The Ben Mulroney Show - Measuring industry growth at Toronto Tech Week.

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

GUEST:  Julia Baird (Co-Director, TTW)   GUEST: Myles Harrison/Praktikai    Guest: Tony Chapman, Host of the award winning podcast Chatter that Matters, Founding Partner of Chatter AI GUEST:   Michael  Lee-Chin / Founder, President and Chairman of Portland Holdings /  Major donor and namesake of the  Michael Lee-Chin Family Patient Care Tower at St. Michael’s Hospital. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. You've heard me say it many, many times, that there are some really annoying parts of living in a big city like Toronto. I mean, I've made a career out of talking about those things.

But one of the great things about having a city like Toronto, and you could say the same thing about Calgary, in Vancouver, and all the big cities across this, countries. This is where people come together and they will come together for arts and they'll come together for culture and they'll come together for educational initiatives. They'll come together

in places like Toronto and on May 25th through May 29th Toronto Tech Week is happening here which means there will be an army of people far smarter than me doing things far more interesting than I. And here to talk about this second year event and hopefully not the last

we're joined by Julia Baird the co-director as well as Miles Harrison from practice which is a data analytics company. I welcome, Julia, welcome to the show. And Miles, welcome to the show. Thanks. Okay, so for those who don't know what it is yet,

I mean, this sounds like an event that is growing and growing and growing. Yeah, it is. So Toronto Tech Week is a decentralized grassroots collection of events put on by the tech community for the tech community. And breaking news, we actually just hit 500 events on Toronto Techweek.com. And if you aren't already familiar with us, It's basically an open platform for anyone to connect. So you yourself could host an event during tech week.

And if you're interested in the tech ecosystem, you're able to register for events that peak your interest on Toronto Techweek.com. So what kind of events are we talking about? When you say decentralized grassroots, I have no idea what you're saying. Okay, I will break it down for you. So decentralize means anyone can host. So we've got founders, investors, executives within the tech ecosystem, even students hosting events throughout the week.

And anyone can register for them. And so there's lots of events happening. There's hackathons, pitch competitions. If you want to meet founders, if you want to meet investors, if you want to learn how to use AI within your business, which I think is top of mind for a lot of Canadian businesses right now, you can come to Toronto Tech Week and learn about that. It feels, though, like having something decentralized

where anybody can host anything, it's got to be a heck of a, I mean, you're the co-director. This has got to be a headache just wait and happen. It's beautiful chaos to see it all come together. Last year we had 315 events, and so it's incredible to see it grow. to 500 events this year as of like 10 minutes ago before we started recording. And so it's really exciting to see.

It's people like Miles actually that are bringing this to life, Practicize hosting for events during Toronto Tech Week, and they're all really exciting. Yeah, Miles, tell me why do you want Toronto Tech Week to be successful? Yeah, we were part of Toronto Tech Week last year. I attended many, many of the events, and I also held with some colleagues, one of the many unofficial after parties called Super Collider,

and we're continuing with that initiative and branding separately with my company. But I, as many people know me, am very passionate, very deeply involved in the tech community in Toronto. And I like the open model of Toronto Tech Week, the decentralized model. There's a lot of freedom to cross-pollinate between different tech communities and connect with the sorts of events and the sorts of people. you want to meet. And so that's why we're doing four events this year, as Julia said, for Practicaa of a variety of formats. And it's a great way to just go out and learn something and also connect with others. Yeah, I want to go back to something you said, Julia. So I could run a,

let's see, we had, we had the owner of a donut shop on the show last year, two weeks ago, phenomenal donuts. But if he wanted to learn how he could use AI in his company, he'd come, he could come to an event. Absolutely. He could come to an event. So on Toronto Techweek.com, you'll discover over 500 events across a myriad of themes and across over 30 neighborhoods in Toronto. So wherever you are, I'm sure there's an event happening for you if you're based in the city. And you're able to filter. So some of these events can be taking place in somebody's house? Yeah, there's a lot of private dinners actually that are taking place in people's houses.

But there's also like restaurants, office spaces. There's picnics and parks. There's lots of really exciting venues that are happening. So what's a benchmark for success? How do you know if this is a successful Toronto, Tech Week or not? Yeah, well, I think great things happen when smart people are in the same room. And so this is our chance as the Canadian innovation economy to get together and to share great ideas and to encourage ambition, especially amongst the younger generation. But I think

success is really in the follow-up. I think, I'm sure, as you know, the fortune is in the follow up and we hope to see the fruits of Toronto Tech Week continue weeks and days and months afterwards after people meet their next investor, their next key hire. They learn how to use AI within their business and become more efficient. So we'll see that success. continue on. But right now, specifically, we're just really excited to see all of the events that are taking place and people signing up for them. Miles, is that, do you co-sign that? Like a lot of, I mean, a lot of the work has to happen at Toronto Tech Week. The follow-up is key. Is one of the metrics, how many companies get their next round of funding through Toronto Tech Week? I mean, I would

happily co-sign to what Julia said, although I'm not sure who our tenants going to be. I don't know, I had a bad experience co-signing for leases. Wait, sorry, what are we talking about? Yeah, I think it depends on what your goals are. And as I said, for these events, there's a very broad cross-pollination of different communities. And depending on how you go about connecting with people or the types of workshops we're doing, it's about getting the people that are interested, the right people in the room, and then making those connections afterward.

But I also know last year, you know, we had a very, large social event. This wasn't about, you know, lead gen. It was about bringing together the broader tech community. And the best part of that event for me after was somebody came to me that I knew quite well. And she said, I had never met this woman before in my life. And then I started talking to her at this event. And I found out we had tons in common. And now we're best friends. We literally talk every day and we're working on a startup idea. Oh, wow. So it's those types of It's organic. And this is why I think it's also super important to have these in-person events to connect

in real life. And that's the differentiates. I like that you guys came in here. Okay, I want to go back to the, the, with Super Collider. Yeah. Okay, how crazy do some of these tech parties get? I mean, I've watched, I've seen, I've seen a lot of these movies. I saw, I saw social network.

And I know that, I know that once the funding comes through, I watch the TV show about Uber. Like, I know that tech people can go a little crazy. What are the parties like at Toronto Tech Week? I mean, I'm not at liberty to say, according to my lawyer. We're in the trust tree. No, we had a good time last year. We went to an arcade bar. It was all very good, clean fun.

But I did hear, I'm not at liberty to discuss it, but I did hear that there were more than one yacht party last year, I believe there was. Oh, I don't know if Mother Nature is going to allow for a yacht. But maybe by May 25th or 29th. It would be a bit chilly this year. Hey, we're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, more about Toronto Tech Week.

and I'm going to ask some pretty big questions. Like, wait, are we not? Is that, did I get the room? Oh, I got the time right. I was not a few minutes. Good. I told you. I'm not 100% here.

Okay, here's my question for you. Clocks are your enemy today. Just numbers. I was told there would be no math in this job. Here I am. Sorry, I wasn't there like watching the math for you. Trying to add three minutes on to a clock. I mean, this is high level stuff.

It is, it is. What is exciting in tech today? What are we? I mean, a couple of years ago, the joke was, if you just tacked AI, the word AI into your pitch, someone would throw a billion dollars at you. I think there's so many things that are exciting within the tech industry right now. But I think it really depends on who you are and what your goals are. Like if you're a founder, I think there's no better time to build actually because you don't need that technical background.

AI, like you said, maybe you're not tacking on. Maybe you're actually using it now, but you're able to do things that you weren't normally able to do like two to three years ago. But also for folks like working in the ecosystem, I think this is such an exciting time to play with new technology. But there's such a wide range of events at Toronto Tech Week. Like there's a lot that has AI, like an AI focus for events. But there's also go-to-market and finance. Actually, I just saw this event today. And it was finance leaders using AI, which I don't know if that's scary to some people.

But people with the money. The people with the money using AI. But they're getting taught how to build products to make them more efficient. And there's a people-making pasta for talent leaders. I think before we started recording when you were talking about the importance of talent. People making pasta. What? Pasta making people?

Pasta. People making pasta. So people in the talent and people function making pasta together talking about hiring the next great generation of talent. Oh, I like that.

The way you phrased it, you're like pasta. No, it's a tongue twister. All right. Now we're going to take a break and when we come back more on Toronto Tech Week, this sounds very, very exciting.

Do you guys have one central hub, physical central hub where people can meet? It's completely decentralized. So the whole city is the hub. Damn hippies. All right. When we come back more on Toronto Tech Week. Don't go anywhere. This is the Ben Mulroney show from coast to coast to coast on

the chorus radio network. Some crimes are so shocking. They don't just make headlines. They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's most infamous crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, release every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first time that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. Listen to and follow America's most infamous crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Well, I'm so glad to be here with Julia Baird and Miles Harrison. We're talking Toronto Tech Week, which is just around the corner, May 25th through May 29th. And what's interesting is in doing

this job, Julia and Miles, is we talk about so much news. There's so much news that crosses our desk and goes through this microphone that when I have somebody like a group like you coming in, it's really interesting because it pushes back on some of the stories that we that we read the news. Most notably, the fact that in the news, it seems like Toronto tech people can't seem to get out of Canada fast enough these days. There's a story of the engineers out of Waterloo, I believe it was over 70% of engineers are just cutting and running as soon as they get their diplomas. And I wonder what the experience is from your perspective. Yeah, I think brain drain and what is perceived to be greener pastures in San Francisco are still a real problem for the perception of tech in Canada. And I think something that Tech Week is going to do is show people that there is so much talent here and there is an amazing community.

And now as AI has become more important than ever and continues to operate a very large, amount of the mind share of both people that work in tech and also the general population, people are talking about how so much of AI came from here in Canada, and we are really the originators of a lot of this, having got the authors of AI like Dr. Hinton and people like that, and I think that's something that we're going to see people talking about. And what do you see when you read those bad, those, I think it sounds like almost apocalyptic, stories in the news that the brain drain, particularly in science and tech and STEM, those those who have those degrees don't want to be here. That's what the news presents. What are you seeing

from your angle? Yeah, it's actually so interesting because from my vantage point, I actually meet a lot of people who want to stay in Canada. And part of why Toronto Tech Week was started was to address the brain drain and to keep our tech talent in Canada. And to Miles point, by the way, like we are the godfathers of AI. We actually just had a billboard in Times Square. And the call to action was don't forget where AI came from, see you at Toronto Tech Week. Because we are the builders of AI. And so it's so interesting. I think what we need to do is show young people what great looks like and show them that there's opportunity here.

And our hope is that with Toronto Tech Week, we can show them what's possible and how to build a fruitful career here. But a lot of it has to do with deals getting done. And you've got last year to look back on. And there was a lot of activity last year. Obviously, it's something to build on for this year and next. But based on what you've seen, when you put a lot of these people in the same room together, people are pitching and people are receptive to pitches. Yeah, absolutely.

So I also work at a venture capital fund. Golden Ventures were an early seed stage venture capital fund. So we're investing in Canadians who are building the next unicorn company. And so we even hosted events where we saw deals getting done for our portfolio companies and downstream investors. But what's also interesting is there's a few events at Toronto Tech Week where investors are actually pitching to founders. Oh, really? Yeah.

And so if you want to go learn from really great investors and see if you want to take their money, you can go learn from them and hear what they have to say. Miles, why are you hosting events? What do you hope to, either you or Practica, what do you hope to get out of it? Yeah, as I said, I am very, very passionate about the tech community in Toronto. I have been a very deep part of it for quite a long time, first as a participant. And now I see organizing all these things, including the events we do in Toronto Tech Week, as part of giving back. And for me also, you know, I work in the consulting business. And as much as a lot of people love to work in their pajama pants, I think that meeting people face to face and meeting

IRL, as the kids say, there's no substitute for that. And to me, there's nothing more powerful than bringing all these people together in the right room like we've been talking about. And so for me, that there's no substitute for that. And that's why we're holding not one, not two, not three, but four events through Practi. That's amazing. Our other business, do you find that the people that are trying to get involved in Toronto Tech Week are, I mean, do they all come from the same place? Or do you have companies that say, hey, we want to get in on AI, but we don't even know.

Like, they want to join you to see what they can learn. Yeah, we have people coming from everywhere, not actually just in Canada. We have folks coming from all over the globe for Toronto Tech Week. Some of my recent conversations include folks with Australia. Spain, India, Germany, the Czech Republic, London. There are so many people flying in for Toronto Tech Week as well, which is really exciting. Tech is like a global business.

And so people are hosting events that are here. There are Toronto-based businesses and startups and even individuals. And people are also coming in from across the globe to host and to attend. If you're hiring over at Practica, what skills do people need to have? Yeah, so a lot of people I talk to, they think that you need AI. and you need coding is your number one skill. Maybe those are good skills to have, but the number one skill you need to have

is to be able to communicate effectively with people. And the more you practice that skill, the better at it you will get. And so I think that, especially for a lot of this younger generation that's coming out of school right now, they spent a lot of that time not in person, not communicating in a room.

And I think this is the chance to get out, to socialize, and to also get more comfortable talking about the work that you do, the business you operate in front of people face to face. You know, that's a really good question. How good or bad are people at networking these days? Because that was a skill when I was, I don't know how old you guys are, but I'm 50. When I was in university, like that was, that's what we did. You know, we went out and we met people. I mean, I literally, I remember I was in a dorm and it was a very small dorm on the outskirts of the campus. And so I just went to the biggest dorms that had freshmen in them. And I would

knock on everyone's door. I just had to have to meet them to see what am I missing that I'm not getting from this experience. I don't know that, I don't know that this generation is coming up is particularly good, but you would know you're on the ground. Yeah. It's so interesting, actually. So we have a student ambassador committee this year. And so we have students from all across Toronto-based universities and across the GTA that are helping bring students to Toronto Tech Week. And so the students that I've met, actually, they're exceptional networkers and they're hosting and throwing their own events, their own hackathons, their own dinners, parties, lunches and brunches, all of those things.

But I think it's a skill that you build up. So I think any of us, if we've spent too long at home, we need to, like, get back into the real world or, like, Miles said, IRL, like meet people in real life. And so I think it's a skill that you build. And if you feel you need to, you know, relearn that muscle, there's no better way to do that than to throw yourself into over 500 events that are happening over five days. Miles, have you noticed, I mean, is there an improvement over the past couple of years? Or is it organic? Does it go up and it? Does it ebb and flow?

Yeah, I think it's a mixed bag. And something I have noticed that is interesting is that it's very extreme. There's people that either don't network or there are people that are very, very hardcore networkers and very involved in the community. I also have found that sometimes introverts are the best networkers because they're very focused. They like to talk to people one-on-one as opposed to a group of people. And I like to say, I'm an extroverted introvert. So that means I look at the other person's shoes when I talk to them. But yeah, I think people are getting more comfortable. And I seek in our events that we do instead of Toronto Tech Week and elsewhere to just let people know that even if it's scary for some people to say, hey, I'm going to go to this event by myself.

And I've never done this before. And you have to be very welcoming and say, look, there's no judgment here. You know, this might seem a bit intimidating, but, you know, it's a safe environment, and we're here to help. Where are the jobs in tech these days? Because I was told as someone who's distinctly not in tech that, you know, AI was going to come for all the coding jobs.

And so anybody who learned how to code in university irrelevant. What's the situation today? Yeah, I think it really depends on the business and their needs, but I think storytelling is such a big part of it. Actually, what's so interesting is that events are becoming, a real big part of tech companies these days. People want to connect, going back to what Miles said, IRL. And so you're seeing companies like Anthropic actually lean into their event strategy as well. So events, BD, I think there's the traditional accounting finance talent, like there's

all of that, go to market. There's lots of opportunities still across the board. I think those jobs, the way they look, though, is changing. I think they're now more AI enabled and, you know, people can do more with less. Well, I wish you the very best. Again, Toronto Tech Week has happened. May 25th through 29th. What's the website for Toronto Tech Week? Toronto Techweek.com. Oh, look, you got it a nailed down. You got Miles, thank you so much for being here.

Julie, I appreciate it. And come on back and report back on your success. We did love to have you back. Absolutely, thanks, Ben. Welcome back and welcome back to Tony Chapman, the host of the award-winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, founding partner of Chatter-A-I. I love having him on because we talk about all these things

that we see on social media and on television and magazines and all these ad campaigns, We ask ourselves, are these guys doing what they think they're doing? Are they setting out to do something wrong? Are they going to achieve their goals with something like this? So let's jump right in. Tony, welcome back to the show. Always a pleasure.

Always a pleasure. Yeah, so there's this guy who got kind of famous on social media because he just was, he works at Ashley's Furniture. And they fired him because I guess he was putting out a lot of content for Ashley Furniture, but he wasn't getting permission to do so. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos, different tools, different models,

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Yeah, his name's Steph. He got over 6 million views on TikTok. And he's an interesting guy. He's got a great face and personality. He's a white guy. I would say he's not the best rapper I've ever heard. But he always kind of worked in with his using his pens at work and the furniture that he was represented behind him.

He created these wraps. And he got a great following. A lot of people loved him. but the Ashley people thought, you know, it wasn't up to what they thought their brand should be. And I would say to you that in the entire, actually, just to describe it to your audience, looks like a standalone furniture store in a small town.

Yeah. And I promise you, they got 6 million more views than they've ever got advertising in their local newspaper. So, it's so weird. Like, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. And, I mean, it'd be very interesting to hear the whole story because they just fired him.

It would be interesting to see why they tried to fold him in to their, their communication strategy or not, but feels to me big corporations, sometimes they don't get it and they don't realize until it's gone, that they had, they had a positive, they had a, they had a ringer, and they chose, they chose not to use them. I mean, they demanded he took the videos down and the guy's got six million videos. He's probably making more money now as a viral.

I'll tell you a quick story. So I had a bride cut off her hair just before she got married. It was a $3,000 video to test the woman react to bad hair days. It was just a little test video. Yeah. It went viral. All of a sudden, I'm not exaggerating. Jay Leno, uh, Tonight show, entertainment tonight.

Norb Jewison weighs in. This thing becomes the biggest viral hit number. Pop 10 viral hit in YouTube. Yeah. Unilever shuts it down. And because there's a guy saying, oh my God, because she swore in the video and she was drinking champagne. And I called it coughing up one of the greatest marketing hairballs of all time.

They could have gone on Oprah wearing suns silk shampoos for sunsulk shampoo. T-shirts, they would have done it. And the whole thing was, is this real or not? And sometimes you've got to, if you're going to try to be an authentic brand, and something happens like down in the web, you've got to let it go. You've got to enjoy it. And as opposed to going, oh, my, what's going to happen? Are some of my long-term customers going to be offended because this case is rapping

about couches? No, they won't. Take the win. Take the win. Exactly. Take the win. All right. Drop to your lap.

Now, it's not every day that we look at a Canadian bank and say, they hit a home run here, but TD hit a home run. Yeah, I love this. So they've got this new fractional shares that are coming out, which is basically you can buy 100th of a share, but they weren't allowed to use the logos for whatever reason, bureaucracy. Of the biggest companies in America. The biggest companies, like the Nikes of the world.

So what they did is they bought billboards where there was a Nike sign. So imagine a billboard and you look, and there's a hole in the ad. You're reading this ad, you don't know what it's for. And you look through the hole and there's a Nike logo. Yeah, like a chunk of it. They got a way to do the logo. But what they did is they made the consumer part of the campaign. Yeah.

And then they took pictures. And guess what? They shared it with other people. And all of a sudden they had this fantastic hit. And, you know, out of home is a really important part of your media mix. But when you have it that it stops the consumer in the tracks versus just driving by and looking, that's where you've created some magic. So I've got to give full credit.

They did a beautiful job with this. And I'm sure it's going to win awards around the world. like a lot of other great Canadian creative does. Okay, so meanwhile, Kodak is returning to film. This is a big deal because I thought Kodak was gone. Yeah, I did too, and I actually did some research. This height was 150,000 employees. Now there's 3,000.

They haven't sold it, but what happened is they started getting more demand for film. And they thought as professional photographers moving away from digital, it was kids that love the idea of having only 12 pictures to take, and I have to make sure they're perfect, and I have no idea until they get developed. Yeah. And to me, I think the comparison is the sense of going back to retro and tactile vinyl is obviously become massive.

People love their vinyl, putting on the record, dusting the record and everything else instead of having thousand songs to your pocket. I don't think this one's going to last because I'll tell you something. Immediate gratification. This generation's grown up by, you know, click it and it delivered on your door. And I'm not sure taking that film and is going to continue with a novelty of taking the film and getting it developed. But for now, they're enjoying it.

They've expanded their plant, and they're selling more film than they have in a decade. If they could find a way to reinvent the role of film so that you could have, I don't know, so you could develop these at home and you don't require a dark room, if there was a way to do something there, because that's it, it's the last mile. That's the issue with film.

We've got to start a company, because I'm telling you something, I had the same idea. If you could just dump the real, the cartridge, into a machine and it comes out printed. Yeah. Like a, almost like a Polaroid does. Yeah. But I think it would be a huge chip.

But I think just, you know, it's the last mile is a tough mile when you got to find someone that's going to develop the film. And then you got to pay for it because you're just shooting digital. There's no expense. No, exactly. I don't think it's going to be the phenomenon that vinyl is, which has become, you know, just literally year after year, vinyl sales are increasing. So I guess, I guess the question that we're ending that part with it, is this, is,

Is this Kodak's next chapter or is this just a very loud death rattle? Yeah, it's a just lung death. I just don't see that coming back. I mean, it's, you know, professional photographers were coming out claiming, but they, professional fault, they love digital because they can throw it on their camera and then put in their computer and make it perfect. Yeah. So I just don't think it.

There's nothing there other than a little bit of novelty. Like it's like a Kavini baby that's going to come and go. Okay, let's talk about this next story. but National Geographic turned billboards into bloom boards. And then you got Heinz launching catch-up insurance. Both of these seem like they're taking big, big swings, and I don't know if it's going to be a fly ball or a home run. Well, the interesting thing about the Bloomboard,

National Geographic can probably afford two billboards. I mean, they're not going to have a big media budget. So creating a board that becomes a green wall and grows, and there's bees and there's honey, people are going to take pictures of it, and they're going to talk about it. So they're getting the amplification effect of a big idea. I don't have a lot of money, but I hope it gets talked about.

Heinz insurance is very different. So Heinz has been on this journey forever saying it has to be Heinz. It has to be Heinz. Right. It has to be Heinz. And it's done really well with it. But now this new twist in the Middle East is if you spill it on you, they're going to, they have insurance. And you can actually go and get your dry cleaning paid for it.

Now, no one's going to go through the process. But the fun of it is, the fact is, I am willing to take. take that risk and take forever to squeeze that hinds out, even if it explodes on me, because I'm back with insurance. It's just another way to get a literally a condiment, basically essentially tomato paste, talked about as if it's a big iconic brand. And I think that they've done that successfully for the past decade. And we talked about it in the show before where they had to, you know, you buy your fries

and McDonald's and the little pouch comes out, you put your ketchup in it. Yeah, very smart. So they're doing things like that to constantly put them like front and center. And again, we've talked about it time and time again. Attention is the oxygen of marketing. It's the oxygen of sales. It's the oxygen of what you do. You need an audience to pay attention.

And I give full credit to Heinz because I don't talk about mustard the way they do. I don't talk about relish. But somehow or other, every month or so we're talking about Heinz ketchup. Yeah. And you're right. Because Heinz, I mean, people don't know. People don't know the, everyone knows Heinz is number one. and they know that

who's the French has got into a catch-up as well, right? Yeah. And in Canada, we know about these because, well, is it a Canadian company or is it an American company with a Canadian plant? But Heinz has been doing,

I mean, they came out with a ton of new condiments last year. It really does seem like they know their brand and they know where they want to take it and they're very, they're very smart about about this sort of thing,

about this, like they know how they're seen and they know how to get more attention. They're making themselves more important than the hot dog you're putting the ketchup on. Oh, hey, easy. Slow your role there, player. You're a hot dog fan, but I'll tell you something. We don't talk about your favorite hot dog, but we certainly talking about Heinz ketchup. So you got to get them credit to that.

I do. Hey, my friend, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Always a pleasure. So when I talk about nuclear, the power of nuclear, a lot of people think immediately and exclusively about the energy grid and the power that we can have in the province of Ontario, the Minister of Energy is focused in doubling down on the nuclear option to improve our base load in this province.

But that is not the only use for nuclear. Obviously, there's the military use as well, but there's a medical use, which we're going to drill down into for a lot of different and disparate ways in the medical system. New cancer targeting therapies. Huge demand for medical isotopes. The list goes on. So to talk about this, we're joined by Michael Lee Chin.

He's the founder, president and chairman of Portland Holdings, major donor and namesake of the Michael Lee Chin family patient care tower at St. Michael's Hospital. Mr. Lee Chin, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here. Thank you very much, Mr. Ben Mulroney, sir. Yeah, so let's talk about nuclear in medicine and why it's needed in research. Well, we have to talk about the current state of how cancer is treated in the world today. There are three modalities, basically.

The first is surgery. The second is external beam radiation. And the third is chemotherapy until this point. But there's now a fourth modality. And the force modality works like this. Each cancerous cell, each type of cancer, the cells have a unique receptor on them. And what we do, we find a peptide or protein that is attracted to that particular unique receptor. So it's like iron shavings and a magnet.

And once we find a peptide, we can attack. a radioisotope to the peptide or protein, which takes the radioisotope to the receptor on the cancer cells. And we can either see light up on a PET scan or with a different type of isotope. We can zap that particular type of cell and that particular type of cell only leaving neighboring healthy cells alone. So side effects, very minimal. Very much. So attacking different types of cancer, this could be, as you called it, one of the new modalities. But required in that is nuclear isotopes for medical isotopes. And we, yes. So I don't know much about much, sir, but I know that Canada is very rich in everything that we need for nuclear power. Are we also rich with everything that we would need for nuclear isotopes? 100%. Canada,

Canada, we have a research center by the name of CNL, Canadian nuclear laboratory. And CNL is at the forefront of nuclear isotopes, the forefront in the world.

Canada, we a few decades ago, were leading the world in this area, but we lost it. We now have an opportunity again to regain that pole position. So C&L was pivotal, is pivotal actually, in this, in medical radioisotopes in the world. Now, so a lot of people, sir, are going to say, look, Canada's health care system is in crisis. And we've got our emergency rooms are overrun. and we don't have enough GPs and we don't have enough nurse practitioners is now really the time to be focusing on that side of the equation, the research side.

Make the case for me that it absolutely is, it's always the time to be making, to be investing in research. So, unfortunately, we have to walk and chew gum. Yeah. It's not, we don't, things don't happen secret, things for optimality. we don't we can't do things sequentially right so we have to do medical research continuously and we have to at the same time satisfy patients needs because they're dying right now uh the good news is this whole area of it's called targeted radio ligand therapy this whole area because it's a robust platform this whole whole area we have now many companies throughout the world researching and going through the different phase of getting approved by the FDA primarily. So over time in the next 10 years, 15 years, most cancers will be treated by this modality using different types of radioisotopes.

Right now the workhorse radioisotope is an isotope by the name of Letizium-177. the and this is an alpha emitter but other types of this is a beta emitter other types of alpha emitters are being worked on which are much more powerful for solid mass type cancers so the good news is we have research going on throughout the world and different companies are at different stage of getting approved by the fda currently there are two drugs in the market marketplace that are approved by Health Canada, FDA, and in Europe. And they're both by Novartis. The first is a drug called Lutathira, which is used to address GEP-net type cancers, gastroentropanthagriatic neuroendocrine tumors. The second type is a drug by the name of, which is again by Novartis. it's used to treat prostate cancer.

So when you say this research needs to go on, how far are we from getting to, you know, I don't think we'll ever get to the top of the mountain when it comes to cancer research. There's always going to be another part of the mountain to climb. But how close are we to the next great breakthrough as it relates to medical isotopes? Well, the next, we don't need to continue us to be looked.

looking at the next best breakthrough. Once we have a platform that is robust and it can address all types of, all different types of cancers, we just need to make sure we scale that platform by addressing different types of cancers. Again, targeted region ligand therapy is a very robust platform applicable to any type of cancer.

Michael Leachin, you have been very successful in the world of business, and then you have, you have, helped, you know, the world of the arts and in science as well. What did it, what was it about this challenge that you said that you were going to put your money behind it? Well, well, firstly, as a, I like to take on big challenges. And two of mankind's biggest challenges would be number one, solving for cancer. Number two, clean energy. because if we do, those are existential threats to mankind.

And if you think about it, if you think of any and every successful organization, business person, they intuitively, they behave in the following way, what we call the three P's. They predict, they plan,

and they persevere, the three P's. Any and every successful person, that's what they do. Maybe intuitively, I'm just codified. what is intuition. So why would I be fascinated and at the same time put so much resources into this area, into these two areas is because they are the way of the future. We need nuclear

energy is the way of the future for clean energy. And specifically, small and micro-modular reactors will be the energy generators of the future because they'll give countries, not only energy security, but also actually make countries not only more secure, but also give them access to energy without. And it's a democratizing of energy for those countries that are not energy endowed. Michael Lee Chin, thank you very much for being here. Thank you for your optimism. Thank you for your leadership. My pleasure, Mr. Mulroney, sir. Ha ha ha ha.