Disruptors

From Ottawa to Orbit: Two Views on Canada’s Big Day

SPEAKERS

Colonel Jeremy Hansen, Michael Sabia, John Stackhouse

John Stackhouse 00:00:09

Hi, it’s John here. As we wrap up this season, I want to share a couple of conversations with you that I thought captured a couple of the big ideas we heard over and over again this season. One is on moonshots, the other is on big ambitions.

The first is with Jeremy Hansen, who is now the Canadian authority on moonshots because he’s been to the moon and back. He’ll share insights from the journey, the voyage, and what it taught him about leadership and about humanity. We’ll also hear from someone who may be a little less celebrated than Colonel Hansen, but is hugely important to all the moonshots that Canada is trying to undertake this decade.

Michael Sabia runs the Canadian public service and is Prime Minister Carney’s right hand for pretty much everything major that is going on in the country. He’s also one of Canada’s most respected business thinkers and business leaders. Having run Hydro-Quebec, the Quebec Pension Fund and Bell Canada, he knows a thing or two about disruption and is on the front lines of all the disruptions that Canada is up against.

Both conversations were recorded live at the recent RBC Eurasia Group Canada US Summit held here in Toronto. One of my takeaways from that summit is that we’re going to face a long, hot summer when it comes to trade negotiations and everything else that’s on the table between Canada and the US. But there’s also a huge amount of opportunity, especially if we stay grounded but reach towards the stars. That’s the formula of every great moonshot.

Here he is, fresh from Halifax, Colonel Jeremy Hansen. So he literally flew from Halifax to get here this morning, but of course has also returned from another trip. He’s been to the moon and back. For those of you who don’t know Jeremy’s story, born in London, Ontario, educated at the Royal Military College and spent 17 years in Houston living, working, training with the American astronauts, but always wearing that Canadian flag on your shoulder there. So we’re going to talk about space, but we’re also going to talk about Canada and what lies ahead. But thank you. A lot of people are wanting to spend time with you right now and it’s wonderful for you to be part of this conversation.

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:02:35

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I actually appreciate the opportunity just to be with you, thought leaders. These types of conversations and leaders like you that put Canada in the position to collaborate with the United States, that Canada became the second country to send a human in a deep space because of that collaboration. So I’m excited to be here with you. It was worth the flight.

John Stackhouse 00:02:53

Well, we’re going to talk about– it was worth the flight–we’re going to talk about all that’s going on down here, but let’s start up there because the summit has been very much about the ground level, but you’re, I think, the only one in this room who has seen our beautiful continent from afar, very, very far away. What went through your mind as you were whipping around the moon there and got to look down on our little rock here and our little piece of that rock?

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:03:19

Pretty extraordinary journey. I would highlight, I flew with Reid, Victor and Christina and they had all spent at least six months, Christina closer to a year, aboard the International Space Station. And in the beginning, when you ride the rocket to space and you get out to, we went out to about 2,000 kilometers on our first orbit. I did get to see the continent, all of Canada, all of the United States all at once, but it wasn’t very long until all of that started to disappear and you couldn’t make out continents anymore. You saw a lot of blue, you saw a lot of white clouds. You’d see strange shapes of the terrain, but it was hard with the cloud cover to really make out what you’re looking at. And very soon you just started to connect with what we termed “tiny earth.”

And you couldn’t always see earth out the window, it depended on the orientation of the spacecraft. And so whenever the spacecraft would turn for thermal reasons and we would catch earth out the window, someone would just say, “Oh, there’s tiny earth.” And we would all float over and admire tiny earth. But I think it was interesting that I stopped connecting with a country, I started connecting with a planet. And I didn’t really think about that until I had some time off last week and I was like, “Gosh, yeah, it’s really true.” I just naturally stopped connecting with a country. But I will say, when I do think about our collaboration, something that really jumps out at me and when I looked at it from space is, for a thriving North America, you have to have a thriving Canada and you have to have a thriving United States. There’s just no other way to see it from space.

And that does mean two things. In the Astronaut Corps, we have these expeditionary skills, we call them, but two of the five are self-care and team care. And in order to be a good team player in a crew, you have to have good self-care. And so understanding how each of us take care of ourselves and our thriving as individuals is what allows the conversation to figure out how do we collaborate while still accomplishing that.

John Stackhouse 00:05:13

It’s a bit of a message for Canada and the US that we have to take care of ourselves but also be part of the team.

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:05:19

When you decide to go on a trip, try and send yourself around the moon, you do need a team. You need mission control, you need the engineering teams and of course you need the team that’s in the capsule and you don’t pick that team lightly. And so our currency is competency and collaboration. Those are the two things we have to have, otherwise, it falls apart. And we demand that. There’s no free rides in space exploration. Everybody has to be in it fully, has to be digging in and bringing real meaningful contribution. And that’s what I see here when I look at this room. You guys are all spending time here because you see that it’s valuable to lean into how can we get our two countries working together and firing in all cylinders to bring that collaboration.

John Stackhouse 00:06:09

Give us a sense of the collaboration up there because there’s no more challenging or risky environment.

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:06:15

Yeah. So Reid was our commander and the commander is always the commander, but a good commander will lift up their crew and utilize them to their full capability. And so Reid was very intentional about finding meaningful roles for all of us in the capsule and dividing the tasks through the mission. And so for launch and entry, Reid and Victor were in the seats with the controls and those were their primary areas. For all of the other trajectory burns that we did to navigate around the moon and back and get up to 39 times the speed of sound, that was Christina and I who were responsible for those. We’d built a lot of trust and we had worked through a lot of tensions.

In the beginning, we committed time in saying we want to get to be the highest functioning team that we can be. And then eventually when we came to understand that we would need to understand each other better. And so with that time we started to dig deeper and then we started to build a muscle that we would communicate when things, anytime there was a small friction, we would start to communicate about it. And that is the muscle we built so that we would eventually become this team that just wouldn’t let something fester.

John Stackhouse 00:07:23

So a team, but you’re also an individual. What did you learn about yourself on the mission?

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:07:29

I really found myself moved in gratitude for the opportunity and for what we have. There is an innate human joy in accomplishing tough things, taking on big challenges, leaning into help, helping others. What it reinforced for me coming back here is that it is very much worth continuing to dig into the challenging and hard things that we have in front of us. This Canada-US relationship for one, how we leverage space. There’s a list as long as my arm of things that we could do that are the right things to do for our country and the right things to do for our international collaboration on space. I guess I know with concrete certainty that there’s value in pursuing that.

John Stackhouse 00:08:22

So let’s get into some of those challenges and opportunities. We’re all more excited about space today, I’d suggest. How do we seize on that excitement and what should we as a country, as Canada, but also as neighbors, Canadians and Americans be doing?

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:08:37

Something that I’ve said often that I think is worth highlighting here is, why was there a Canadian on Artemis II? And it’s because Canada partnered with the United States decades ago. Canadians held a vision over decades, thousands of people participated in this, but also because the United States carved out space for a country to bring their gifts and actually bring real value to the collaboration. And so when we committed to developing a third generation of space robotics, Canada earned its way onto the Artemis II flight and that’s a really incredible example. And so what I would suggest out of that is as we look at our relationship, we really need to ensure that we are guiding the masses, that collaboration is our stated objective.

Actually getting stuff done and working together in a way that is mutually beneficial has to be our stated objective. And so if you’re going to lead thousands of people who are going to make millions of decisions in order to make this the thriving collaboration it could be, then you need that stated commander’s intent, that overriding commander’s intent. And it does not need to be complicated, but it has to be simple in that collaboration is the desired outcome and that at the end of the day, it should be mutually beneficial for both parties.

John Stackhouse 00:10:01

I wonder, Jeremy, if you can leave us with some of the insights you’ve brought back from space on what we can all take away in terms of how to go about our own days, but also how our two countries can work together in the years ahead.

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:10:14

Well, pretty much every night that we’re sleeping on board the spacecraft, the caution and warning system went off and woke us up. And every time the caution warning system goes off, it might be a false alarm, but you don’t treat it like that. You float out of your sleeping bag and you float the displays and you start trying to figure out what is going on and why that happened. And then you talk to mission control and you work through it. And I think what is maybe useful for us as humans is, especially with our cancel culture and our culture that just is constantly pointing out what’s wrong, we as leaders can’t accept that. That’s not good enough. People who can point out what’s broken and stop there is not acceptable in our space culture. We do not allow a flight control or a mission control to pass or to participate in our program if that’s all they can do is point out the problems.

We have an expectation that they will, yes, identify the problem, but then they will identify a workaround or a solution, or at the very least, a path forward to find a solution and who they need help with. And we as leaders right now need to demand of the people in this conversation that they either get the depth of understanding to understand all sides of the problem and an actual solution, or we just don’t need to hear from them yet.

John Stackhouse 00:11:43

I can’t think of a better message to end on Colonel Hansen, Jeremy. Thank you, thank you. On behalf of the audience, on behalf of the US-Canada Summit, thank you for this conversation, but also all that you’re doing for Canada and the world.

Colonel Jeremy Hansen 00:11:56

Thanks everyone. Have a great day.

John Stackhouse 00:12:03

Jeremy Hansen went to the moon and came back with something more than data. It was a new way of seeing. From that distance, borders disappear. What’s left is the relationship.

Canada’s top public servant has kind of been doing the same but from a very different vantage point. Here’s Michael Sabia. What a great way to end the day. Michael is one of the most thoughtful people I’ve known. You are.

Michael Sabia 00:12:32

You’re jumping to conclusions.

John Stackhouse 00:12:34

See what I say at the end of the conversation. No, let’s get right into the relationship because you’ve been clerk for close to a year, probably feels a lot longer.

Michael Sabia 00:12:44

It does.

John Stackhouse 00:12:44

But you’re not quite at the one year mark. And you’ve in various jobs dealt with Americans, worked with Americans. Curious what, in this position, what you’ve seen that maybe the rest of us don’t see or understand about the relationship?

Michael Sabia 00:13:00

I don’t think that I see anything in particular that others don’t see. I mean, at the end of the day, this relationship between Canada and the United States, this is not ultimately about a relationship between two governments. Obviously, governments matter. I mean, that’s the statement of the obvious, but the relationship is so much deeper and so much more highly distributed. Here I’m thinking about governors, chambers of commerce, CEOs, investors, firms, families. I mean, that’s the bedrock of this relationship between Canada and the United States. And I think those people on both sides of the border understand that by working together, we are collectively stronger and it creates strength on both sides. That’s the essence of it. And as Canadians, I think we have to be and we are trying now to invest a lot more in the strengthening of those relationships and taking our case to a broad spectrum of Americans beyond just the administration in Washington.

So if you asked me kind of what did I learn in this period, I guess it’s a bit paradoxical and I think I’d say, on the one hand, this is a relationship of great strength because of its depth, because of how highly distributed it is, but at the same time, paradoxically, it’s also fragile. Fragile because at this time in such a contested world, the strength doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in resilience on either side of the border. So for us, I mean, the lesson I draw from that is we have to continue and really redouble our efforts at working with that broad spectrum of opinion in the United States.

John Stackhouse 00:14:47

The Carney government is clearly focused on diversification but not decoupling. Help us understand how you walk that fine line between trying to diversify Canada’s relationships, not just through trade, without alienating our principle partner or antagonizing.

Michael Sabia 00:15:03

I actually don’t think there’s a tension here because you’re absolutely right. We are not decoupling. Yes, we are diversifying, but look at Canada’s economic policy and split it geographically. I mean, two basic pieces, there’s the United States piece and there’s the rest of the world piece. I don’t think there’s a strategic conflict between those two things. I think actually those two things are mutually reinforcing. That’s the essence of it. So take the US side, clearly proximity brings with it some economic gravity. I mean, that’s an inevitability. And therefore, does Canada need a well-functioning economic relationship with the United States? Absolutely we do. And that’s why the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago in New York called for a new economic partnership between Canada and the United States. Now that starts with the work we’re doing on the CUSMA negotiations. It starts in addition to CUSMA with working to get to a trade arrangement for some of the heavily impacted sectors, whether it’s aluminum, steel, autos, et cetera.

But what’s really important to understand here is all of that rests on, in our view, a foundation of a stronger Canada. And that stronger Canada is the result of the work that we’re doing to invest in the country, to yes, diversify our economy, to use our natural resources as the coin that will allow us to diversify more broadly. It’s about doubling the electricity production of our country, which we are going to do. It’s about AI and the things that Canada is an intellectual leader in AI, we need to start using that for commercial purposes. It’s about all these other things that we’re going to do to make Canada a stronger economic presence and a stronger economic partner to the United States, which is why not decoupling, yes, we’re going to strengthen Canada, but by strengthening Canada, we think we can strengthen the relationship with the United States and that’s the frame of mind that we have.

John Stackhouse 00:17:09

Let’s shift to defense strategy. It’s been a focus of this summit. The government is clearly increasing, quite significantly, defense spending, but defense spending has become key to economic and trade policy as well, which is a big shift. How are you thinking through balancing the efficiencies as well as the requirements of defense spending, ultimately protecting the country while also stimulating economic growth, adding to the Canada Strong agenda and being used, if I can put it this way, as a trade lever.

Michael Sabia 00:17:39

Yeah. So national security and economic security, though those two things are mutually reinforcing and that’s pretty fundamental to how we think about defense. I think the issue’s a lot broader than procurement though. I mean, this is ultimately, on the defense side, this is ultimately about a few things. One, it’s Canada stepping up to take care of ourselves, which we need to do. It’s Canada stepping up to be a good ally in a context of NATO or whatever. And it’s Canada thinking creatively about how we can use defense dollars to accomplish two objectives at the same time, to strengthen national security on the one hand, but at the same time to promote economic development. In other words, by creating more defense industries, by creating a more dynamic environment in the Arctic with the investments that we will make there. So it’s a really good example of how the kind of policies that we’re pursuing and the diversification that we’re pursuing is not at odds with America’s interests.

Why do I say that? Look at the Arctic. There, we are working in a diversified environment. We are working with the Nordic Five. We are asserting our presence in the North, both for economic reasons and for military reasons. And I think actually that’s exactly consistent with what the Americans would like to see. They would like to see Canada stepping up, doing what we need to do a little bit more, well, more aggressively, not a little bit more, more aggressively from a defense spending and a defense presence point of view. But that diversity that we’re pursuing, that diversification we’re pursuing with the Nordic five is a great example of how our cooperation with other countries can frankly take some of the pressure off the United States. And when I stand back, John, and I think about, I just look at the hand we have to play and I compare that to other hands of other countries in the world.

We have huge reserves of low carbon, low cost gas, and the world’s going to need gas. We have foods and fertilizers for a hungry world. We have natural resources and especially critical minerals and in the fall, you’re going to see a package of regulatory reforms that are going to allow us to speed up and to speed up in a dramatic way. We now have a plan to move forward on using AI and adopting AI. As I said, we’ve been an intellectual leader, but now we need to integrate it into our economy and deal with some of our productivity issues. By the end of the year, we’ll be the only country in the world that has access to three billion consumers through free trade agreements, the only country in the world that can say that. We’re changing the way the country operates so that it’s not just a Montreal to Toronto corridor that dictates what happens in Canada, but that all of the regions of the country, because of their importance from an economic development point of view, that they’re part of the game as well.

One other thing, we also have one other asset that sadly is pretty rare in the world today and that’s a sad thing and that is a simple word, the word is trust. People trust us. They trust us because of our values. They trust us because of our history. So when I look at all of that, the conclusion I draw from that is, this is not a time for national anxiety about a relationship between two governments. This is a time for confidence because we have a hand that, played properly, played in a skillful way, can lead to really a new chapter in Canada’s history and a new chapter in the relationship between Canada and the United States, which we acknowledge is very important and an important foundation for the future prosperity of the country.

John Stackhouse 00:21:27

What a great note to end on. In fact, that’s the note we began on this morning. Dave mentioned its risk in Canada. We’re hearing that from around the world. Lots of smart people are seeing that hand. We are playing it, but we’ve got to play it even more ambitiously in the US.

Michael Sabia 00:21:41

Ambition. Now there’s an important word. That’s exactly what we need. Confidence, ambition. Those are the characteristics that are going to build the future of the country and build an enduring and good relationship with the United States.

John Stackhouse 00:21:53

Let’s do it.

Michael Sabia 00:21:54

Let’s do it.

John Stackhouse 00:21:55

All right. Great note to end on. Michael, thank you.

Michael Sabia 00:21:57

Thank you.

John Stackhouse 00:21:57

Thank you. Thank you.

Michael Sabia 00:21:58

Thank you.

John Stackhouse 00:22:04

Two conversations, one from orbit, one from the room where policy gets made, but both pointing in the same direction, which can be incredibly positive for Canada. From all of us at Disruptors, that’s season 10 and what a season it’s been. This season Disruptors won a Webby Award and that genuinely would not have happened without you. To everyone who listened, who shared the show and who voted, thank you. It means a lot to our whole team here at RBC. We’ll be back in the fall with more conversations at the edge of what’s changing Canada and the world. Until then, have a safe and happy summer. And if you’re listening along the way, be sure to check out some of the episodes from years past that we will re-release through July and August.

Be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to Disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to explore more of RBC’s thinking on all the issues that we cover, head to rbc. com/thoughtleadership or follow us on social media. And if you can, be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to Disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. I’m John Stackhouse and this is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you in September.