty of invincibility that is only the promise of the young.

And then, my friends began to get sick. More and more and more of my friends got sicker and sicker and sicker. And then, they started to die. So many that I stopped counting after I had gone to 50 funerals. I had yet to have my 30th birthday.

Not only did they die, they died with the cruel burden of stigma. AIDS phobia was rampant. It showed its ugly face in many ways. People were disowned by their families. Jobs and homes were lost. Medical care was hard to come by. Partners were not allowed to be together in the last hours of life. Funeral homes refused to collect bodies. Politicians turned a blind eye.

It was then we learned that we would have to look after ourselves. And look after ourselves we did. Some took to the streets in protest. Others committed acts of civil disobedience. Still more cared, cooked and cleaned for our sick when no one else would. And comforted them when they would otherwise have been abandoned.

As a community, we challenged the rules. We demanded to be heard. We changed the way drugs were brought to market. We built our own health care and support organizations. We insisted that people who were HIV+ were not HIV/AIDS victims but rather were people who were living, yes living, with HIV/AIDS. We changed the way we had sex.

And, in doing so, we brought about a revolution, the embers of which still burn today. After all these years, we continue to be a community more self-reliant, more resilient, more skeptical of authority and more caring than we ever were before.

We no longer take every day for granted, no longer believe that anything will last forever.

And while those lessons stayed with us, only years later did we understand just what those lessons meant. What all that pain taught us.

As I have been remembering that time, recalling those friends and partners I still miss today, wondering how on earth I cheated the disease, I’ve been thinking about what lessons we will take from this pandemic when the television lights turn off and the headlines recede.

Will we learn the importance of being more resilient? Of being better able to take care of ourselves as a country and as a people?

Will we understand people have been impacted by this pandemic in brutally unequal ways and that we, as a society, all pay a price for that? Will we be willing to rethink what fairness means?

Will we understand that we truly are in this together? That we really are each other?

In the worst days of the AIDS crisis, no one could imagine that they would one day marry their partner and society would celebrate it; that my now partner would be the proud grandfather of three.

Our challenge today is hard and may grow harder still, but I am optimistic because I know Canadians are already coming together, strengthening our communities and mending the divisions revealed in this pandemic.

Crises reveal our character — how good we are, how kind we are. And if you know where to look for it, that character and that kindness is where you will find our strength.

This article was originally published in the Toronto Star on April 26, 2020.

Though it was justifiably overshadowed by last weekend’s tragedy in Nova Scotia and the ongoing pandemic itself, parliamentarians this week resolved an important debate over when and how the House of Commons and its committees will convene during this state of emergency.

This debate seemed like a distraction or even a nuisance to most. After all, the pressing concerns of the nation are immediate: getting payments to those in need, producing ventilators, sourcing raw materials for testing. But far from being an academic concern, the smooth and proper functioning of Parliament is actually now more critical than ever.

The compromise motion approved this week suspends regular sittings of all 338 MPs until May 25. Instead, it strikes a new COVID-19 committee whose members will meet on the floor once weekly, and virtually twice weekly. While the plan had the support of the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc, the Conservatives objected to this proposal, arguing that the prime minister has effectively replaced Parliament with daily press conferences; pointing out that even as MPs refuse to meet, construction workers continue to work daily renovating Centre Block.

The Opposition had a point: there is no reason that if other essential businesses have found a way to carry on by respecting social distancing and implementing necessary health and safety measures, the most essential business of all — government — cannot, or will not, bring itself to do the same.

But with this motion’s passage, an institution, much of whose strength flows from its aversion to change, has now itself changed. But it has hardly, as the expression goes, changed on a dime.

Real challenges remain for the speaker and his staff. There are MPs who represent rural ridings where broadband connectivity is spotty at best. The most popular teleconferencing software is insufficiently secure. Many MPs struggle with the technology. There is, surprisingly, no easy way to arrange for simultaneous translation. It is not clear if the laws of parliamentary privilege that protect members from defamation and libel lawsuits apply in the virtual realm. And, of course, other quaint, many would say anachronistic, customs, such as the tradition of directing remarks to the speaker instead of a specific member, may also need to be revisited. As you can see, the list goes on and on.

But beyond those challenges, Andrew Scheer and his party face a more substantial one: how to hold the government to account in the face of this new reality. Fortunately, he has some promising international examples to look to.

Westminster, the mother Parliament in the U.K., has adopted a similar “hybrid” approach to its sittings, in which a proportional fraction of members remains physically present while up to 120 participate virtually; either group may put questions to ministers.

And while it is not the same, they are making it work. It was, for example, hardly the end of the world last week when Sir Keir Starmer had to make his House of Commons debut as Britain’s opposition leader during prime minister’s questions without the customary cheering and hissing that mark such occasions.

All opposition parties struggle to find their voice in times of crisis. In Canada, it doesn’t help that not only is our opposition leader someone who has quit his job, the race to replace him has been suspended.

Yet the pressing need for checks and balances remains. As I wrote in this space two weeks ago, democracy is never as precarious as during a pandemic. The government has already shown itself unafraid of anti-democratic overreach. Its attempt to invest the minister of finance with sweeping emergency powers that would last 18 months being exhibit A. Only in the face of fierce public criticism, led by the opposition, did the government back down.

Make no mistake about it: there are legitimate questions to ask. And forget questions about what the government has done. That’s water under the bridge. No, questions need to be asked about this government’s plan for when and how it plans to reopen the economy and about when and how it plans to rebuild Canada.

And those questions need to be both asked, and answered, in our house, the House of Commons.

This article originally appeared in the Toronto Star on April 19, 2020.

Of all the things underpinning our pre-COVID19 lives that we paid little mind to, supply chains would have been at the top of the list.

And for good reason. Parts were seamlessly delivered on a just-in-time basis to our factories. Shops were filled to the rafters with the latest fashions. Shelves were loaded with asparagus and fresh berries, even in the dead of winter.

But as the song goes, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” and the past few weeks have shown how little time it takes for, if not it all to be gone, at least for the cupboard to be bare.

Initially, it was our reliance on Chinese goods that proved problematic as that country’s economy shut down. Since then, China has rebounded but at a cost. By leveraging its position as a vital supplier to the Western world, China has systemically strengthened its state power through commercial networks that manufacture and transport essential goods like medicines and personal protective equipment.

It’s no surprise that President Xi has taken advantage of this crisis to manoeuvre China toward greater dominance. It is also no surprise just how successful China has been in disrupting supply chains and isolating countries like Canada along the way.

To make matters worse, these moves come while our closest ally, the United States, seems intent on leaving us further isolated.

Two weeks ago, in a move Premier Ford declared “totally unacceptable,” U.S. officials halted the shipment to Ontario of 500,000 medical masks from manufacturer 3M.

The situation was resolved but the episode underscored the frightening reality that Canada, with zero domestic capacity to produce N95 masks, is wholly dependent on a supply chain built on trust.

So, amidst this never-before-contemplated disruption, maybe it’s time for a return to “made in Canada.”

Canada’s manufacturing sector has been shrinking for decades as trade deals like NAFTA have taken effect and production has moved overseas. For a long time, this decline has been characterized as the inevitable cost of globalization. But now, when Canada needs quick, reliable access to goods that we find more difficult than ever to acquire, we need to reconsider those assumptions.

We must recognize that, even setting aside COVID-19, the world has changed. Exhibit A? The 3M issue. It is simply inconceivable that Presidents Bush or Obama, or any other former president for that matter, would pressure an American company to withhold life-saving equipment from Canada.

So too, the nature of Chinese power has changed the world. This week, the EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, explicitly urged member governments to consider ownership stakes in European companies whose tumbling stock market values may leave them susceptible to Chinese takeover during or after this pandemic. Canada’s industries are equally susceptible to anti-competitive efforts by China.

Conservative leadership candidate Erin O’Toole has leapt on these trends. In a campaign video released this week, O’Toole called out “corrupt foreign governments” and “incompetent global institutions,” like China and the World Health Organization, which have left Canada to fend for itself. O’Toole’s solution? “Buy, build, and grow Canadian.”

In the latter half of the 20th century, Canada’s economy was denationalized — through the sale of Crown corporations like Petro Canada, CN Rail and Air Canada — in the belief that the same public policy outcomes, previously pursued through ownership, could be achieved through regulation. At that time, both citizens and governments felt confident in the effectiveness of those regulatory policy tools.

As our leaders plan their long-term response to our latest economic catastrophe, already christened “the Great Lockdown,” it is worth asking whether they continue to have the same confidence in those same policy tools.

It’s possible that Canada’s response to the long-term problems this crisis has exposed will rely on not only a new role for the private sector but also a new relationship between public and private sector. As the last recession taught us, government bailouts alone will not bring back Canadian manufacturing. Nor will they bring us a supply chain we can trust.

That’s something that will take all of us — government, business and all Canadians — to do. As the prime minister says, “we are all in this together.”