Nuanced. - 276. Jim Balsillie: Canada–U.S. Trade War Explained by Former CEO

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Former BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie discusses Canada’s productivity, intellectual property, Donald Trump, Mark Carney, trade agreements and economic sovereignty with host Aaron Pete.Send us Fan MailSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

I'm Jim Balsali. I'm the retired chair and co-ceo of Research Emotion, which I grew to $20 billion before I retired in 2012. Why do you think it's so difficult to build and keep a business of that scale in Canada today? We've had a lot of erosion in our prosperity. So those that succeed, I say they succeed overwhelmingly the wind in their face. Imagine what they could do if we put the wind at their back. And do you see any changes from this current liberal government? in response to that? I've yet to see anything on intangibles or estate craft.

I've not seen anything on intellectual property, anything on data. I'm giving them a bit of a pass for the first year because they need to learn, but the time for giving them a pass is running out. What are your thoughts on CEOs pay and taxing the rich? It would be very counterproductive to tax CEOs more. They just leave. And they can. And the companies will leave.

and the money will leave, and we've seen that. You're better on trying to grow the pie than to grab the pie. Why do you think there's such a narrow-minded approach in Ottawa in comparison to the US right now? What's going on? Jim, thank you so much for being willing to join us today. It's an honor to have you on the show. Would you mind briefly introducing yourself for folks who might not be acquainted with your work?

Sure. I'm Jim Balsely. I'm the retired chair and co-ceo of Research Emotion, which I grew to $20 billion before I retired in 2012. I'm very active in my commercial endeavor endeavors, mainly tech but otherwise, and North America principally. But I also do a lot in public policy and philanthropy and realms of capacity building and social services and culture in the Arctic. So it's very rich and fulfilling life.

And lots to discuss on all of those fronts. First, I'd just like to know you helped build a Canadian company that changed how the world communicated. Why do you think it's so difficult to build and keep a business of that scale in Canada today? When I was growing RIM, I was very fortunate because my commercialization mentors were in the United States. And so we were kind of seen as an American company. which helped me navigate the terrain that of getting money in 150 countries around the world. And back then, there was a real focus on Team Canada, growing Canadian companies. And that was something really Jean-Cretchen and Paul Martin really embraced.

But then for some strange reason, as the world became more hands-on with their companies and promoting them and engaging them, we went hands-off, or even worse, we focused on foreign companies growing in Canada so that they figured if you helped Google put whatever, or Facebook or Microsoft grow, that somehow that would benefit Canada, but in fact it benefited their home country.

So the thinking changed. It went from engagement for our time to non-engagement, to really strike. actually putting wind in the face of Canadian companies. And with that, we've, we've had a lot of erosion in our prosperity. So those that succeed, I say they succeed overwhelmingly with the wind in their face. Imagine what they could do if we put the wind at their back. Interesting. I'd love to get into what putting the wind in their back looks like. But before we get there, before Blackberry was a household name, how did you convince Power?

customers to take a chance on a small company from Waterloo? They weren't really taking a chance per se. We used a lot of guerrilla marketing campaigns as the expression for it. It's probably more common now where we were seeding units into influential people. And so we were playing with traditional sort of power structures where we put this in the hands of like the CEOs and their assistance, and then it transformed their relationship or working teams in deals, and therefore these spread virally. So the people who adopted it after their bosses or bosses bosses used it, they were told what to do. and because there was a viral structure to how we created the product and how we inserted it in the market.

Interesting. Losing the signal describes you leaving Harvard for a job at Sutherland Schultz, paying roughly half of what you would have earned on Wall Street from my understanding. What pulled you toward running a business? It was a lot less than one half, that's for sure. but yeah there are parts of the book that get it right there are parts that the book gets wrong but my interest my application to hbs was i'm an electrician son it was to um uh become an entrepreneur and i was interested in tech which was very um out there in the late

80s so um yeah that was the i was looking for that opportunity to be an operator in a tech type company. And so I was given, I was this chief financial officer, but I was also responsible for these fledgling tech products. And I had full P&L for them. And they grew very quickly. And that gave me the confidence that I knew how to do this. You've said you wanted BlackBerry Messenger on rival phones before you left.

Why couldn't you get the company to make the shift while you still had that level of influence? Yeah, that was a very difficult time for me because they, fundamentally, I'd spent a year and a half and bought some companies, one called Live Profile, which you can still, I think they're still on the net and Nube, and that allowed us to work cross platform, but also it had a whole storage capability for media into the cloud. So we were a social media for SMS. And I navigated the commercialization of RIM for 20 years to 5.5. We just finished a quarter of like $5.2 billion.

And yeah, Mike and the new CEO just canceled it without telling me. And I was very surprised at the time. And they said that this would undermine hardwill. wear sales and said yeah but hardware is already dead and we weren't making money on hardware making money on the services so but when they sacrificed the services business for a new hardware OS it took away the profitability of the company and so yeah that was um that was a boardroom surprise to me i was on the board call of the board meeting and they just said oh we've decided this and I called afterwards and they said it's a done decision.

And yeah, very, very disappointed in that. And I was surprised how, I was disappointed how surprised it was. I'm thinking, how could this be? How could I let that get to that point where they just did something so foundational without talking to me when I'd navigated this all this long? but it shows that you have to manage power dynamics of a board. It leads me into a reflection I've been having a lot lately. I interview different people, the Premier of Alberta, Pierre Paulyev,

and one of the things I think I need to develop within myself and be able to maintain is an ability to somewhat predict where things are going, where the wind is blowing, what the future looks like. And the thing I love about speaking with like an individual like yourself is that that is half of the job, right, is trying to predict where things are going to go. And reputations and the futures of companies are built on trying to project out as best as you can where things are going to go. And on this, you ultimately were correct. And I just wonder how you think about that for businesses.

How important is the ability to predict where things are going? And do you think that businesses do a good job of recognizing when somebody got it right, even if it was a few years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that those predictions, that ability to look out and make a prediction and get it right is a rare skill because obviously most people in entrepreneurship and business get it wrong over the long term. And so being able to get it right consistently is a really important asset to have in people. Well, one of the things I do is I call things very clearly and sharply. because if you get this muddled ambiguity, that's death. You've ever been in a meeting where people don't know what to do?

And so it just goes around and round to the table. And eventually everybody just muddles into something and shrugs her shoulders and says, that's a good idea. But nobody knows what they're doing. And there's really no conviction, but you have to, quote, unquote, make a decision. But nobody's really in charge. So I lay out very sharp characterizations, very sharp. very sharp, like hardware is dead.

And even though it's the most of our sales, it's none of their profit. Now, I don't put my identity or ego on the line when I do that, but I force people to challenge me on that. And if they come up with a good argument, I want the facts and I want the argument. And again, I don't have to be right. I don't put my ego on the position,

but I do say, prove me that I'm wrong, because somebody has to say, I think this. And I think you have to characterize things crisply. And even starkly, almost black and white, to just give clarity to, you know, are we strong here, are we weak? Are we re-resourced or are we impoverished? And so I think that's one thing I do well. The other thing is you just have to follow the money and follow the leverage.

tech is a leverage game, where's the profit pool, and then how do you have a reasonable chance of attacking that? And obviously, with RIM, we had the services business, which was all our profit. We made well over a billion a quarter on the services business, and the carriers were going to put that in with SMS, but it had to be a lower rate, but still, every phone had SMS. And would you have used your social media on your text versus an emerging social media company. And so, yeah, it's forcing very crisp decisions, characterizing it clearly, forcing debate on these things,

and really looking for the leverage, looking for the profit pool. You'll find generally it surfaces the pretty clear strategic call, and then there's a lot of execution that goes into that. And then you create a re-huddling, structures, regular meetings to revisit your assumptions, get your feedback loops, get the facts. So there's a very intense, so we had these meetings of executives and salespeople, which was very regular. A lot of people participate, get a lot of facts, distill it, make a call,

and then get back. So because it's like whitewater rafting, okay, this is what we're going to do. and then we go around the bend and you encounter something new. You may encounter something surprising. You may encounter something placid where you can all exhale for 10 minutes. You don't know. So you've got to have that highly integrated, adaptive feedback loop and execution loop together. And I find that really helps. But of course, as a CEO or a chair, you've got to really drive that strategic thinking.

And in RIMS place, they just didn't do the decision. They didn't think it. They didn't debate it. They just made a unilateral call. And I think that was low functioning in terms of how you make strategic decisions. And that's when I resigned from the board and sold my shares back at that time. Where did you develop that? Was that in school or was that in your personal life?

Because just to give you some background, look at so many people who need to make some tough decisions in their life. They need to start to look at where they're going to be in 10 years, where they're going to be in 20 years, like even just at a personal level. And people stay where they are or make kind of that muddled kind of like gray zone area decision rather than really critically looking at their life or where they want to be and making tough decisions and making at times some sacrifices about like, hey, if I actually want to go make something of my life. I can't stay at this nine to five job where there's no growth opportunity. So many people stay there because it feels safer or like the more obvious choice. And you made an incredibly

big decision where you could have kind of stuck with the group. Things were somewhat working during that period. And you kind of said like, hey, if you're going in this direction, I cannot stay with you because I know where this leads. And that's a prediction. But it's also got to be tough to make that decision when you've been a part of this and kind of walking away. So where did you develop that mentality of really looking at the cold, hard facts and making tough decisions? I am not sentimental. And I think being sentimental in these things is a shackle. So I think I do see things as they are. And I characterize them. Honestly, now people will say, some will say that's sharp, but if you're preparing for a major boxing match and I say, you know, your right arm's too slow

and his left undercut is going to knock you out in 10 seconds and you're going to the hospital, am I being sharp or am I saying, yikes, we've got to change our coaching. preparation so that you're you're attuned for this and you get or they say we can't be um adaptive in time in that way therefore we have to come up with some other strategy or you know fake the flu and cancel the flight whatever it is but let's not dilute ourselves so i think there's a lot of diluting there's a lot of sentimentality uh and i don't think those are your friends i um i did a lot of these kind of logic games and logic tests and those kinds of things as a kid.

And I just developed a belief I could figure things out. So I just walk into a room and say, I know I can figure this out. And I have that narrative loop in my head. And so I think people should think of the loop that they're putting in their head. and obviously parenting and mentoring and circumstances has a lot to do with that but i walk into any situation and i i just know i can figure it out i just don't doubt it and and so i think that and that creates a determination of focus a grit to to see it through so i think those are those are good things is a positive self-taught not a not a i'm going to

go in there and knock out Mike Tyson 30 seconds kind of thing, but I'm a constructive self-talk. And then having a super clear characterization of what is. And then you apply your toolkit of tactics and strategies to say, how can I navigate through this? And then you, but you have to keep revisiting those things because things are developing all the time. Like there has to be a very regular heartbeat to that. So it's a process. It's some, skills. It's a, it's a personality orientation. Um, that's how I approach it. But I literally just came out of a meeting now going through three or four tech companies of mine on these very specific kinds of issues. And, um, yeah, and you just, um, but then part of it is, is when you do it a lot,

then you, you, you see the pattern. You get, you, you, you really start to see patterns. And you really start to, it's like, you, you just, the more you interview, the better you get at your interviews, because you've been doing it. You've seen what works and you see what doesn't work. And, yeah, in a sense, those good habits, I journal every day about what I did yesterday. And I'm accountable to myself. Did I, was I prepared? Was I, you know, did I do it the best I think I should and could?

Did I eat properly? Did I have one glass of wine or too many glasses of wine? So I think you have to look yourself in the face too. And just for good habits and good accountability. And I think those are some of the things that I employ that I think people can generalize on. But I think people, the other thing when I mentor is everybody has their own style. So it's like sports. It's in basketball.

I don't want you to shoot like I do. But I got to give you the ball and put you in a position. to shoot and make a move and we're in a team and we've got some flow. But ultimately you have to develop your own style and your own confidence and your own way. And so this is not some kind of cookie cutter thing. I think that's very dangerous. So you've got to let people develop their own style. And also I'm very interested in business.

I'm very interested in commercialization. It's what I wanted to do. So it was my passion. other people may have different passion so it's very hard to think passion when did you start journaling a long time ago a long time ago yeah

yeah I would say a couple things that people may not know one is that yeah I do write down there's just one page every day like did I go to bed on time did I exercise? Did I prepare everything I should have prepared?

Did I arrive on time? Did I approach that thing the way I should best? And that is something that I think is important because it compels you to be accountable. And you fib to yourself. It's kind of like ate good food, had one piece of pie, and then you kind of come back two days later. I know I lied.

I had two pieces of it. by. Like, it's funny how you lie to yourself. And apparently, doctors, when you say how much you drink, they always take the number and they double it because people lie to themselves. So I think being honest to yourself, and I'm super honest now, like I am plainly honest. And I think another thing, which is, again, not exactly locked into this, but when I travel, I always try to carve out an hour to visit an art gallery, a museum, or a house of worship. And invariably, they would get, because Grim was successful, they would get somebody very senior to tour you. It could be a minister, priest, could be a curator of a show.

And it's remarkable, 45, 50 minutes. You just, your brain is full. Yeah. And I think you, you just learn the world and don't miss a chance to live in the world. And what's interesting is that when you have these business dinners, people love talking about their cultures. They'll talk about it all day. And I'm a curious person. I'm extremely curious. So I'll just keep asking them questions.

And they'll talk about their culture all day. And I'm curious and I'm interested. And I'll tell them about the show, I think, or the thing I saw at the museum. And then I think it wasn't a tax. but I found that they tend to trust you because you're interested in them. And then it's 10 minutes to go on the dinner. Oh, yeah, we haven't talked to business.

Okay. Okay, our team's going to work that, right? And if I'm not happy, I'll call you and you'll fix it. Yes. And you're not going to screw me. I promise. Okay, good. It's good.

Yeah, but there's a lot of trust and subtle connective tissue in these relationships. But people have a good radar for a phony. So I wouldn't suggest you do it as a schick. That's actually such a good point because one of the things I learned early on when I was just interviewing past professors and stuff was how much people have learned throughout their life and how much wisdom they have to share and nobody ever asks them. And nobody sees them as a source of knowledge.

So when you do, it's like a real gift to somebody at times to ask them the correct question. That's great. Well, that's beautiful. You argue that Canada needs to get better at owning what it creates. Can you help me understand what you mean by that? Yes, of course. And it's an interesting time because the U.S.,

the Trump administration has just laid bare what's been going on for my own business career, because I've been in this tech world. And so when you're in the world of intangible assets, it's legal frameworks that determine who owns what. Whereas the jacket you're wearing, you own that physically. That's not in dispute, but the design is in dispute.

And there's fights going on in that stuff all day, every day, and everything, you look around you, the lights, the switches, the technology, the microphone, the screen. There's thousands, hundreds of thousands of elements at play over who owns what, who gets the money and who gets the power. And we simply don't teach it. We simply don't play it. And every other country is extremely hands-on that I've encountered that's successful.

The Southeast Asians, credible, Western Europeans, Americans, Israelis, Scandinavians, Swiss, on and on. And we don't do that. So we do $7.5 billion of research funding a year in Ottawa with no framework to own the ideas. It just goes in and people think, well, that's fine. It's just global philanthropy. We have nothing, no strategies to govern the data for our economic benefit. And even though it's creating trillions of dollars of market cap, and in this interoperability, there are hundreds of thousands of standards out there that determine who wins and who loses. and tens of thousands or new ones

are created every year. We have no strategic engagement, no strategies with our firms. And I know these files very, very well. And it's like we're blind to the game of owning because you can't commercialize

what you don't own. Can't ask for money with something that's not yours. And yeah, it's a structural policy failure. There's a lot of, dismissal in the parochial hubris of these things in our policy community. But what's happened is Trump has laid it so bare. And Bassant wrote a very good or gave a very clear speech on U.S.

economic state crap a couple months ago that says, we're going to architect the future because if you don't set the rules, you're going to be living under someone else's rules. I'm like, yeah, no kidding. And all these people that have been saying this is how the world works. It's a free market and it's about efficiency and it's hands off and it's neoliberal. There's nothing neoliberal about any of this stuff, that these are markets created by governments and modified hundreds of times a day for strategic benefit of nation states. And you've got to build the capacity and build the engagement strategies. And we categorically didn't do it.

And we always kept wondering, why are we last in the OECD and productivity growth last over the last 40 years? and forecast to stay lost in X-40. And they scratched their heads and made false myths, resource curse, too close to the American market, complacent culture. And I say, I dealt with hundreds of hundreds of CEOs in my life and money managers. I've never met one that would say,

you know, I'm just going to not grow my profits this year because the fishing's good at the lake. I've just never met that person making that decision. And yet these people dismiss their failure. failures, never having been commercial actors most of the time, with some constructed, because I say we obviously got the policy perfect. And I go, you got the policy exactly wrong.

And so you're not going to participate in the Santanapal's economy without tremendous technical expertise and front-footed statecraft. How would you bring that in? And do you see any changes from this current liberal government in response to that? Well, there's a lot of very good people that are advocating for this young scholars, older scholars, and the kind of keepers of that old orthodoxy are aging out and being pushed aside. I haven't seen anything yet from this government. They're much more pro-business, which is great and much more responsible than the previous government,

which is good. They're smarter, they're conscientious, they're more professional. However, when you look at all they're doing, I've yet to see anything on intangibles or statecraft. I've not seen anything on intellectual property, anything on data, anything on happening on tokenization and unified ledger. We're seeing that these quote-unquote trade agreements, I wrote seven years ago that USMCA was about a hijacking of our sovereignty. and everyone said, no, this is free trade, and we can't be North Korea. Now, I think they actually have adults in the room reading the drafts and saying, oh my God, this is hijacking our sovereignty.

And I go, yeah, they grabbed half of it seven years ago, and they're coming back for the next half. So I think they're learning on the job that there's a state craft here. But we haven't done anything on the sovereign data governance. as a factor of productivity, the research funding and the IP, how to support domestic companies versus foreign companies when you do all this FDI. I mentioned how these are in FTAs, standard setting. I mentioned tokenization in a unified ledger, which the U.S. has been very aggressive on.

I haven't seen any strategies yet in the country. Sorry, can you explain what that is? Sure. If you see the U.S. Genius and Clarity Act, they've fundamentally been very strategic saying the U.S. dollar has to be the base currency for all digitization of money. And then we're going to tokenize land, minerals, crops, everything. And that has to be U.S. dollar backed on U.S. infrastructure. So in a sense, if we don't respond to that, do we need to? our own Bank of Canada. Do we need our own Canadian dollar? Do we need our own Toronto Stock Exchange? Do we need our own land registry? And so on and so forth. So this is

going for, where you keep the ownership of these things is called a ledger. And if you have a distributed ledger, that's what you hear, blockchain. And you start involving currencies. New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ are doing full tokenized 724. or share trading now, we've got to get in on that, or people will just say, I don't need New York, Toronto Stock Exchange anymore. And so on.

So again, those are very aggressive frameworks when it comes to tokenization and a digital ledger. And if you make these ledgers talk to one another, like you can do your stocks and your money, or your land and your money, or your crops and your money, that would be a, or your rem, minerals and money.

That would be called a unified ledger. And there's lots going on in these discussions, but where's our statecraft in this? And so, U.S. is just every day, there's something, every week, there's something very aggressive they're doing in national security, in science and technology, and AI, fintech stuff. They had very aggressive fintech stuff in the last couple months. at free trade stuff, FDI reviews, standard setting.

In January, the U.S. stepped down from 66 global organizations very publicly, but they doubled down on three standard setting bodies, what's called the ITU, IEC, and ISO. And then they put all these supportive structures for American companies to set the rules so that they get the rents in these value chains.

There's nothing in that. in Canada's statecraft. We can do it. We should do it. But again, that's that orthodoxy shift. And so I've exhorted publicly and privately the government to get active here. But it's a bit like learning a new language. It's not. So if you look at the Investment Summit next week and you look of the document, it's almost all 19, like traditional industries. It's all, and I'm not against them. I'm all for a trip, but it's pipelines, ports, mines, energy infrastructure. It's very much, and if you, you know, do AI, it's a shell and energy where somebody else brings in the gear, and I would call that a traditional approach. You're not capturing the value add. So, yeah,

this is, we have all the ability to be much more sovereign, much more prosperous, but we have to develop this understanding of how intangibles works and the statecraft and the frameworks that goes with it. And that's why I said when I was commercializing rim, I was pulled right into the middle of these kinds of things all the time. But very fortunately, in Washington and other mentors in the U.S., so they helped guide that. But the receptivity to revisiting thoughts in Ottawa was just not there. They're very closed in their thinking. Both parties.

Where do you think that's coming from? Where do you think, like, for one, the U.S. seems very willing to tinker and modify and take big risks? Like, I would say the war in Iran was a big risk for the president in the upcoming midterms. You can call that big risk. I just, I consider that irresponsible. A big dumb risk, maybe. And so you have a lot of big risks being taken. And from what I can see very naively, it seems like the balance of power is recalibrating.

We're hearing about how we're becoming a multipolar world where there are different states that have more power. China being one of them. And so it seems like the U.S. is trying to reorient. And seems like they have, as you mentioned, Besson being willing to take some real actions and take some risks. And then on our side, we're hearing we're going to step back from the U.S. But to your point, I've interviewed a few economists and they said, hey, when we heard about the major projects office, that was supposed to be a temporary tool. And they were going to update the infrastructure for how we look at major projects over the long term. They have not done that.

They said they were going to look at a tax review and updating that. They've not done that. What do you think is doing on? Why do you think there's such a narrow-minded approach in Ottawa, in comparison to the U.S. right now. What's going on? Yeah, well, I would say my first thing would be to those economists where's your scholarship been on statecrack for Canada

in the past 25 years. Because I can't find any new thinking, new institutions, new policies for this world of intangibles, which is 92% of the value of the S&P 500. So there's a place for the process bureaucracy, of course, and there's a place for tax competitiveness, of course, but those are necessary but not sufficient. And so it's a two-legged race,

and I'm simply trying to invoke the second leg, not to the exclusion of the first leg, but it's a necessary complement to the second leg. I do think when it comes to this office and what they're trying to do and moving major projects and changing the culture that they inherited from the previous administration

has been quite constructive. And I do think they're hardworking people trying their very best and conscientious and experienced in this. What I've not seen is any expertise on these realms of the statecraft that constitutes the 92% of the S&P 500. And if we don't invoke that more,

are we taking economic strategies akin to Russia, where it's just oil and gas and minerals out of the ground. And I think we're capable of a much more prosperous, much more advanced, Scandinavian-like economy than that. But again, I need to see the understanding and the activities in the state craft and the expertise and the capacity building for that kind of world. In harmony with, yes, approving our major projects, whatever the machinations are going to be

and having a competitive tax code which we absolutely need to be I think it's fairly clear our tax code is not competitive with the US and if people and companies and money can move

with the stroke of the pen or the click of the mouse then they will so it's not a hard tax assessment are you competitive with the jurisdiction that can Hoover our opportunity sets. So I think that's fair game. And I've I've talked to the policy people in finance about that because they're now worried that startups that it used to be 30% left Canada.

Now it's 70%. I said if I was losing 70% of my customers every year, my future every year, I'd have an emergency meeting and sit down and say what is going on. And I can tell them because I'm active in that community what they're thinking is. But I've not seen anything to respond to it. And when you're the CEO or the prime minister, you have to parallel multiple files. You need to get resources moving to courts and out of the ground. But you need to parallel the 21st century aspects of our economy also. And I haven't seen it yet.

I'm public and getting more public about what needs to be done. I'm giving them a bit of a pass for the first year because they need to learn, but the time for giving them a pass is running out. And it's going to have to be sharper, the characterization of the blindness of inattention to these 21st century realities. There are a lot of critics of this current government. One of them is this guy, David, I don't know if you've ever heard of him. he hosts a show called Moose on the Loose, and he regularly questions Mark Carney and a lot of

Carney's team because a lot of them were former ministers under Justin Trudeau. So there isn't this new government coming out of nowhere operating. It's a lot of the same traditional players from the previous government. And one of his big fears and concerns that he raises a lot and he has a chart outlining Mark Carney's potential conflicts of interest is around Brookfield. And one of his predictions and his beliefs is that Mark Carney is actually more interested in seeing Brookfield succeed than Canada succeed. And his argument for that would align with Pierre Polyevs, who's put out this chart of how much growth Brookfield saw versus how much growth Canada has seen in the past year. I'm wondering as a CEO, like as a former leader yourself, how do you think about that criticism?

Is he completely wrong or is there hints of concern that you would have as well in regards to his relationship with Brookfield? I think by Mr. Carney is, he scores very high on conscientiousness. He scores high on pride, which is dangerous when you have blinders. However, I do think his conscientiousness, he sees himself as a stark figure, which he has the opportunity to be. I do not think that he would not say, gosh, I could put X million dollars in my jeans and to heck with Canada. I don't think that's how he thinks. I think that's a lot how Trump thinks, but I don't think that's a fair characterization. But again, a lot of people go after people with money in public office in Canada.

There's an envy structure. And if you've been successful, then you just go after that money and naturally you have to have trust. So I think it's you, and then you get people who haven't accomplished things in politics because those are the only people that have, you know, that you can't, you're not envious of. So I don't think that's there the way going after in the Brookfield. I think that's undermining the countries. People doing that are compromise in the country. They're driving away good people. They're creating a false narrative.

So I don't think I don't think that's a fair criticism at all. I think in terms of the same people, I think there's some fairness to that. I think we've had, but I think it's a broader issue, which is the thinking structure of Ottawa

and our policy community, it's the same people. They're all the same Ottawa Mandarin Bay Street people with this neoliberal thing. But the issue with the conservatives is they're just simply saying, well, let's just be more neoliberal. Even more neoliberal. So they're not putting any thinking into the window.

And you hear all this stuff, let's get a deal done with the United States. It's kind of like me saying, well, just buy the house. And they go, yeah, but it's five times too expensive. It's decrepit. And we have to sign a clause that the prior owner gets to live in it forever. And they go, I don't care. Buy a house. the house. And I go, no, there is such a thing as a bad deal. And so this idea of, you know,

free markets, it's a John Lennon song. Imagine a world where it's free markets and it's only about efficiency. It's easy if you can. In a rent-year economy of intangibles, it's not a free market. It's a friction market where somebody charges a rent. They're not shipping a good. And it leads to strategic state behavior to try to jackhammer because they want the trillion dollars in their economy, not ours. And so this is, you know, the right free market orthodoxy folks have to get off this John Lennon song thing. Imagine a world where it's all about free Marx.

It's not about free Marx. These are social constructs. And when it moves to intangibles like intellectual property and data, those create incentives for states to bully. So if you've read USMCA, which I have. and most of these people haven't. There's a million words. You will not find the words free trade in it.

And they got rid of no tariffs in that, but he put the whole country on the line if we didn't sign that back seven years ago. So what was it about? It was about grabbing our sovereignty. It was about a new constitution for Canada, run out of Washington. It sets our health policy, our environment policy.

Part of our trade policy, our macroeconomic policy, our intellectual property, our standards, our data and AI, our enforcement, on and on the list goes, much more the power is in that treaty than it is in our House of Parliament, even though it was signed without a proper debate and understanding for Canadians.

Now, what I think with Prime Minister Carney is he's a responsible person and his chief of staff, Blasherd, as a lawyer, they actually look at these agreements and go, they're taking us over. And they think, well, I ran a, a fund before. Imagine if I can't make an investment without the approval of a foreign country. I'm not a sovereign company anymore. I'm not a sovereign fund. So they're starting to realize

that this is loss of control. And then they looked back at the prior agreement and said, well, we gave half of this away seven years ago. We're just giving the next half away now. So my question is, where has anybody been in the last 10 years saying, how do we create a sovereign, resilient country? Instead, we give away so much of the sovereignty. We trumpet it that we're the victors. And so now what's happened that's different now is there's not a veneer of diplomacy in Trump. He's just brutish about it. And so it's laid it bare.

But it was going on for 25 years. So it's woken us up. The question is, are we going to build the capacity in the orientation? As I say, you know, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, when you reach a fork in the road, you've got to take it. And Trump has manufactured a fork in the road. Are we going to learn how the world works and engage with it front footed in Sovere? Are we just going to capitulate and be a vassal state? And I said seven years ago, we're on a path to becoming Puerto Rico without a passport in this structure.

And I stand by that today. And so I think Carney's government extricating themselves from the past thinking, it's a hard job. I think he's doing a pretty good job of it. I don't find a lot of fault. I just think he has to invoke this second leg of intangibles and statecraft, which I spent time talking about. But I would like to see some humility from the whole class of them, which is you all wrote books, you all been advisor, you all been given speeches, you all been mandarin's. Why in the last 20 years did none of you bring this intangible statecraft to bear when it was so plainly obvious at the way globally? And that's a hard question to answer.

But I think that people should say, yeah, we've got to course correct our approaches. and we're learning and we're going to build expertise and we're going to bring in the right voices. But they tend to bring in the same old people that put us in this all. So, you know, I'm a proud Canadian. I want them to do well. I don't want to be sharp with them. But they've got to bring in updated thinking of new voices and proper experts. You know, they got to.

And I haven't seen that yet. That's one piece. we talked about it a bit earlier, which is if the whole board gets it wrong, like they should not be encouraged to continue down that track. And I find your ability to kind of prosecute past governments so plainly as like, hey, look at the results. Shouldn't you be able to justify why we are where we are right now? It's something I just don't see a lot of our media do. Like, I don't know if they don't understand the issues, but like you have laid it out more clearly than I have ever heard it. disgust and I've spoken to economists, I've spoken to journalists, I've spoken to a lot of people

who are more in the know than I am. But I feel like in this short conversation, I understand where the hesitancy to continue with the USMCA is, why we are slowed in our growth. And I just wonder, how do we go about addressing that? Is that like demonstrating that our politicians have not been successful? Do we, like it feels like the US does that more. They're more okay with holding a politician to account and somebody being ostracized in politics as a consequence of a bad decision. Like the idea that politicians are held accountable for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the things that took place, they're still very much in the zeitgeist of Americans and how they decide who they are going to support and who they're not going to support. And I just don't

see that same level of either knowledge based by the public or prosecution by journalists to hold politicians accountable? How do we kind of shake people and get them to wake up from your perspective across the country so we can vote in a more thoughtful way so we can get better platforms from different parties on how they would propose delivering on these types of issues? Yeah, well, I think you brought up a lot of good things. One, I think the media has to become more savvy on these issues and hold the government to account. I think they are starting to do it this year more because the Trump has laid bare our lack of resilience and the need for sovereignty. And sovereign

people, they play rhetorical straw man games. We can't be North Korea. But, you know, I'll just say sovereignty this way. It'd be like somebody saying, you know, honey, why do we need a guard dog? Nobody ever breaks into our house. And I'd say, think about that for a second. And people don't exploit those that are resilient. And so,

yeah, we have to build that resilience. Clearly, I think the conservatives have to put something better. in the window. They were all the big free marketeers for the data companies when they were building monopolies, not understanding that in libertarianism, the principle is the sovereignty of the self and the respect for the individual and their family, and libertarians distrust concentrated power. And yet they had nothing to say on these hyperscalers when they became more powerful. They violated your privacy and autonomy and the well-being of your family.

the libertarians should be the first ones standing at the front saying, we have to stop this runaway power. And yet they got, because they have simplistic conceptions of how the world works, say, no, this is a free market. And it's not a free market. It's a social construct with a state back here driving it and hauling out Canada. So I think the conservatives have to not be afraid of an intellectual journey and stop thinking that they learned all they needed.

to learn in high school and put something better on offer as an alternative. So that's part of the problem is if you're not offering something compelling an alternative, and then the media should pick up more in the critiquing. I've invested a lot in supporting investigative journalism and young scholars and these digital issues and capacity building and think tanks. And so it's a super meaningful life. I just have such a fun and meaningful and interesting life. And so I do understand my role to avail resources to the good people,

perhaps do some air cover to push away the bad people, and let these people have a much stronger voice in architecting the future they're going to live in. But everyone has to do their part. But it's a beautiful country. We love it. There's so many good people. but I do think your point of sharply going after those things that should be challenged. You know, one thing I say to people, if you look at the bone structure of a whale's fin,

it's essentially the same as the bone structure of a human harm in hand. It's almost exactly the same. Evolution is conservative. It's very hard to break free from these old thinking, and we went on a wrong path. about 40 years ago, 38 years ago, and we reinforced it. So it's going to take a lot of work to break from that thinking. But it used to be in the 30s. You'd see advertisements, exercise your lungs today, smoke a cigarette.

And then the person on the Tour de France would get a cigarette, take a couple puffs and race ahead of everyone else because they just had a cigarette. And then, of course, somebody had the temerity to say, I think smoking's bad for your health. And that person was ostracized until, you know, the facts were overwhelming. So I do think as a country and as a civil society, media, young scholars, political actors, I do think we owe it to use this opportunity of awakening to raise our game and characterize the world is as it is and how do we do better within it. And I think we have

all the power to do it. I think we have all the skills. The things I talk about are not about money. They're zero to a few dollars. You'll start to see some very quick returns. So mine is an optimistic story. I believe in our people. I believe in our capacity. I think we could be turning it around very quickly. But it is something else when you see how stubborn they are to do it.

It's like, no, I'm going to keep smoking that pack of cigarettes today because I want to win that in my grace. I must tell you, I must tell you, I, I, I, I do kind of, it is something funny because they're holding on for just such dear life. But I think it's going to shift. And there's so many good people and the facts are so obvious. But it is, it is something else out of telling you. Two more questions for you. One is on media.

I would just be really interested in your perspective. As like an independent show, I'm blown away by the amount of money that's holding up and supporting a lot of these legacy media organizations and just how, I don't know, like, how lack of diverse perspectives they are, how not eager they are to challenge government from my perspective. Like, that doesn't mean I don't like Mark Carney. I just think it's my job to criticize him and to try and find faults because he's our elected representative and he's holding a position of power.

And I'm supposed to question the decisions they're making, question the opposition and try and think these issues through. And it just seems really surprising to me that there has been very little interest from my perspective in new media from any of our traditional media organizations in the U.S. You're seeing the free press purchased by CNBC. You're seeing kind of like a mixing. You're seeing Spotify investing in Joe Rogan. You're seeing a lot of kind of playing with what future media is. And I don't know if you know who Stephen Bartlett is, but he hosts Diary of a CEO.

I think he is the greatest podcaster of our time. Just in understanding how to add value to viewers, how to really entrepreneurize the process of creating a good show that's engaging. I know he does a ton of market analytics and how people are engaging with his content behind the scenes. And I just don't see that in Canada right now. Podcasts are either owned and controlled by global news, CBC, and those are kind of your top ones.

Or you have a few independent shows that are already connected. to, as you've kind of described, a think tank or another organization. What do you think is going on in the media ecosystem? Because I kind of put that at the root of holding government accountable, informing citizens. Like, it plays such an integral role in how we understand ourselves and what's going on. And I see that as our weakest link right now. Yeah. And I would say, and I'm going to take this in a path you may not have anticipated,

that when you think of the creation of, because the biggest investment is probably CBC, right, they're getting, or $1,6 billion a year or something like that. It was 90-odd years ago, 100 years ago, whatever, created because there were no Canadian stories out there, and they wanted to tell Canadian stories. And now, and they're a full-stack producer of content, and that was the public good.

So what is the public good now? Well, I would say I use the Environment Canada weather app. It's fantastic. It does everything I need. I use it every day. It doesn't track me. It doesn't surveil me. One of the most surveilling apps is your weather app.

So that's a public good. And I would say, what is the public good in media right now? Well, I would say there's two things. Number one, the presentation engine was taken over by a company that uses it for social media to trigger negative emotions to addict you. And I would say that should be a channel that if this is a 12-year-old girl, she can turn into 12-year-old girl channel

that is about feeding information that's flourishing and what you may be interested is closer to me but not exact, and you tune your channel. So the public good is moved from the full-stack content creation, which is not getting a lot of eyeballs, to the presentation engine. But where is that structure?

strategic discussion. Second of all, Europe is starting to do open ad stacks where you can have your characteristics for ads. So if Aaron is characterized as having an addiction for red gummy bears, and one, that's not true. Or two, it is true, but it's a deep, deep dark secret. You can change that parameter. And therefore, it becomes open. the ad servicing structure. And they could actually say, we're going to fix the, because you can't deal with these things ex post because the U.S. comes in and does all this hacking through trade agreements and threats and all

that stuff and calls it irritants and stuff like that. So we can't be sovereign on that. However, you can create a competitive alternative. And I think if you restructure the ad market, I think Facebook and Google take $20 to $30 billion a year outside of Canada, and you start to turn that. so that the water starts flowing in another direction, you may find that you've changed their behavior,

you're flowing a lot more money, and if you have the presentation engine, for everyone else, not for yourself, because you don't want to compete with everybody who's doing this content, that you're servicing public good. So they're using an old model of public good in delivery and thinking where the leverage points have gone through the odds

and the presentation engine. But that's, again, understanding how platforms work in a digital economy, and that should be a public policy discourse in Ottawa because they clearly want to stop the harms here, and they want to get the money. They want to be more sovereign. They want to get hurt less. They want more revenue.

But they're coming out with an old incentives expost taxing model, and they're getting into the strategic geo-economic shenanic bullying of the U.S. and there we are. And so, but again, it's that who in that shop thinks about these things, has expertise on these things? And that's what I mean by, if you start to do that, everybody wins. And then how that works in terms of competitive media, well, people will start to consume the media through the presentation engine

that interests them to their, and it becomes a very vibrant, true, you know, vibrant open market. for less content. And yeah, and you can divorce standards and you can attune it to the right audiences. So, again, not hard to do. I'm not the first person to think of this. A lot of works going on in different jurisdictions around the world. I haven't seen it here.

We get caught in this loop of online harms and can we do privacy and can we touch digital services and who gets the subsidy. But we're not in a generative thriving model. It's kind of a reallocation, shrinking, coping, racemole model. But it's people using an old platebook for an old economy. And yeah, so I didn't answer your question directly, but I'm trying to say, let's move upstream structurally in responding to these things. And then you'll find, it's kind of like somebody that says,

I got really bad lungs, I need a bunch of pills and surgeries. and I say, okay, we can do that, but you really got to quit smoking. And so in a sense, yes, I understand our current triage, but we have to get to the ex ante upstream cause. And I would argue what in these realms are we doing ex ante? Now, there's a lot going on in terms of the traditional stuff for mining and other resources and energy and oil and gas, and all for all of that.

but in these other realms that we've spent our time talking about today, I'm not seeing any points on the board yet. And maybe thoughtful discussions with you and other people. And I'm being called a lot to talk these days. Like I'm the biggest keynotes and engagement. So people are realizing, yeah, this is something we should be thinking about. And yeah, I'm happy to do it. It's a proud Canadian.

I love our country. I believe the moral code is you leave a camp. fire better than you found it. And this is something I can do. And there's so many good people out there that want a better country. Let's just get the right young people at the table and being hurt and being engaged. Last question. And thank you so much for your time. This one will be quick. What are your thoughts on the claim of taxing CEOs more and the CEOs make too much money? You mentioned envy earlier. And I think that's a piece of

the pie, but we're seeing the Green Party in BC talking about taxing the rich. You have Mondamni talking about going after billionaires. You have Bernie Sanders talking about that. It's starting to catch more and more wind. What are your thoughts on CEOs pay and taxing the rich? Well, as I've said before, we only have one marker for our tax competitiveness, and that's the United States. So I could tell you lifetime capital gains is order a magnitude plus bigger in the U.S. than is in Canada, how they treat these things. So, yes, Canada's just not competitive. Now, is U.S. in equal? Yeah, it sure's got huge inequality.

And I have issues with the inequality and it's something I engage with. But the idea that if you try to tax the CEO, and we're already, you know, the personal taxes are much higher than the U.S. Yeah, all the CEOs have just moved to the U.S. They can say, I'm CEO, I live in U.S., and other than a few companies that are here for whatever reasons, they'll just move their companies or move themselves to the U.S. Like I said, people, capital, and money can move. And that's the nature of the world. And you saw some deeply irresponsible moves by Christopher Lund and Justin Trudeau

to drive entrepreneurs away with the capital gains. And now we've got this whole pattern of saying, I'm going south. And we have to reverse that, which could take a lot of work. But, yeah, they would be very counterproductive to tax CEOs more. They just leave. And they can. And the companies will leave and the money will leave. And we've seen that.

And so, yeah, I think it's a capacity. competitive world in these frameworks. So I think you're better on trying to grow the pie than to grab the pie. It'll be counterproductive. And I think that's why we're seeing these issues in the country. Thank you, Jim. This has been one of my

favorite interviews today. I think in large part, because you think about these issues deeply. And when I ask people about their thoughts on media government subsidies, not to shame any of my past guests, but a lot of them say the same thing. Remove the subsidies and you'll see a flourishing. The way you

approach the question is from your understanding of the technology and of what's working in other countries. And it just felt grounded in your own understanding of these issues and what's working and what's not working. And just it felt like you went more to first principles of how did we arrive here. And it was just very refreshing. And one of my hopes is to interview more CEOs and get the business perspective on some of these issues because it's fine to talk to politicians and journalists, but there's a missing link. And I think that's the business community. And so it's just been a privilege to speak to you today. And I find you to be very thoughtful and meticulous on how you arrive at your conclusions.

And as you said, very sharp on what your diagnosis of the issue is. And I just really greatly appreciate that. Very kind of you said. That was a real pleasure to speak with you today. I look forward to the next time. Sounds good.