Category: Perspectives

Any entrepreneur worth their salt is very careful about who they do business with. 

Backgrounds are checked. Past employment is measured. Every effort is taken to ensure that, when a crisis comes for you, your business partner will be there for you, not the reason you are there.  

For me, this centring of trust echoes both in my professional career and in my reality as an Indigenous person. 

When I am looking at beginning a business partnership with a company, before I examine the profit margins or the reputational impact, I ask a very simple question: who are you? 

Are you a person who looks for profit or prosperity? 

Do you think about yourself first or about community? 

Do you evaluate the scope of a project by its impact on your bottom line or on the environment? 

Now, Indigenous peoples are not a monolith. However, this is how I believe the majority of us examine every decision we make.  

We are people who strive for abundance. We believe that there is enough for everyone, and that is a fact that should be celebrated and guaranteed, a reality that should be centred in everything that we do. We put aside our personal opinions and take a look at things broadly, not linearly. All-encompassing, not top-down.  

But this top-down, linear perspective has been the root of several failures in relationships between leaders of industry and Indigenous communities. 

In 2021, after the discovery in Kamloops, the Canadian public briefly escaped this entrapment. Canada opened its heart to the Indigenous community, offering sympathy and apologies to us in a moment where we were reeling emotionally. Canadian businesses in particular appeared ready to step up. 

But it’s critical that this be more than just a burst of participation. Relationships aren’t built overnight and require sustained, reciprocal engagement. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Call to Action 92 urges the corporate sector in Canada to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework. 

From a legal perspective, this can be complicated, but the principles are simple. It means meaningful consultation and respectful relationships, including working patiently to obtain the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before proceeding with economic development projects. 

It means equitable job and training opportunities for Indigenous peoples and advancing long-term sustainable benefits from economic development projects. And it means education for management and staff on the history of Indigenous peoples, so that we can gradually foster intercultural competency. 

For leaders who are used to a top-down form of thinking, this may be an adjustment, but it’s part of a necessary mindset shift for long-term, truthful, trusting, and fair-minded relationships with Indigenous communities.  

It’s those relationships that will prepare us to work together better to figure out the changes, challenges, and opportunities we all face in the years ahead. To me, that reset towards the pursuit of abundance is worth prioritizing. 

Karen Mackenzie is the President of MacKintosh Canada, an Indigenous-owned, international consulting company.

In conversation with Mike Moffatt

AV – We have a housing crisis: there are too many people and too few houses. What’s the solution?

MM – I think we need to look at all the barriers and bottlenecks that raise the cost of housing. Taxes and fees are a big part of that. In the 20 years since I bought my first home in London, Ont., development charges and other taxes have shot up about 1,000 per cent. The cost of land is up about 1,000 per cent. These are the drivers of unaffordability. If this path continues, development charges in the city of Toronto will be $2 million per unit 20 years from now. It’s unsustainable.

AV – And yet, on the other side of this, cities have been pushed into relying on development charges because there’s been a focus on freezing property taxes. You end up with poor cities being asked to get poorer to solve a housing crisis.

MM – We have to look at alternative models. There’s this whole idea out there that growth pays for growth, but why should the growth of housing pay for roads? Shouldn’t it be the growth of cars that pays for roads? Why is it that we’re building apartment buildings in walkable neighbourhoods, with municipalities then turning around and using those development charges to pay for expanding arterial roads in the suburbs? 

For example, commuters from Carleton drive into Ottawa every day to go to work. The city has to expand arterial roads that those residents use every day, but don’t pay for. You’re making the taxpayers of Ottawa pay for all of this infrastructure that’s largely used by people who don’t live there. There’s a massive and problematic cross-subsidy.

AV – Do we have to recalculate the math, but also reframe the expectations of home buyers that a white picket fence with a front yard and backyard and a two-car garage is not the new normal?

MM – I think we’re already there. Detached home starts in Ontario are down about 70 per cent from 20 years ago. It’s not so much that money is going to new homeowners in the suburbs; it’s going to existing homeowners. We are taxing density downtown to pay for infrastructure, which is often just upkeep of infrastructure that’s been underfunded for decades.

AV – So we need to rethink how we pay for infrastructure?

MM – Absolutely. Why do we put water and wastewater infrastructure on development charges, but not electricity infrastructure? If we ran water and wastewater on a utility model, like electricity, those utilities could borrow at government rates. Instead of paying for that water treatment plant at, say, three per cent, four per cent municipal interest rates, we end up making new homeowners pay for it at five and six per cent mortgage rates. 

This comes down to what we value most – if it’s making banks rich, then the status quo works just fine. But if we care about great communities or great neighbourhoods, we have to rethink the way we finance infrastructure.

The time for patchwork solutions is over and if we’re serious about housing affordability we should get serious about dismantling outdated financial models and acknowledging development charges for what they are: a constantly rising tax on housing.

If governments keep coming to the table with half measures that overlook this necessary reform, then I think we’ll see people start to tune out altogether. The time has long past come to rethink our cross subsidization and put attainable housing back in reach.

Mike Moffatt is Senior Director of Policy and Innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute.

It’s interesting coming back to Canadian media after being gone for almost 10 years. I left because I was frustrated that [the industry] was not really acknowledging that the internet was creeping up behind them. And I think to a certain degree, they still haven’t acknowledged this. Despite 10 years of massive problems in terms of revenue and trust, a lot of the media is still hanging on to an approach completely out of alignment with how people consume information. 

They still look at media as a static product: a daily paper, or a six o’clock newscast, or a specific show at a specific time. They are still oriented around the idea that the media is a thing we produce rather than a constant state. In reality, it’s all channel inputs, all the time. It’s WhatsApp groups, or YouTube or Instagram. Young people don’t really go to a URL. We are in a post-website era. The idea of my kids typing in a website URL is insane. We have to be thinking of our channels first and how those feed back into our repository of information. 

At the same time, the need for Canadian media and the need for Canadian storytelling has never been higher. There are so many people consuming more information than ever. The audience is there, which is exciting for journalism. But I think there is still a massive mismatch between how most Canadian media is operating and what the audience wants.

For me, the future of journalism is going to be about specificity. We’re a huge country with massive issues and I think we’re going through a phase of reorienting around first principles. Some of the biggest investments being made in Canadian media right now are in local news. For eight years, we were all writing the same trend pieces and hot takes. And now we want to know: who just got murdered in my town? What’s going on with the school? Why is my water not working? I think the next phase of who will survive in media will be about specificity as a source of Canadian information.

Siri Agrell is a long-time journalist and current CEO of BetaKit, a digital news platform covering Canadian startups and technological innovation. 

“Useless and overpaid.” “Government relations flacks.” “The rotten fruit of undue handouts, privileges, and protections by the state.”

These are some of the less-than-charitable words Pierre Poilievre fired across the bow of corporate Canada in a National Post piece written this past May. With the Conservatives riding high in the polls, does a future Poilievre government spell the end of corporate lobbying as we know it? Will the 50-odd lobbying firms and their clients’ so-called flacks in Ottawa shutter their doors overnight? 

Fortunately for public affairs advisors everywhere, the current Conservative leader was as much seized with the solution in the piece as he was with raising hell about the problem. 

In his words, “Your communications must reach truckers, waitresses, nurses, carpenters — all the people who are too productive to tune into” a Parliamentary committee or downtown Toronto/Ottawa luncheon. The idea is that if you’ve managed to convince your colleagues it’s good for your company, you should also do the same with Canadians before taking it to Parliament. 

Lobbying is a completely legal and regulated activity in Canada. It takes its name from the lobbies of the UK Parliament where MPs and peers gather before and after debates in the House of Commons, and where constituents used to have the opportunity to approach their representatives to raise their particular issue or case. 

Poilievre’s solution hearkens back to those democratic roots. Political parties are fundamentally guided by their appeal to and influence over the greatest number of voters to win government. In other words, a shrewd political party will chase the voters and not the other way around. 

In this brave new world, companies and organizations, especially those who operate in highly regulated industries, must embrace grassroots campaigning. 

Even before Poilievre put pen to paper on this issue, grassroots lobbying campaigns have enjoyed significant success in both shifting Canadian public opinion and governments. Think of the Pathways campaign that secured more funding for carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies for the oil and gas sector. Think of Unifor and the pressure brought to bear to reverse GM’s decision to close its Oshawa plant. 

Here’s the kicker: Grassroots campaigns engineer change that lasts much longer than a transactional win. These changes are not built on the special interests of a small group, but have fundamentally changed the hearts and minds of Canadians with regards to an issue, perhaps for decades. That is real power – power tied to the Canadians you serve and power that can influence governments and the world. 

But does corporate Canada have the social licence to do these campaigns? The overwhelming response is yes. Navigator’s think tank, the Canadian Centre for the Purpose of the Corporation, found in a 2021 study that half of Canadians support corporations trying to influence public policy on issues as diverse as wage inequality to child care to climate change. 

So corporate Canada, now is the time to build your coalition of voters. Your business may depend on it. 

After months of intrigue, missteps, and speculation, Justin Trudeau has finally confirmed that his near decade as prime minister will come to an end. While the headlines and punditry have understandably focused on the next steps for the Liberal Party of Canada and implications on tariff threats south of the border, the lasting impact of his tenure in office warrants reflection. As we approach the end of an era, two of our colleagues sat down to take stock of Trudeau’s legacy: what he’s accomplished, where he’s fallen short, and how Canadians will ultimately remember him.

Trudeau will be remembered as the global benchmark for progressive leadership

Over the last nine years, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cemented a legacy as a transformational force in Canadian politics, and as a flag-bearer of progressive politics around the globe. 

His 2015 victory ushered in a new era for young progressive leaders determined to act on climate change, gender equality and support for the middle class. While there were many like him to follow, including the likes of Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Ukraine) and Emmanuel Macron (France), Trudeau served as an early benchmark for progressives around the world. 

Trudeau has gone on to transform Canada’s social safety net, significantly expanding the supports available to lower-income families. These include the Canada Child Benefit, the Canada Workers Benefit, $10-a-day child care, the expansion of CPP, and a starting point for pharmacare and dental care, just to name a few. 

While critics take issue with the costs of these programs, their impact has been considerable, with poverty rates, including child and senior poverty, declining significantly during Trudeau’s tenure. Though some programs remain incomplete, there is no doubt a future government will be hard-pressed to reverse all or even some of these policies.

Lastly, Trudeau has faced more than his fair share of national crises, serving as a statesman through the first Donald Trump presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, the renegotiation of NAFTA, and increasing global turmoil. 

History has often looked kindly on leaders for their actions in times of crises, even if they were deeply unpopular when leaving office. Leaders like Winston Churchill, Brian Mulroney and even Pierre Elliott Trudeau all built lasting legacies despite their low popularity at the time. 

When Justin Trudeau moves on from the role, he too won’t be remembered for the temporary political pressures he faced, but for the way he represented us when we most needed leadership.

Matthew Barnes is a Principal at Navigator, and a proud Liberal.

Trudeau will be remembered as the politician who took Canadians from haves to have-nots

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may want to be remembered as a template for progressive leadership, but he is more likely to be remembered as the leader who killed Canadians’ belief in progressive politics. 

After positioning himself as a new kind of leader, with the self-aggrandizing claim that he was building not just a political party but a political movement, Canadians are left with higher costs, rising crime rates and worsening government finances.

A few examples: The Consumer Price Index in Canada has increased approximately 27.4 per cent from 2015, when Trudeau came to power. Our low-growth, low-productivity economy is leaving Canadians behind, with the average American worker out-earning their Canadian counterpart by $20,000 annually. Violent crime has surged by 50 per cent, with gun violence spiking a staggering 116 per cent over the past nine years. 

When Trudeau assumed office in 2015, Canada’s federal debt stood at around $616 billion, a sum accumulated over nearly 150 years under two dozen prime ministers. Today that debt has skyrocketed to $1.232 trillion, doubling in less than a decade and representing an unprecedented level of fiscal mismanagement. This is more than just a figure; it represents a crushing financial weight on future generations, with severe implications for our public services. For the first time in a generation, Canada now spends more on interest payments than on health care, diverting vital funds away from services we rely on. 

As the second Trudeau era finally comes to an end, it isn’t a sign of Canadians going backwards, but a clear rebuke of his governing philosophy, which made life more expensive, our economy less dynamic, and our streets less safe. It’s the next generation of leadership that will be left to pick up the pieces.

Kyle Jacobs is an Associate Principal at Navigator, and a proud Conservative.