Canada Has Everything, Except Urgency: Goldy Hyder on Canada’s Economic Drift

In this year-end episode of Toronto Talks, Giles Gherson sits down with Goldy Hyder, President & CEO of the Business Council of Canada, to look back on a tumultuous 2025 — and ahead to the choices Canada must confront in 2026.

Together, they examine an uncomfortable paradox: a country with every structural advantage a modern economy should want still finds itself struggling to scale companies, attract investment, or remove the barriers it built for itself. As they reflect on the year, they press into the questions 2025 made impossible to avoid:

• Why did a more assertive U.S. catch us off guard yet again?
• How did regulatory inertia become a defining feature of Canadian policymaking?
• And heading into 2026, is our real challenge competitiveness — or complacency?

Hyder argues that Canada’s greatest vulnerability isn’t external pressure but the comfort that allows drift to masquerade as stability. If 2025 was a wake-up call, then 2026 will test whether we’re willing to act.

Transcript

Goldy Hyder: 0:00

We're very upset. We're very hurt. But I look at this, and I say this with great respect to premiers, do you have the moral authority to question Donald Trump's tariffs while we've been imposing tariffs on Canadians via interprovincial trade barriers for decades? So let's fix Canada.

Host: 0:22

In today's episode, we're looking back at the major economic forces that shape 2025 and the challenges and opportunities that await in 2026. To make sense of it all, Goldie Heider, President and CEO of the Business Council of Canada, joins our President and CEO, Giles Gerson, for a wide-ranging conversation about competitiveness, policy, and Canada's place in a shifting North American landscape. Here's Giles and Goldie.

GIles Gherson: 0:53

Goldie, great to have you for our Toronto Talks podcast. You know, you've been head of the Business Council of Canada now for about seven years. And I would say this has got to be, you went through the COVID years, but this has to trump, to use that word, the COVID years in terms of just the sheer volatility of it.

Goldy Hyder: 1:12

Well, at least in COVID, we were all going through it together. Whereas here, there's a lot more at stake being Canada, being attached in the neighbourhood that we are. And in that sense, I think this is a period of, it's a seminal moment in life of our country, whether we want to look at it that way or not, it probably is. And how we respond to that is going to help the next 150 years of our country.

GIles Gherson: 1:35

It's interesting how, you know, I know the Americans don't like to hear the word trade war. That's not what they have in mind, but that's how often we've interpreted the tariffs and some of the, you know, less flattering descriptions of Canada from the White House in the last year. But just how would you characterize the year from your

Goldy Hyder: 1:57

Well, it may surprise you that I often say in my public remarks, I want to thank the president. I want to thank the president for doing what really no Canadian has been able to do. He's awoken us, a sleeping giant, one that got comfortable, one that got complacent, one that now is united, east to west, French to English, urban to rural. Yes, some schisms show, and there's some fault lines there that we have to navigate very carefully, but Canadians, set aside the politicians and everything, but Canadians, I think, are looking at this and saying, I'm awake now. I want you to do something so that we never become beholden to a single economy the way that we've managed to do over the course of the last 150 years. So on the one hand, America has basically said, listen, this is not personal. This is not about you. It's actually about us. We're going to set apart, we're going to have a new industrial policy here. We don't like the direction in which we're going ourselves. And frankly, I think America has long wanted to isolate, to withdraw from the war. I think that's American history. Again, if you look back to the war, I mean, if it wasn't for Pearl Harbor, they weren't getting into that war either. So this is who America is. Currently, they've been fighting wars without any body bags coming home. They use technology and all that. That may be the future. But they want to have an independent industrial policy. And one that's driven by tariffs, which are really a vat on the American imports. It's a vat on the American people. It's a form of tax collection without having the courage to say, we're going to tax you. So that's what that is. But it's their prerogative, their democracy. Americans have voted for it, not once, but twice. And time will tell how long that will go. But we have to prepare as if this is a different America. And when America changes, the rest of the world changes. And so we have to open up our own eyes and say, okay, how do we use this crisis as an opportunity to set ourselves apart and to set ourselves on a trajectory where we're economically sovereign, which is very different than saying we're a sovereign nation. How are we economically sovereign? How are we going to leverage what frankly is a hand, Giles, that any country in the world would trade places with Canada right now? It would trade right away because we have it all. You know, you look at the natural resources going from, you know, sort of like softwood lumber, agriculture, oil, gas, potash, uranium, electric, you know, hydropower. The list just goes on and on and on. And we have that. We have the immigration policy that, while challenged today, really built this country's economy so we can attract talent. We have innovative capabilities. We have 15 trading agreements with 51, you know, countries in the world. So we have a lot of cards to play, and we're going to have to figure out how to do it one hand, stabilize the relationship with America, but on the other hand, diversify and build our own independent economy.

GIles Gherson: 4:44

Now, of course, I think you're absolutely right. And that is the promise out of this year is more economic sovereignty, more economic self-reliance, which is something that we once had. And I think over the years, as you say, we drifted away from that. And now we've had this, we've been sort of galvanized to it. On the other hand, of course, we are still living next door to the largest, richest market in the world. Flavia Volpe likes to say it's a marriage you can't divorce from. And so we have to learn if we can't divorce from them, we're going to have to live with them. And we're going to always have a close relationship with them. And so I think if you're intimating the same thing, how are we going to find a way that is going to be maybe less integrated than it has been, less open than it has been? But at the same time, clearly we're going to be sending a lot of products down to the U.S. under some terms. Otherwise, I think it's going to be very difficult for us to really...

Goldy Hyder: 5:36

Yeah, that's what I say to people who tell me, well, you can't do a deal with this president. He doesn't honor his agreements and all of that. I say, well, hang on a second. First of all, he's saving us with the Kusma exemption. That was his choice. If he didn't want to do that, we're in a whole new world here, which tells me that even though there's this notion that the president doesn't like multilateral agreements, I think he thinks tri and multi are different things because he, after all, did the trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada. And they're working very aggressively with Mexico to address the issues and they're making a lot of progress. Mexico now has at least a 10 point spread with us on tariffs. And if he ever implemented his other 10, he just threatened, it'd be a 20 point derenture. And so we're going in the opposite direction. So how do we do with that? So there's two things I would say. First and foremost is, to share an anecdote for your listeners, Bob Lighthizer, the author of former USTR head and the first administration of Trump, and the author of a book, No Trade is Free. We had him at a members meeting in Calgary in 24, yeah, 24 March, I believe it was, just before the election. And, you know, we were just aghast at what he was selling. Now, most of what he was selling is happening today. But when the event was over, he was at the head table and just leaned over to him. And I said, you know, Ambassador, do you mind signing your book for me? And so I gave him the book and he picked it up and I thought he would just simply put Bob and give it back to me. Instead, he looked at me and he said, "It's Goldie with a Y, right?" I said, "Yes." And he said, so then he wrote down the following. He said, "To Goldie, your main message is keep North America number one." And that message to me was, because that was a subject of discussion at the table, was I was stressing, is it in America's interest to have a weak Canada and a weak Mexico? No.

GIles Gherson: 7:18

No.

Goldy Hyder: 7:19

look at North America as a competitive, as a block that competes with the other blocks out there, Europe, Asia, South America, someday Africa. And his point was, I'm America. I don't need to think like that. But I agree with you that you do. And so, first of all, we need to make a case for North America. We have an opportunity to do so through sports when we host the World Cup of Soccer together. Separately from that, though... The World Series. Well, the World Series could have done it too. But, oh, you brought back some pain there. You know, you look at the other aspect of this is we're very upset, we're very hurt. But I look at this, and I say this with great respect to premiers, do you have the moral authority to question Donald Trump's tariffs while we've been imposing tariffs on Canadians via interprovincial trade barriers for decades? So let's fix Canada. Let's fix the things that Donald Trump is not responsible for. He didn't put about interprovincial trade barriers. He's not the one that's preventing us from building trade-enabling infrastructure in our ports. He's not brought our immigration system to the state that it's in today. We have an opportunity to fix our own country because if we do, we can compete. And I've often joked with the Americans that I deal with, I said, not only are you worried about today's trade deficit, but if Canada does what it's supposed to do in this moment, that trade deficit will increase because you're going to buy our products for even better pricing for us.

GIles Gherson: 8:45

I think there's a lot in that. I also think, though, that, you know, again, going back to my point about our continued, I can't see us not continuing to rely heavily on the U.S. market. Geography. Because of geography. They're going to sell ties. Give you an example. So we know that a couple of months, last month, General Motors dropped the Bright Drop electric EV van out of Incasol, Ontario. And that was really the first electric van. You know, and you look at the spread of e-commerce and these vans that are all over, delivery vans all over our cities and here was an electric one uh perlator fedex dhl were all using that van out of ingersault ontario they dropped it why because they said general motors said look you guys are using it in canada which is fantastic but you're 10 percent and of the market and we're not you know your counterparts in the u.s are not using it so we're we can't produce it any longer in canada because your market just isn't big enough and i think there's a lot of cases like that where surely Canadian company, UN members, have spread their wings in the U.S. That's why they've become great companies, domiciled in Canada often, but doing very well in the U.S. and really would not be doing nearly as well if they didn't have that U.S. market to align.

Goldy Hyder: 9:59

It's more than that. All of that is true, but there's an added element. I've just come back from Asia with the Prime Minister's visit to APEC and ASEAN, or reverse order ASEAN and APEC, and we happened to also go to Japan when President Trump was there. And in meeting after meeting, not just the political people, not just the business people, including the departments at the DM levels, in their own subtle Asian way, would ask, you know, how are you guys doing with that USMCA review and renewal? Because what they're telling you is our interest in Canada is connected to the US. If you can't give us that

GIles Gherson: 10:36

We're a channel to the U.S.

Goldy Hyder: 10:38

So we have to realize, when I wrote the prime minister when he won the election, I said, sir, there's three things you need to do in this order, frankly. One, stabilize the relationship with the United States of America. When 25% of your GDP is trade dependent and 75% of that 25% is with one country, your economic viability is very much at stake here. So let's stabilize that. Secondly, let's strengthen our own country. Let's get out of our own way and so many of these things. And Giles, I tell you, and you and I are from the West, and we've had experience with the fragility of this federation. It takes a lot of work to keep Canada together. But if we can just get out of our own way, if we can collaborate, cooperate, and compete, we can win. There can be no doubt about that. And thirdly, this whole notion of diversification is kind of being attributed to Donald Trump. I think that's wrong. I think we've been trying to diversify our long time, and many companies have. There are Canadian companies, our pension plans, our insurance companies, our engineering companies, infrastructure companies have been out in the world for decades. Global players. Yeah. I mean, Manulife was in China before Canada was... Sun Life was in England. In those last centuries. So you look at that, it's how do we bring others with us? How do we bring all of those that were so lazy that they didn't even become QSMA compliant? Because they thought I don't even have to do that to have access.

GIles Gherson: 11:54

Well, I think our issue in the region, I think about our members at the Toronto Region Board of Trade, we've got lots of small and medium-sized businesses. And the worry we have about them, and even they have about themselves, is in a North American context, they're subscale. And a small business for us is 100 employees or fewer. In the US, a small business is 500 employees or fewer. Then you look at our small businesses, and they're often 25, 30 people. They're not even 100. And then do they have the capital, do they have the resources to get into that US market?

Goldy Hyder: 12:24

And then will they stick with it when they scale to 10 million or just sell? That's the other problem. And we've had a lot of that.

GIles Gherson: 12:29

And so again, one of the things we really need to see is incentives to stay and grow here. I always call our, I sometimes call our tech economy a Christmas tree farm economy, right? We grow these fantastic companies. They get harvested and taken away. Then we grow another batch. They get harvested. And we never really grow with the exception of, you know, great companies like Open Text or Wealthsimple. We've got a bunch of them, but we don't have, and obviously Shopify, but we don't have nearly as many as we should have. And I think if your kind of vision, Goldie, that you talk about of, you know, much more interprovincial trade, much more pan-Canadian trade, to grow our economy. Just use our own goods.

Goldy Hyder: 13:05

Our own steel. Our domestically takes up a little bigger than what we see. But again, that's the challenge for Canada and Canadians. All the elements are there. Every element that you need to take control of your own economic destiny, your own economic sovereignty is available to us. But what are we seeing? I mean, you know, you and I have the opportunity to interact with premiers. I've spent some time in the summer with a few of them, and they basically said to me, your instincts are not wrong and the air is coming out of the balloon here Goldie all that hype all that hoopla I mean even the the issue of Donald Trump in Canada has gone from being the catalyst of one issue to now he's like fifth or sixth of priority we can live with it well because we're becoming numb to it yeah we're becoming numb to it right and the exemption has given us a okay we're good there you know the steel aluminum auto stuff we'll get through it we'll get a new number and we'll figure that out but generally speaking that comfort is coming back. And look, I'm not trying to be duplicitous about this. Of course, we need to be with the United States of America. Of course, we need to make sure we have that renewal of the pre-trade agreement. Of course, we should continue to make the case for our auto industry, our oil and gas industry, our agriculture industry, our nuclear industry. I mean, a massive deal was just signed with the Americans.$80 billion.$80 billion. When people get upset about the 51st state, you know what, Tom, it's nice to be wanted. There must be something we have here. So the whole rhetoric about, I don't need Canada. The evidence is quite contrary. You like us enough to want us. And I think the prime minister did a magnificent job in that very first meeting in the White House where he basically said, well, the president goaded him on the 51st date. And the prime minister said, actually, I just consulted Canadians. They're not interested. End of transaction. Right? So now let's move on beyond that. Let's put, I know people have got this whole elbows up and elbows down thing. I'm more of the emotion doesn't get you where you need to go. Facts and reason is what we need to be conscious of. Just take a look at a map. And with all due respect, even the diversification piece, it's a fraction of our economy. It's a long runway. I mean, the prime minister is talking about getting Europe and Asia to cooperate. Good idea. If you've got 20 years, let's get the ball rolling and we'll figure that out. It's a long-term plan. But it's a long-term plan. It should be started, but it should be our salvation in the next couple of years. But let's recognize, and I think, again, in the real politic world in which we're living right now. I'm pleased that the federal government took a very direct approach in resetting some pretty key relationships or recalibrating some of them. You look at in one week before the G7, calls to MBS in Saudi Arabia, call with Prime Minister Modi, call with Premier Li at the time, and subsequent to that, now a meeting with President Xi. Canada's gone away from that sort of preachy values-based, we're here to tell you what to do, to, okay, I'm now in a world in which interests, I have to lean with interest in my policy. More the traditional Canadian policy going back. Again, in a balanced way. And so I think we have an opportunity here. Every time I travel, Giles, I come back with this sense of, God, they love us out there, but they're asking us is, are you going to be a partner we can rely on? Well, there's a question, are you serious? Are you serious? And can we rely on you? Because, you know, Australia is now selling LNG to Germany because we told them no.

GIles Gherson: 16:13

Yeah, it's a far longer way to go.

Goldy Hyder: 16:14

Far longer way to go. And so if you care about the climate, that didn't do it that very good either. We said the same thing to Korea, to Japan, to Greece. And you go there now and they're saying, despite everything, we're still looking at you because we're buying from Louisiana. It's a six to 12 day longer journey. Then it would be from you. To get from Vancouver and to get from there as opposed to Vancouver. So again, we have what the world wants. They're looking to us. We know we need more foreign direct investment. That's one of the other reasons, as I mentioned, we need the USMCA. But do I feel, do I believe in Canada? You're darn rights I do. It's frustrating at times, right? But, boy, if we put this together, we can...

GIles Gherson: 16:52

It's a winning formula if you can do it. I mean, one of the things, though, just in the way you framed it, the thing that comes to my mind is, I have to say, at the Board of Trade, we're sort of pushing the same thing. We're very big on competitiveness and business growth and productivity, and we think that we've coasted for a couple of decades, and it's cost us dearly, and we need to drive investment back here in order to invest in modern plant and equipment and up-to-date technology and so on. We create a lot of technology. We don't necessarily use it here. But that's been to a huge cost for us. The new government, again, one of the things we didn't talk about, but here it is, 2025. I don't think at the beginning of this year your members necessarily thought there was going to be an election with a new prime minister and a liberal party that is now a pro-business party.

Goldy Hyder: 17:44

I believe they saw that. It's how it should be. I mean, our business and government should work together to grow our economy.

GIles Gherson: 17:51

But it was one of the big surprises of the year. It is. In part what you said was a reaction to Trump. It's one of maybe the interesting things and positive things that happened as a result of Trump was to get a government that was much more focused on growing the economy in quite short order. But my sense is, you know, we talked about the interprofessional trade barriers. We need head-turning policy. we don't need incremental policy. And what I feel is that even though the talk has been big and bold, no question about that. But I'm not sure I'm seeing it real. I'm seeing more incrementalism than.

Goldy Hyder: 18:27

We saw that. I mean, you know, we're speaking about a day or two after the federal budget. And you saw that. I mean, the framing was generational change, transformational and all of that. And, you know, I think that's great from a vision perspective. But in terms of the substance of it, I'm not the only one saying this, it's been said across the country, left media, right media, eastward media, western media, wherever. It was like a good start. It basically said good start, but hardly transformational, hardly generational change. Now, I think, and I'm not trying to provide an excuse for them, but my own assessment was ambitions that reflect that of a majority government, but execution that reflects the reality of a minority government, where not only are you worried about your own opposition, you're probably looking over your shoulder because a lot of the people sitting in your caucus believed in redistribution, believed in raising taxes, believed in the idea that business is not a force for good. And that, so here we are where we're pleasantly surprised and delighted that, you know, I'm like, I've like Mark Carney is my prime minister, you know, Michael Saviour is our clerk, Marc-Andre Blanchard is our chief of staff. And there's a constituency of people here. We're like, we know these people, they know us. He's clearly not worried about, you know, reelections or, you know, all that other stuff. He's full speed ahead. And so we want to cooperate. We want to collaborate. We've tried to do it. And, you know, look, relationships are like marriages, right? Like we're not going to agree on everything. There's some things we disagree on and we respectfully put it. We're having some challenges on our labor issues these days. You know, there's been a lot of disruption in our supply chains, as we've seen and strikes and so forth. We're going to have to figure some of these things out because these are own goals. We're going to have to figure out a way. And I still believe that you can't do the things that people want you to do if we don't have a growing economy. And so we now have a very big bet being made at a deficit that I think still is quite high. And it's betting on growth. And look, I want the prime minister to be right. I'd love to see a trillion dollars come into Canada given our GDP is less than three, right? That would be fantastic. I got to land out over 500 billion.

GIles Gherson: 20:32

Yeah, it's suddenly becoming a goalie. A couple of days before the budget, so it doubled in size. One of the interesting aspects of the budget, though, and I want to get your reaction to this and think about your members, is one way to try to grow is what the government has put forward in the budget, which is we're going to use the power of government, the power of the state, and a $75 billion deficit to produce big government projects, infrastructure, energy, transportation, defense. And we're going to use the power of the state and big projects to unlock private capital. An American approach probably would have been, and it has been, I'm going to unleash private capital to do whatever they want to do, because I'm going to deregulate significantly. I'm going to create significantly lower taxes and tax incentives to really unlock investment, and we'll see where that goes.

Goldy Hyder: 21:30

Very different approaches. Totally. Look, this is a subject for an entire podcast because now you're talking about philosophy and ideology. Which direction do you want to go? When the Major Projects Office opened up, and Dawn Farrell's obviously known to us at the Business Council, someone's going to get stuff done. She will. But the reality is most members I heard from said, you know what? I don't need to pick five projects. I want to create the conditions for me to deploy, make the decisions that I want to make, that my board wants to make in terms of a final investment decision. Just create the conditions. There's 200 projects that the country needs and something in Timmins or in Regina won't make the list because it's not one of the five. By rule of thumb, when you identify that you're going to expedite four or five things, the capital goes there and none of it goes to the other stuff. You're actually suffocating capital. You crowd it out. risk there. I will say on behalf of the members, at least at the business council, that our preference would be the American model, which is to create the conditions for capital to be deployed. I'm going to own up to something else here, which is a lot of the people in the public have this sense that, wow, you guys are not competitive and you have all these monopolies and oligarchies. You know what? Everybody I've talked to, first of all, they're the most competitive people you'll ever meet, CEOs. They're very competitive. They're eternal optimists. No one has an issue with competing. All they say is create a level playing field. Give me a level playing field. You're in Canada at billions of dollars, which by the way is flow through taxation through the public, okay, via a corporation. But in Japan and Korea, I pay zero. And so the cost of a farm in Japan is half. They're innovating, they're inventing, they're doing things, right? And so you can't have it both ways. Our airlines, people pick on them all the time. Like, okay, but when you get a $1 charge for a ticket from Calgary to Edmonton, but the invoice is for $170, take a look at the 169. Those are all taxes that are being charged to you via a corporation because the government is overspending. And so we have got to make sure that people understand you have to create growth in this economy and growth will come when you realize that if you are a country that wants capital and you get eight out of 10 things right on regulations on taxes, but another country that you're competing with gets nine out of 10 things right, they're not going to reward you for effort at eight. And there's no patriotism involved at eight. It's, I got to go to the place where the nine is. So be the best.

GIles Gherson: 23:50

Well, I think that's an important message that you have because, and we share it at the Board of Trade, and part of it is because with all of these government projects, and they're not bad projects, we're delighted that we're going to 5% on the same. Sure, they're seeding it. In fact, there's what we're doing. But here's the thing. Are Canadian companies going to be in a position to benefit from those projects? Are they going to be competitive enough? will they participate is the first question because of all the uncertainties. That's right. So, you know, I do worry about that. I mean, I think that competitiveness thing, from my perspective anyway, is that's the bottom line. If we could do everything we can to make our companies more competitive through regulation, reform, regulatory streamlining, and modernization through a much more competitive tax system, I don't think we'd have a lot more to worry about.

Goldy Hyder: 24:36

Yeah. I'll tell you, in all honesty, Giles, I'm sure you do this with your members. We survey our our members at our members' meetings, it's actually not taxed as much as it's regulations. That's the big one. It's the predictability and certainty and the confidence. And, you know, I must be getting this message across because the prime minister actually quoted me in Mexico when we were at an event. He said, you know, as Goldie likes to remind me, and really I'm doing it on behalf of my members who tell me this all the time, but they said, you can't legislate the deployment of capital. There's no law that can say, you know, this company must spend X percentage of its investment. You can't do that. All you can do is create the conditions. You can induce it. You can incent it. You can do everything you can, but you can't make... There's discussions going on about a north-south pipeline in Washington. No one's talking to the company that actually had the issues with the pipeline who says, I don't even have a permit for this anymore. We have got to collaborate better to figure out from it, again, a very deliberate and intentional industrial policy. And people get all excited by the term. I just say growth strategy. What's your growth strategy? Well, that's what it should be.

GIles Gherson: 25:36

What's your growth strategy? Well, you know, in the 1970s, there was industrial policy and it was very sort of de-registreation or state-driven. Sure. And a lot of market signals got blurred and that led to a period of stagflation, fundamentally. Now that's why I worry a little bit about a very much government-driven growth strategy because I worry that we could end up in the same spot where we don't actually get the growth we want because our companies aren't...

Goldy Hyder: 26:01

Well, look, I'm no economist and I'm not an industrial policy specialist or anything of the kind, but I do know the behavior of capital, right? It goes where it grows. There's water. It goes to the path of... It goes to the path of... Totally. It goes to the path of... It has the least resistance. I do have a pretty front row seat to decisions being made by companies in Canada who are multinational. And by the way, they're encouraged to be diverse, and so they are. It's interesting to me how much capital is flowing south still, despite everything. In some ways, if there's a question that I'm asking myself is, what happens if Donald Trump is right? What happens if the inflation doesn't come? What happens if a recession doesn't happen? By the way, no one should be wishing harm to the American economy in Canada because we go down with them even harder. Apart from I told you so. But what happens, right? And so his message is actually very clear. Avoid the tariffs. Get better permitting. Get better competitive taxes. Their issue, frankly, is now becoming our issue, which is they don't have people. They have basically a 1% unemployment rate at 4%. 3% is natural. One is, so they may want our auto industry, which we're going to fight tooth and nail to defend, but they couldn't build a plant. They couldn't.

GIles Gherson: 27:11

No, we hear this all the time, in fact, even with the decision to move the Jeep Compass from Brampton to Belvedere, Illinois, a lot of people are asking where they're going to find the living.

Goldy Hyder: 27:20

Right. Now, you have a president who is threatened, literally threatened, I believe it was a Los Angeles support by saying, "You will not automate. You will employ my workers that we need." They don't have them. Again, all of these things point to a place, which is why I think it's really important that we fix our immigration system. Again, credit to the federal budget. It does what we've asked it to do, which is now 64% target of economic migrants. Because I think Canadians are all saying, I don't have issue with immigrants. I'm having issue with abuse. I'm having issue with... Composition is an issue. Yeah. And we've got to address the reality on temporary foreign workers because some of that is just...

GIles Gherson: 27:57

International students, right? I mean, I think, you know, we had lots of international students, but there was not maybe the right mix. And I think where you're seeing in the budget is a really heavy push now on highly skilled students in STEM, students in PhD programs, students in engineering programs, which I think could be really beneficial to us. It's not much needed. So that's a plus.

Goldy Hyder: 28:16

I think we're getting the hook. But let me just, I want to say something, you know, a couple of things. First of all, thank you for having me. Thank you for the leadership of the Toronto Board of Trade. Toronto economy is the epicenter in many ways. We've got to make sure that it's humming as much as we need the energy sector humming and we need the mining sector humming. We need the softwood sector humming. Change is coming. Whether we like it or not, change is happening. I think we can be ahead of it. I think we have a government that wants to try and pull us and lead us. So I don't punish them for the idea that they're involved in our economy. I would prefer that they continue to hear us. And look, the prime minister was once responsible for a lot of capital in his previous role in allocating that capital. He knows full well how capital goes. So I think he believes that what he's doing is going to work. I want it to be successful. I'm just saying the old age adage about capital is very simple, right? Give me the reason to invest in your country. Make it easy for me to do so, and I'll do it, right? And so I think it's important that these pieces of this puzzle that are there, proximity to the United States, access to the U.S. market, you know, the free trading agreements we have, the clean electricity grids, the immigration policy, you know, if we could just get Canada humming, we would be so much more stronger and so much more economically sovereign. So it's all the elements are there. All the ingredients are there. And I think Canadians are actually expecting governments and business and labor and academia and others to say, you guys figure it out because we're trying to make ends meet over here and we're trying to get our kids through school and all of that. And have a career. Pay off our house and have a career. But you do that. We're authorizing you to go where we've gone. The license is there.

GIles Gherson: 29:54

I think the license is... So now you've just got to use it. So, Goldie, thank you very much. Great conversation. I will say this also. I mean, as you pointed out, we're sitting in the Toronto region. It is, I believe, the epicenter of the Canadian economy. That's not easy for an Albertan to say. No, I know it's not easy, and I can't imagine. But I mean, you know, I think it's true. I think what we saw in the World Series was emblematic of this city, right? It's dynamic, it's scrappy, and it wants to win. And it can be a unifying... The URSS brought us all together. And I think we have all the ingredients here too. And I have to say, at the Board of Trade, we're very excited by the future. As you should be. Thanks for having me.

Host: 30:30

Thanks for listening to this episode of Toronto Talks, the voice of Toronto's business community. We'll be back in 2026 with more leaders, insights, and conversations about Toronto's economic future. music