Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hey, it’s Theresa. We all know by now that lowering carbon emissions is one of the biggest challenges of our time. And it’s of paramount economic importance over the next decade. But here’s the unspoken truth for all the talk about regulation and technology, talent actually has to be at the heart of any strategy to achieve Canada’s new target of cutting emissions by at least 40 percent by the end of the decade. Research shows as early as 2025, Canada could be short roughly 30000 environmental workers, those that are employed by green companies or engaged in green work. So what do we need to do? We need to capitalize on the upcoming generation’s interest and purpose. I’m a millennial Gen Z after me. They want to make sure that they are having an impact more so than others and past generations, and there’s no greater purpose than saving the planet right now. As we move toward net zero, a big shift in mindset is definitely required. But so too is a big shift in skill sets. And that’s the focus of a new RBC report called Green Collar Jobs The Skills Revolution. Canada needs to reach net zero. Some of the numbers in the report are pretty jarring. 3.1 million Canadian jobs, or 15 percent of the labor force, is going to be disrupted over the next decade as the country transitions towards a net zero economy. Eight of 10 major economic sectors are going to be affected as the workforce adapts think transportation, energy, manufacturing, natural resources, agriculture. This is the lifeblood of Canada’s economy, and these changes initially are going to affect highly paid, highly skilled workers more dramatically and more than others. My colleague Naomi Powell, who is the managing editor for RBC Economics and Thought Leadership, coauthored the green collar jobs report and as she explains, upskilling is at the heart of this shift. Speaker 2 [00:01:50] The net zero transition will place new demands on the workforce, especially when it comes to upskilling or expanding existing skill sets. In the beginning, that demand will be felt most by highly skilled, highly paid workers. Managers in engineering and architecture, for example, are already seeing over 50 percent of their work tasks change. But as the transition continues, more jobs will be affected. Logistics people will need to look at the environmental impact of shipping routes. Accountants will need to audit emissions, and mechanics will need to transition from internal combustion engines to battery powered vehicles. There’s a lot of uncertainty about the pace at which all of this will happen and how fast workers will need to upskill. But one thing that’s become clear is much of the responsibility for retraining will fall to Canadian businesses, especially those developing the green technologies that will drive the climate transition Speaker 1 [00:02:38] despite the costs involved. And yes, the disruption. It’s undeniable that this green collar revolution is creating some pretty great opportunities. One is brain gain. A highly skilled Net-Zero workforce could establish Canada as a top destination for green investment and international talent. Not to mention the new industries that could be created, the new jobs that will see a combination of new and old disciplines innovation that we probably can’t even dream of today. But these opportunities can only be seized if we give workers the tools they need to succeed, and that’s a big if. This is Disrupters, an RBC podcast. I’m trying Teresa Dome. In this episode, we’re looking at how the shift to carbon neutrality is affecting Canada’s workforce, particularly in the skilled trades. Our guest today is no stranger to the challenges of greening a blue collar company. Colin Osborn is CEO of Oakdale based Samuelson and Co., a global metals and industrial products giant. Serving buyers like Boeing and the U.S. military. And its largest customer is none other than Tesla. Samuel has been around longer than Canada has been a country, in fact, and today it’s rebuilding its 6000 strong workforce for the demands of a net zero economy. Colin, welcome to disrupters. Speaker 3 [00:04:08] Thank you so much. Really glad to be here. Speaker 1 [00:04:10] A. Samuel is a major player in the green steel supply chain. You buy green steel from suppliers like Algoma, fabricate the bra metals materials and then sell those green parts to your customers across the defense, aerospace and auto sectors. Why was it necessary for you as a parts manufacturer to green your products and operations? Speaker 3 [00:04:30] Well, I think when you look at a company like this, which is pretty incredible, as you mentioned, one hundred and sixty six years old started before electricity and like before a light bulb. I think the only reason that survived one hundred and sixty years before I came along was by innovating and constantly seeing trends in the market or seeing trends in the uses of metals or materials, and then adapting or being ahead of those curves. You know, the reality is I’m the sixth CEO in 160 years. I don’t want to be the guy that doesn’t keep this company going. So a big part of our view on sustainability, aside from just carbon footprint and reduced energy, is really trying to assess market trends and position our company in a way that that it can take advantage of those trends and continue to grow and continue to be profitable and continue to sustain good jobs. And that’s really the gist of it. Two of our core values as a company, we have five, but two of them are agility and courage. And that really just speaks to the the need to constantly assess the market, constantly adapt to the market and have the courage to go after it and make some mistakes, but ultimately hopefully build a very strong, sustainable business. Speaker 1 [00:05:30] Agility and courage are such timeless fundamentals of running your business. And as we look forward, the share of electric vehicles in Canada is expected to rise dramatically over the next decade, bringing with it expanded infrastructure. And my partner and I are a Tesla driver as I’m personally so excited about having more charging options and to see EVs become more mainstream. But as a manufacturer and a key player in enabling this reality, what is at the top of your mind and preparing for this increase in demand? Speaker 3 [00:06:00] I think what’s top of mind, honestly, is positioning our product in our service offering in a way that allows us to service that change. We are metals, primarily a metals company. We process four million tons of metals we buy from all over the world and almost every customer we have, literally every customer out of 23000 customers uses metal in some way. So if we’re complacent and we don’t adjust to what those trends are, we’ll obviously, you know, not survive it. So I think as a company, what we’re trying to do and before my time, we’re investing in areas where we see this greening of the economy, taking off and driving demand. We have a business that makes components for internal combustion engines. You know, that’s not going away tomorrow or next week, but over time, we expect that to be a declining market. So if we don’t change our positioning of our product offering and our service offerings, that wouldn’t be a great outcome. So I think the big driver for us, too, is to assess those trends, look at the products and services and capabilities that we have and position ourselves to help our customers take advantage of the greening of the economy. Speaker 1 [00:06:58] Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned your customers and I’m curious, what’s that relationship like? How much do they steer conversations on sustainability? Speaker 3 [00:07:06] It’s becoming more prevalent. For example, the investment we made in aluminum blanking seven, eight, nine years ago, Tesla was already making a very small volume of cars, but there was no Rivian. There was no lucid who we also supply. So I think in many cases, it’s been our internal people looking at trends that they see and trying to get ahead of those trends as opposed to customers pushing us. But I would say now, Theresa, more and more customers are asking us about sustainability, not just in the product, not just in our carbon footprint, but even in our supply chain. You know, going all the way back through the very complex supply chain that we operate and say, How do you know you’re operating that supply chain and is green a way as possible? And that’s very complicated. And I see it’s starting to evolve where customers are actually insisting that you can disclose and track and monitor and improve if you’re going to bid on their business. So that conversation is happening more and more, especially with sophisticated OEMs, the Hondas, the Boeings, the Toyota as the BMW use Tesla’s. Speaker 1 [00:08:05] Can you give us a sense of the H.R. situation right now at Samuel was the one job you just can’t fill fast enough? Speaker 3 [00:08:14] Timing is everything I would say. You can’t fill anything now, but it’s an absolute, very difficult situation on talent. But without question, I would say we operate businesses and we’ve invested more and more in businesses that involve automation, additive manufacturing, what I’ll call Industry 4.0 Technologies. And I would say in large part, those skills either don’t exist or are in such high demand that you really have to either find channels to partner with universities or you have to do on, in all honesty, train your own people. In the case of an evolving industry like additive, we really just rely on taking smart people out of university and training them ourselves, to be honest. But it permeates a lot of areas. I would say it just broadly I.T. We are a company that will have one of the largest cloud based ERP systems in the world, where about two thirds of the way through that. Even getting those types of skills for people to do cloud based systems is very hard. So it’s one of the frustrations of manufacturers that we always seem to lag in the academic community and the university community, the ability to seed those types of skills so that we’re ahead of that curve. We always seem to be scrambling to catch up when there’s things like mechatronics or automation skills that are required. Speaker 1 [00:09:18] Can you explain to our listeners what exactly is mechatronics and additive manufacturing? Speaker 3 [00:09:23] So starting with mechatronics, the whole field of automation obviously is exploding and we’re investing in companies and automation. We’ve bought two companies in automation and even before the labor in the workforce and the skills issues became so prevalent right that that Amazon’s giving signing bonuses. Automation was a good business. Now it’s going to be, I think, an incredible business. So when you look at an automation business, a skill you want is somebody that can combine mechanical engineering, knows how to put things together, but also electronics and programing. So it’s not like you want a pure mechanical engineer or a pure electronics engineer. You want a mechatronics person who can combine mechanical and electrical and programing skills all together. And that’s your kind of your perfect automation engineer. And so that’s what a mechatronics engineer is. And there’s some very good schools in Canada like Waterloo, who I think have been pioneers in actually developing the field of mechatronics. So that’s what mechatronics is in terms of additive. Additive is my whole life has been manufacturing in every aspect of manufacturing is subtractive and you take something big and then you machine it or you cut it or you fold it or you drill holes in it. But you keep removing and removing material a bit like sculpting until you get to a finished part. But in additive, you literally start from nothing and you build from the ground up. People call it 3D printing. That’s a little bit of a simplistic view because there’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens before you ever get to the printer. But but basically, it’s this additive a building from nothing versus subtracting and taking away. And I do think and we can probably come to it later. I think the adoption of additive is in early stage, but it will be a linchpin or keystone in the greening of manufacturing. Speaker 1 [00:10:55] I wanted to ask you about that. So it sounds to me like it would reduce the much less waste additive manufacturing compared to previous forms of manufacturing. But what other ways is it considered more of a green practice? Speaker 3 [00:11:07] There’s many elements of their green, but I would say there’s two big buckets. One is the first that you mentioned. You can imagine taking a giant slab of aluminum or steel and then cutting it and machining it, and you keep cutting away. And in some cases, you end up with a component where you’ve had 70 or 80 percent yield loss. By the time you get or even higher compared to additive where you print powder and you generally retain 99 percent of the powder, there’s one percent that’s melted slightly. That’s not usable, but you have 99 percent recovery versus 20 or 30 percent. So all of the energy that’s wasted in all of the yield that’s lost is a huge carbon footprint loss. But the second piece that I think sometimes underestimated is the way global supply chains work. You could be buying something in Indonesia, which ships to Canada, which is processed and shipped to the U.S. and maybe goes to Mexico and maybe comes back. So you, before you end up with a component, we make tubing for fuel injectors that metal travels all over the world before it ends up in an engine, as opposed to printing it at the site or close to the site. And so you don’t just have the gain of yield loss, but all of the energy that’s wasted, all the fuel that’s wasted transporting all of these semi-finished components, thousands and thousands of miles back and forth, you know, there’s a very significant carbon footprint. Emission and the transportation industry in general, of course, is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas. So if you can literally produce a component right at the assembly line where it’s going to be put into use and eliminate that whole supply chain, that’s a huge greening of the manufacturing industry. Speaker 1 [00:12:34] So you’ve mentioned that one of your biggest challenges is getting that new breed of engineers to think differently about manufacturing and that you’ve actually tried to retrain mid-career engineers to unlearn what they know. What’s that been like and what makes engineering so challenging to reskill within the manufacturing space? Speaker 3 [00:12:53] Yeah. So I’m a bit of a I’m an engineer by training, so I’m an engineer snob. But I will say that I think is really two elements of this one is getting engineers into the environment because I still think back. When I was in university, the scary exams where they would say you can bring anything you want into the room, you can bring any book, you can bring anything, it’s not going to help you and it creates that mindset where you realize it is you just your brain and creative problem solving and true innovation that’s going to solve the problem, not memorizing something, not not using something that everybody else does. A big part of my job, I think, is creating a culture in our company where that is the mindset you can challenge. You can innovate, you can take risk, you can fail and we’ll learn from that. But in terms of engineering specifically, additives very different because there really there’s very few places you can go in the world and find an additive program. And so we have found when we bring in more mature people that have spent 20 25 years in manufacturing, in a subtractive mode thinking about casting and machining and so on, they have struggled. We have had we have spent most of our time, I would say, bringing people literally out of school who have a mechanical engineering degree or a heat transfer engineering or something and really retraining them from scratch and trying to teach them using 3D modeling techniques and other techniques. How to design for additive It’s called Devam, which is designed for additive manufacturing, how to become competent in devam, and we basically train at our plant. That’s really the answer we have today. There are pockets again, Waterloo in this area, Mohawk College in this area. McGill University, U of T. These programs are evolving. And now there’s dozens and dozens of graduates out of these programs every year. So it’s getting easier. But certainly for the first three or four years that we were operating, we were more or less training our own people Speaker 1 [00:14:35] coming up after the break, more of my conversation with Colin Osborn. Plus, I’ll reveal the top six emerging green jobs in Canada. You’re listening to Disruptors and RBC podcast. I’m Theresa Do. As you heard off the top RBC Economics and Thought Leadership has just released a report called, “Green Collar Jobs: The Skills Revolution Canada needs to reach net zero”. In it, we dove into some of the transformative changes coming to Canada’s labor force. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit RBC dot com slash thought leadership and be sure to follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. We’re talking with Colin Osborne of Samuel Son and Co. about some of the challenges facing Canada’s manufacturing sector and how companies like Samuel are working with their partners along the supply chain to invest in new green skills and understand that you often have new employees working directly with big clients such as Boeing or Pratt and Whitney to learn how to design from first principles. Tell us more about that approach. Speaker 3 [00:15:42] Yeah, and it’s a very good point. I think it’s interesting because it’s actually quite intimidating. I think we bring these young men and women out of university and we put them in front of Boeing engineers and sometimes it’s 10 engineers. And so it’s quite intimidating when you look at the differing skill sets, but it is a big part of the process. And in fact, one of the, I would say, the biggest barriers to entry today and additive is not so much, just as it’s actually educating the customer know that you can actually print something that will go on a plane and perform even better than the way you cast it. So that’s a huge leap for engineers, especially in industries like aerospace that have to be conservative. But it is a very interactive process, Teresa, where you take people that understand design for additive people that are responsible for the design authority and building a plane or a train or a car and putting those people together in a room. We actually do weeklong workshops where we put those people together, try to get them to blue sky. You know, what is it you’re trying to do? Forget how you used to make it. What is it? You need this part to do. So don’t worry about it, and we’ll figure out how we can print it. And that’s an amazing process to watch. It’s as educational for our people listening to people from Boeing and Tesla and GM as it is for I think those engineers and, you know, very mature companies thinking about how to live in a different way. Speaker 1 [00:16:54] It reminds me of I read Elon Musk’s biography a few years ago, and he talks about first principles when he was starting out space. And a key component of that was just questioning how SpaceX has operated for the last several decades to the space program in the 60s and 70s. It was remarkable, and if you subtract all of things that add noise to how you work and just think about what do I need to get this thing out the door and then start the next process and the next process, and you just focus on those things and how you can completely reinvent an industry by doing so. So I think that’s fascinating. How well are you being served by the current skills training and educational programs that are available? Speaker 3 [00:17:35] I think it’s getting better quickly. I think, you know, one of my best friends is actually the dean of engineering at Waterloo, and I’ll give a shout out to her. I think they’re doing a great job. But what I do find just a little challenging and it goes all the way back to even additive manufacturing. And mechatronics is very sexy, but you can obviously have a whole conversation about skilled trades too, about welding, right? And we do a lot of welding, try to find a good welders, try to find good electricians. So I just feel like sometimes we don’t maybe promote properly where the jobs are, what the compensation is, what the opportunity is. And because of that, we don’t fill the pipeline effectively. You know, and again, skilled trades is maybe the poster child for that. But I think in the case of mechatronics, in the case of additive manufacturing, I just I feel like we need to be just more proactive to identify technologies where we can be a big player and try to nurture the school system to shift that way. Because I’m sure, as you know, you know, when you go into university, it’s not like it’s published that if you take this program, you have an 80 percent chance of getting a job that will pay this much money. That kind of it doesn’t exist. I feel like if we did a more transparent approach to that, people would migrate more to these great opportunities. And I do think government can play a role. I actually think in the case of additive manufacturing, we have in Canada a pretty incredible hub between our company here, between Waterloo, between McGill and U of T. There’s some very good other 3D metal printing companies in Canada and Winnipeg and other places. Very good powder manufacturers. I think we have a center of excellence here in Canada that we could be absolutely world class. And I think if the government supports that and nurtures that and you at the university level and provides that feeder for this system, we could be a quite a powerful entity in the additive world. Speaker 1 [00:19:14] What kind of jobs just simply can’t make the transition? Speaker 3 [00:19:17] I think what we have to do is migrate product more than skill for me because I look across my business it like I have a blanking business that used to do metal blanking. We migrated it to aluminum freebies. I have a very good aluminum extrusion business, which did all kinds of stuff for windows and doors, but now they do massive amounts for solar panels. I have a pressure vessel business that does pressure vessels for pharmaceutical and oil and gas, but now they’re doing pressure vessels for renewable natural gas, where you capture waste gas out of landfill. So I’m sure there are jobs that are marginalized, but I think in large part for a company like ours, it’s more about migrating skills to different applications. But I think it’s actually necessary of I would say that the basic labor jobs where which were great entry level jobs for people that didn’t have more education. I think those jobs are going to start to disappear because we have no choice for the labor market is shrinking. Baby Boomers retiring, the number of people entering the workforce is shrinking. I saw data that the workforce is going. A grow by 0.2 percent in the US from 2024 to 2031, which is nothing. And so all of this let’s onshore, let’s build semiconductor plants. Let’s do all this great stuff. Where are those jobs going to come from? You know, I think if anything gets marginalized, it’ll be the unskilled labor jobs and those will have to be automated Speaker 1 [00:20:35] in 10 years. How do you think the composition of your workforce will look? Speaker 3 [00:20:40] We’re doubling down on automation in our company, and I believe that I don’t know if I will say the vast majority, but I would be hopeful that the vast majority of unskilled labor has been automated, and I would hope that a significant proportion of our workforce is actually in the design element. You know, everything from whether it’s pressure vessels or blanks or additive or automation. The proportion of people that are in product design and development is increasing in our company, and I think that’ll be a huge competitive advantage for us. Consider that our company not that long ago, was primarily viewed as a metals distributor, one of the largest. It’s still one of the largest in North America. I hope 10 years old, it’ll be looked at as a product innovator and core companies are around design and bringing product to market would be good. And again, I think there will be a necessity. It’s not. It’s not a nicety. It’ll be a necessity that most of the manual jobs will have been automated Speaker 1 [00:21:30] as we round out this conversation based on your expertize and your experience. What should Canadian workers and employers be doing to not just compete but set themselves up for success on a global stage as we transition to a net zero economy? Speaker 3 [00:21:45] Gentleman, that works for me. He was in a corporate development role in BlackBerry, and of course, we all know the BlackBerry story and sad as it is. And so I feel like as a government, as an industry, we should be sitting down and identifying technologies that are going to drive the green economy and investing like crazy. And, you know, everyone looks at will oil and gas, what will it be like? Of course, they’ll be an oil and gas industry for many decades. But what’s next? Is it mechatronics? Is it automation? Is it additive manufacturing? Is it solar or what are those industries that are going to be manufacturing driven that we can nurture and invest in all the way from the school system up through government to build these centers of excellence? Canada has lost so much manufacturing base, right? And so many corporate head offices, and I feel like we’re becoming a service economy and that’s OK. But I think as you know, the compensation is less than the spinoff jobs are less. And so I feel like if we don’t figure out what manufacturing trends are really going to be driving the next 10 or 15 years of growth and invest heavily in them now, then other people will. And it’s why I’m passionate about additive. I actually think Canada is has a unique opportunity to position itself as a center of excellence globally on additive, you know, but it’s going to require academia and manufacturing and industry and government all to align around that. Speaker 1 [00:22:58] And are you hopeful that they will? Speaker 3 [00:22:59] Yeah, I am. I do see I see government support. It’s never enough, of course, but I see government support. I see academic momentum in this field. We’re competing against obviously some pretty credible people in the US, in particular in Europe. But I do see some pretty positive momentum. But if I’m discouraged in any way, I just feel like in general, Canada has let manufacturing dwindle. You know, for decades, like people have been talking about the hollowing out of manufacturing Canada forever. And once you get past the mining industry and the oil and gas industry and a decreasing amount of automotive, you have to start to look pretty far for industry leaders in manufacturing in Canada. And I think that’s something we should reverse. Speaker 1 [00:23:36] Colin, this has been a really insightful conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Speaker 3 [00:23:41] Thank you, Teresa. My pleasure. Speaker 1 [00:23:43] That was Colin Osborn, CEO of Samuelson and Company. It was a fantastic and fascinating conversation, especially on the point of additive manufacturing, which strikes me as an emblem of the challenges to come as we green our economy. There are only a few but growing school programs that are offering that specific training, but everyone needs to play their part to make this climate transition work. Companies that are developing these cutting edge innovations are already leading the charge in training and work integrated learning, but they need support from governments at all levels, not to mention collaboration and alignment with the universities and colleges that are educating the workforce of tomorrow. And now, as promised, the top six green jobs, as revealed by a new report from the Green Skills Network research projects in no particular order. Home Energy Auditor Home Energy Retrofit our solar panel installer bioenergy plant operator when a turbine maintenance technician and wind turbine manufacturing technician. If you’re looking to go green and put some green in your bank account, you got options. Thanks again to our guest Colin Osborn. Next week we’ll have another 10 minute tech with details on a historic moment for the TSX and why the opening bell has just been rung outside of Toronto for the first time ever. Until then, I’m Theresa Do and this is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon. Speaker 2 [00:25:11] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc dot com, slash disruptors. by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit our rbc.com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:02] Hi, is John here. Welcome to the inaugural edition of Disruptors, the 10 minute take. Every two weeks, Theresa and I will take a deep dove into the latest in technology innovation and economic buzz. Speaker 2 [00:00:15] That’s right, and this week’s take is on the Big Tech sell off. What’s up with that and what does it mean for Canada startups and tech sector? Speaker 1 [00:00:22] Who better to help us with that question than sit back at the head of RBC? Our BBC’s highly specialized tech and innovation banking team, which has a mission to help companies scale cities, are widely respected leader in the tech space, in fact. Before joining RBC, he was a managing partner at OMERS Ventures. Sid, welcome to the 10 minute take. Speaker 3 [00:00:41] Thanks, John. Thanks for having me. Really, really happy to talk about this subject. Speaker 1 [00:00:45] It’s great to have you on, Disruptors Sid. And I want to start with what’s going on out there in tech. We’ve seen some big sell offs, but some different movements in the private market where valuations continue to be very impressive. How are you thinking about that possible divergence? Speaker 3 [00:01:01] Yeah. Listen, I mean, the tech markets have been extremely frothy with tons of IPOs, and in a lot of cases, some really, really solid tech companies have been out there. But then we’ve also got a lot of the, you know what I would classify as the ride the coattail IPO is as well, right? So, you know, a number of the companies don’t have the growth trajectory, they don’t have the long term business model, nor do they quite frankly have the management teams to excel long term in the public markets. And I think, you know, when you look at the public markets, you’re seeing retail investors starting to identify this. Quite frankly, I think what you’re seeing right now is just a lot of that crazy upside being taken off the table. And so when you look at the tech offerings that are out there in most cases are in a lot of cases, they’re trading in some cases, like two thirds to three quarters less than their initial IPO value. And that is something that again is pretty stark and leads a lot of folks to go, Oh my God, what’s happening right? Is this blowing up? But on the same token, when you look at the private markets, there’s a ton of capital in the system and this isn’t going away in the near term, right? Because remember, funds get created, they raise capital. That capital takes a number of years to deploy. And so these blips that you see in the public markets don’t necessarily translate into the private markets immediately. Right. And when you look at the private markets, you’re really coupling a hyper competitive tech sector with this abundance of capital in the system and you’re creating this perfect storm for increased valuations. And if this market correction continues to be more than just a blip, there’s absolutely going to be an impact on private company valuations as well. And every venture fund in the world leverages public company multiples as part of their valuation justification exercise. And so when public company multiples fall off for a sustained period of time, there’s certainly going to be an impact on the private market valuations as well. Speaker 2 [00:02:50] What about the private later stage companies, the ones that were on the cusp of going public? Do you anticipate that this correction is going to slow down those potential IPOs? Speaker 3 [00:02:59] Yeah, so it’s a great question. And then I think we just have to step back and go, What is an IPO, right? It’s really a financing event. And so when these organizations need capital, they’re either going to top the private markets or the public markets. It’s a hard thing to generalize across all companies, you know, in terms of say, Hey, you’re late stage, you’ve raised a lot of capital, you’ve now looking to the public markets because really it’s going to depend on, you know, obviously the profile of the company, do they have the ability to continue to top the private markets? In the case where they do, you are starting to see them put the IPO processes on hold and really look to go, OK, hold on. Let’s just look at the private company options again before we jump into the public markets. And that’s just because you’ve got this drop off on valuation. You know, you’re starting to see some of this value come out of the ecosystem. And so it’s going to be very specific company by company. But I think if you were to generalize, you know, certainly people are thinking about this, Speaker 1 [00:03:59] said you’ve been through, I don’t want to get you on this show, but you’ve been through a few cycles. What are you telling entrepreneurs? Speaker 3 [00:04:06] Yeah. So, you know, in terms of what we’re telling entrepreneurs, there’s probably not a lot yet that we’re starting to talk about. That’s going to be different from what we’ve been advising entrepreneurs all along. You know, maybe if I just step back for a moment when I look at the huge influx and the velocity of companies going from private to public, you know, if you step back like a decade, two decades ago, like it used to take companies between 18 and 24 months to become IPO ready. And what did that mean? That meant OK. Well, you know, there’s management team, you know, upscaling a whole bunch of things like that. There’s systems up scaling. There’s, you know, just really making yourself optimized for the public markets with the frothy ness of capital and the, you know, the openness of the public markets to bring on all of these tech issuances. You didn’t see the rigor around that sort of like beefing up management. And beefing up processes, and so I think what you’re going to see is, you know, again, we’ve been advising our companies to do this all along is take a little bit of time to do some of those things because ultimately down the road, it is going to pay massive, massive dividends for you. And I think certainly a lot of the companies that are on the public exchanges, they actually didn’t do a lot of those things, right? And so when a lot of us look at these things objectively, you go, OK, well, you don’t really have a public ready team as yet. Right? And so quite frankly, the you know, if it’s a blip or whether it’s sustained, who knows. But this this kind of taking some of the capital out of the out of the system and taking a little bit of air out of that balloon, I think is allowing organizations to have a little bit more time to think about those things in advance and quite frankly, prepare themselves to be really successful as a public company. Speaker 2 [00:05:51] You mentioned earlier that we’re seeing the companies that have strong fundamentals and then the companies that are sort of riding on the coattails of general market sentiment. Is this almost like a clarifying moment in time where we can start to see, you know, the companies that have strong fundamentals rise to the top and it’s clear which companies are, you know, I don’t want to classify them starkly as good and bad companies, or maybe stronger and not so strong companies. But is this like a paradigm shift of a moment? Speaker 3 [00:06:17] Not yet. And I think it’s really going to depend on will additional capital start coming back into the public markets from a valuation perspective, right? So we haven’t yet demonstrated this is a long term impact. But you’re right in the sense that there are different stages. There’s some really, really good tech public issuances. And you know, why did they decrease in value? Absolutely. Did they lose, you know, 75, 90 percent of their value? Absolutely not. And that’s because business fundamentals are strong. A team is strong, a whole bunch of things. And then you’ve got other companies which are struggling a little bit more with some of these things, right? Maybe their business model dynamics shifted. Maybe the market has shifted on them. And so certainly you’re going to start to see a bifurcation. The best companies will always get funding both in the private markets and in the public markets, and you’re probably going to see a little bit of separation when it comes to that particular issue. Speaker 1 [00:07:09] As you noted, everyone’s talking about the war for talent. Is this having any bearing on companies ability to compete for, especially the world class talent that is such a differentiator in the tech sector? Speaker 3 [00:07:21] That’s a great question, John. And you know, I haven’t actually thought about it that way. So just kind of, you know, in our discussion right now, I’m guessing that, you know, in some cases, it’s actually going to be really beneficial, right? Because who like, let’s say I’m in a public company that’s seen a 90 percent decrease in value as an example, I’m probably going to be a little bit more concerned about the long term viability of the organization. There’s going to be all kinds of internal pressures within that organization on me as an employee and a leader, et cetera. And I suspect you probably have a lot more of those people that are going to be a little bit more loose in the socket, so to speak, and more easily plucked out by organizations that maybe are doing better. Or maybe even perception wise, they’re doing better because they’re in private in the private market, and not everything is laid bare. So I suspect you may have that opportunity, right, where some of those organizations that again are getting hit disproportionate to their peers. But yeah, they’re probably, you know, it’s going to be a bit more of a struggle for them on the human capital retention side. Speaker 2 [00:08:23] What are the lessons that companies can learn from this moment and use to positively position themselves to attract investors that maybe didn’t consider Canada in the past? Speaker 3 [00:08:34] Yeah, I think, you know, really is a learning opportunity here is just, you know, focusing in on management teams and business fundamentals, right? And don’t be in a huge rush to go public. Definitely. There’s going to be a number of companies that have gone public that I suspect at some point in time. Boards of directors, et cetera, are going to start thinking about the going private route. And so I think just focusing in on those like, quite frankly, those long term sustainable business fundamentals, it’s going to be really well serving for, you know, whether you’re public or whether you’re private. And so I think if there is a learning moment here and again, I think we’re really early in this process, to be clear. Valuations are extremely frothy. Don’t get me wrong, and we’re seeing a little bit of a correction in the public markets that over time will reflect in the private if it if it continues to sustain. But, you know, make sure you’re ready for what it is you’re about to engage on. And from a public perspective, literally everything is public, right? And so you need to have things buttoned up. You need to be able to represent these things on a quarterly basis. You need to have the systems in place to allow you to do, you know, allow you even to do reporting and you know, your business shifts right to where you’re now, a quarterly report or an annual reporter. And that may not have been the case to the same rigor when you’re a private company. And so for the companies that may have jumped in a little bit too early. This could be a little bit of a warning signal, but again, we’re still pretty early in that process, so we’ll have to see how sustained this is and whether it’s just a little bit of profit taking that’s coming off the top. And then ultimately, we kind of come back to a natural equilibrium. We’ll have to wait and see. But if this does become more sustained and prolonged, then the learning opportunity here is get your house in order before you go public. For sure, Speaker 1 [00:10:22] it’s going to be a great year or two to watch. Thanks for being on disrupters, John. Speaker 3 [00:10:27] Theresa, thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1 [00:10:29] That’s a wrap for our ten minute take. I’m John Stackhouse Speaker 2 [00:10:32] and I’m Theresa Do. Join us next week for a regular episode where we’ll take a look at the green skills Canada’s workforce will need on our journey to a net zero economy. See you soon, disruptors. Speaker 4 [00:10:45] The 10 minute take is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit our rbc.com slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hi, it’s John here, and Speaker 2 [00:00:03] hello, it’s Theresa. Speaker 1 [00:00:04] Theresa, welcome to 2022, I hope you’re not looking for a job, but it seems like everyone else is. What’s going on out there? Speaker 2 [00:00:11] Oh yeah, there’s so many shifts happening. People are rethinking their work-life balance. They’re finally taking on that next job after two years of sitting still. So yeah, what’s happening? I’m excited to dig into them through this episode. Speaker 1 [00:00:24] The great resignation, the great reshuffle of the great retirement. Maybe it’s all going on all at once and it’s going to be the biggest force or among them for twenty twenty two. And what we want to dig into on this episode is how it’s going to drive innovation. Of course, shortages drive a lot of employers crazy. They excite a lot of employers, too. But we’re in an employee market and that actually can be good for innovation. It creates opportunities, but in the right work environment where employees are driving change. This is when organizations can really take off. Speaker 2 [00:00:59] Yeah, exactly. And despite the ominous headlines, this is actually a good news story. As BlackRock’s Larry Fink said in his 2022 letter to CEOs, workers seizing new opportunities is a good thing. It demonstrates their confidence in a growing economy. The war for talent is on. The big labor shakeout has started, so fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Speaker 1 [00:01:29] This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse Speaker 2[00:01:33] and I’m Trinh Theresa Do. In this episode of Disruptors, we’re looking at Canada’s red hot labour market, what’s causing some of the dramatic shifts in who is seeking and leaving jobs and what can Canadian employers do to come out ahead? Speaker 1 [00:01:52] After the break, we’ll hear from a Kitchener, Ontario based entrepreneur whose educational technology firm is one of the fastest growing tech companies in Canada. He’s struggling to fill key roles across his operations, and he’s trying to do the same for universities, colleges and businesses across the country. He’s got some provocative ideas about how we can all meet this challenge. But first, our conversation with a Canadian born Nobel Prize winning economist who’s made studying labor issues and understanding moments just like this. His life’s work. Our next guest has been studying, writing and talking about labor markets for more than four decades. David Card is professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of its Center for Labor Economics. Before joining Berkeley, David taught at the University of Chicago, as well as Princeton. He’s written hundreds of journal articles and of course, in 2021 was one of three people awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. David, welcome to disrupters. Speaker 3 [00:02:54] No, thank you. Nice to be here. Speaker 1 [00:02:56] I want to start with just an open reflection on what we’ve been through. Maybe we’re still going through it, but arguably the last two years has been the biggest disruption, if not shock, to labor markets that any of us can remember. I’m curious at this stage what you have found most surprising. Speaker 3 [00:03:15] I think to me, the most surprising thing was how quickly the economy bounced back in April 2020. There was the sharpest job losses. There had been really on record. I mean, we don’t have data from 1929 and 1930, but it was just a monumental job losses. And if you think about how the recovery went from the 2008 recession, it was a very long slog to get those jobs back. And in this case that we came back really, really quickly and I was quite surprised by that. Speaker 1 [00:03:49] What do you think made that resilience? Speaker 3 [00:03:51] So there’s two kind of ways to think about recessions, and economists have been arguing about this since 1929. One is that the recession is caused by a drop in demand that employers just don’t want to hire anybody because they don’t see ways that they can sell their product. The other view is that employees are being kind of outrageous in their demands and will only work if employers agree to set their wages. So one actually the kind of leading view among the more neoclassical economists is recessions are times when workers take vacation. And I think that view sometimes gets more traction, especially when there’s a prolonged recovery, because it seems like, OK, the workers took a vacation and now they don’t want to come back. The demand view, I think, is workers want to supply their work. Employers don’t want it or there’s some obstacle to, you know, making that work transaction go through. And I think that what this was an episode showed is that the demand side is really the driver. The supply basically with everything withdrew. But then people were able to come back quickly as soon as employers could find a way to get them back into the job. Speaker 1 [00:04:55] So employment, certainly in aggregate, came back with a roar. But we also have this thing going on called the great resignation or great reshuffle, depending on your point of view. Curious how you look at the so-called great resignation, which has surprised a lot of people and maybe even defies certain elements of economic thinking? Speaker 3 [00:05:16] If you look at the ratio of job openings to unemployment, it’s at an all time high, at least in the U.S. I don’t know the exact numbers for Canada, but I assume it’s very similar. And so there’s a lot of opportunities out there. And what had been happening really since 2005 or 2006? A number of leading economists, including, for example, Edward Lazear, the WHO was Bush’s main economist, had written articles saying, We don’t have enough movement in the labor market. People are sticking with their jobs too long and we need to have more mobility to kind of get dynamism going to, you know, get people moving between jobs and filtering up the job ladder and so on. So actually, the perception was that the labor market was becoming more ossified and then this has really changed. But again, I think it isn’t necessarily bad. A labor economist tends to have the perspective of the workers. We tend to sort of take the view of the workers and say, OK, when something happens, is that good for workers, bad for workers? And this switch of jobs, almost all of it is good for workers. Speaker 1 [00:06:21] We talk a lot on our podcast about innovation and disruption, and one of the statistics I’d argue over the years has been that lack of labor, mobility, lack of dynamism. So it’s encouraging to hear you take a positive view to this. But curious if you see this as kind of the new normal. Maybe it’s the old normal coming back, this kind of more dynamism in the in the labor force. Speaker 3 [00:06:45] So one reason why we don’t have as much mobility in the labor market as we used to have is our average workforce is quite a bit older. So right now, the baby boom, I’m the peak of the baby boom. I was born in 56, and so we’re all 65, 66 years old and many of us are starting to retire. And so the the big, huge bulge of children born in the late 50s and early 60s is gradually going to go through. And the average age of the workforce is is going to fall a little bit and old workers don’t change jobs. So even if you’re, you know, if there’s a better opportunity, but you’re 50 years old, you’re just not going to take it because it’s too disruptive. So you so I think one thing that’s really important is understanding the. At demography of the workforce in that regard, another thing is, you know what sectors people are working in, you know, a lot of employment growth has been in sectors where these days there’s, you know, not such long term jobs for young workers, retail and things like that. But then there’s a lot of employment growth in the service sector, especially like health care and those jobs actually persist. Speaker 2 [00:07:46] I’d like to jump on that, David. I’m curious with the different sectoral impacts that we are seeing, do you see that there will be greater job polarization over the next several years? Speaker 3 [00:07:56] Much of the increase in supply of workers is kind of what you would call polarized. So you got a, you know, increasing number of people who have college degrees or master’s and above degrees. That’s really a growing workforce. And then of course, you have a pretty large and consistent supply of people with basically less than high school education because of immigration from low skill countries. And so if you have those two combinations of demography, you’re going to have what appears to be polarized job growth. But it isn’t really, you know, it’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just a type of type of workers you have. So as the workforce has fewer people that are exactly, you know, 12 years of education to just finish high school, then you’re going to have more of what you’re talking about. In addition, there is another kind of inequality which is generated by performance of firms. So some tech sector firms, for instance, in the area that I work in, you know, someone with a Ph.D. can start, you know, in all honesty, can start working at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. That’s a lot of money. But somebody who’s working the Ph.D. teaching in a community college earns about $60000 a year. So that that gap is ginormous. Speaker 1 [00:09:04] One of the challenges we’ve been wrestling with, and this harkens back in some ways to the work you did around fast food employment that was part of the Nobel Prize. Recognition is why we don’t see greater displacement of lower wage employment by technology, fast food being an example. Lot of repetitive tasks that arguably are automatable and yet employment in the sector continues to go up even when wages go up. And you showed how, you know, an increase of minimum wage does not necessarily lead to less employment. But it also doesn’t lead to a greater capital allocation, arguably to technology that has become more of a pressure point through the pandemic, as there have been these disruptions. And all firms have been thinking about, OK, do I need to get people back or can I use this as a bit of a transition moment to invest more in capital? We seem to be lurching back to the labor side of the equation. And I’m curious how your how you think through with that kind of long view of history and economic cycles, but also technology cycles in terms of the transition of labour to capital. Speaker 3 [00:10:12] Well, in the in the slightly longer run, I think most Western economies are going to go into a period of declining labor force. What you’re seeing in Japan, Korea, Italy, Spain already, we’re going to see that in most Western economies, we’re basically I don’t know about Canada, but the United States is it just does no longer has the tolerance for immigration. Western Europe, most of them, those countries don’t have the tolerance for immigration, and that’s the main source of population growth. And so if we stop migration, which I predict we will be doing, which, you know, that’s what’s going on in Japan, and that’s why there’s, you know, that’s why they’re going to have declining population in China. They’re not going to have immigration. So you’re going to have declining workforce and then you’re going to have the kinds of innovations that you’re starting to see in Japan, where people are thinking, you know, pretty hard about how to replace low skilled labor, to look after old people. How do you do that exactly? And still have, you know, quality of life for the people in the shorter term, paying 50 cents an hour for workers extra or something? I don’t think, you know, that’s that is cut into the pocketbook of the owners of firms and stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily change the balance of if I had to pay a dollar an hour extra for a truck driver or try and invest in a self-driving truck. Now, in other cases, it’s it’s easier, you know, like converting some aspects of maybe fast food restaurants to some kind of other system. Actually, when I first went to grad school in New York City, there were still from the 1950s. These famous restaurants that were automatic. There were you walked in and there weren’t any people. There were just kind of rotating counters and you put money in called automatic. Speaker 1 [00:11:55] There’s a lot of us. Exactly. I remember thinking they were so exotic when I saw them in New York. Speaker 3 [00:11:59] It was like a totally awesome thing from your childhood movies and stuff. Speaker 1 [00:12:04] It was that they disappeared. Speaker 3 [00:12:05] So that technology existed, but it didn’t. It didn’t dominate, right? Is people, you know, McDonald’s works better. Speaker 2 [00:12:12] So when we think about other levers that employers control in attracting and retaining workers, increased wages are certainly one of them. But are you seeing other non-monetary benefits making a meaningful? Dent in this issue, things like, you know, a four day workweek, remote work, as we’ve been seeing, are you seeing that play out on a bigger scale? Speaker 3 [00:12:32] I don’t study that, you know, with my own research, I only have direct experience in two places academia and tech sector. I do consulting for the tech sector and they are definitely innovating quickly and academia. We probably were on the flexible schedule, you know, decades ago. Most of my colleagues didn’t come into work only a couple of days a week and even before the crisis. But the private sector tech companies, they are innovating quickly. So one thing, for example, a lot of those companies rely on foreign labor at the high end because there’s very, you know, acute shortage of highly skilled statisticians and computer scientists and economists. And most of the graduate students in those programs in the United States are actually foreigners. In economics, we’re half and I think in CSI and math, it’s above that. And so basically what they’re doing is setting up branch operations in Western Europe and Canada. So this is great for job opportunities in Vancouver. My favorite example is Berlin. I don’t know if anybody knows this, but Berlin is, you know, probably in many ways the most interesting place to live in Germany. But there’s no good jobs in Berlin. There hasn’t been good jobs in Berlin since, you know, at the end of the Cold War. They used to have a subsidy during the Cold War to have firms put plants in Berlin, but they disappeared. And basically lots of people want to live. There is no good jobs, but now there’s a lot of tech jobs and you can work remotely for lots of tech companies there. And so I predict that this is going to be really good for interesting high wage cities that are off the chart. So Berlin is much different than Paris or London. It’s relatively cheap. There’s lots of people looking for work. And so cities like that are going to benefit. I don’t know what’s the Canadian equipped? Was that like Winnipeg? Speaker 1 [00:14:10] Well, it’s fascinating. There’s a great opportunity here for all sorts of communities to make themselves hubs and even destinations for those kinds of work from anywhere populations. What else should we learn from the tech sector in terms of where the future of work? Some people call it may be going. Speaker 3 [00:14:31] I think actually the management of people is still just getting started. So we made amazing changes in like selling stuff to people. But I think we’ve made less progress in managing people and putting teams together and figuring out how to do that and how to best compensate them, how to best allow them to do what they’re doing. I think there’s enormous frontiers there. And you’re starting to see a lot of consulting companies that are coming in and telling firms how to do things, how to how to pay people, how to recruit people. Because I think that as I said, I think in the in the intermediate and longer run, we’re going to be in an era where there is actually declining workforce and shortages of talent. And that’s going to be great for workers because we’ve been in an era for, I don’t know, since 1980 80. Maybe we’ve been in roughly 40 years of pretty depressed labor markets. Basically, my entire professional career has been one where, you know, most of the time it was pretty crappy. Real wages were stagnant in North America, and there wasn’t really the kind of productivity gains that you might have thought at least passed through to workers. And so I think we’re in an era where that might be kind of a change, and that’s going to be a whole new time. And people are going to have to start thinking creatively about how to use and better utilize the people that they have instead of treating workers like commodities. So I’m a bit optimistic there. Speaker 1 [00:15:55] David, thank you for being on RBC Disruptors. Coming up after the break, we’ll talk to a tech entrepreneur in Kitchener, Ontario, who’s at the forefront of a massive shift in the global labor force. He’s connecting students as well as workers with opportunities all over the world through his company apply board. Speaker 2 [00:16:20] You’re listening to Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m Theresa Do. Canada’s transition to a net zero economy promises significant opportunities for innovation and growth, but none of it will happen without the right people in the right places at the right time. An upcoming report from RBC Economics looks at some of the big changes coming to Canada’s labor force as it sets out on the climate transition. The report maps out the sectors and jobs undergoing the greatest disruption. The way skills are shifting within specific jobs and highlights what workers and businesses will need to build the green workforce of the future. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit RBC dot com slash thought leadership. And be sure to like and follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. We just heard from economist David Card, who has some keen insights into what’s underneath the changes in the labor market right now. But to really understand what the situation feels like, you need to speak with somebody working in the trenches, trying to fill positions and keep them filled in a fast growing company. Our next guest, Martin Bestiary, is the co-founder and CEO of Kitchener, Ontario ApplyBoard. ApplyBoard has an AI-enabled software platform that lets students from around the world quickly identify and apply for university or college programs across North America, the UK and Australia. This platform takes up the middle man in education, and it’s made applying for university or college from wherever you live as easy as signing up to Spotify. And since launching in 2015, Apply Board has grown to 1500 employees and has attracted over $600 million in venture capital. Martin, welcome to disruptors. Speaker 4 [00:18:06] Thank you very much for having me. Speaker 2 [00:18:07] Martin, I’d like to start with your story. You yourself are an immigrant from Iran originally, and you and your younger brothers went through the international student application process to pursue post-secondary education in Canada. And it was a difficult process, and that’s one of the reasons you created your company apply board. I’m hoping if we can get your thoughts on the broader challenges confronting Canada’s labor market, how does your experience, how does that inform what we could be doing to welcome international students and immigrants into our workforce? Speaker 4 [00:18:38] Absolutely, yes. As you mentioned in 2010, I came to Canada to get my master’s degree at the University of Waterloo, and my brothers came to do their undergrad at Conestoga College. And we left Canada. And then we decided to make this country our home and never regret that international students is, I think, the brightest part for talent shortage or enhancement for any country. And Canada is a country with one of the countries that’s really, really taking advantage of this global movement. Think about it. We can bring someone at the age of 18 or 22 for their bachelors or diplomas or postgraduate master’s degrees. Bring them, educate them. They’re young, energetic, ready to join the society. All of that adaptation to the new country, learning a new language, their college time give them the opportunity to integrate with their culture, country, everything and right away they can join the society and start contributing paying taxes, being an impactful part of the society, and I don’t think it can get better than that. Speaker 1 [00:19:54] And that’s a great way of describing our journey as a country with international students. I’m curious because you’re part of the story, but you’re also an author, frankly, of the Canadian story and the Canadian journey. If we have a chance to write the next chapter and maybe be a bit more thoughtful about how we go about this kind of flow of international students, how can we be more strategic as a country and taking it on? Speaker 4 [00:20:17] Yeah, and that’s exactly what we are working at Applied Birds and our Vision 2030 is to make it available for students along the board to access the best education, even if they’re poor, even if they’re from a country that there were like problems, regardless of their nationality, education, background, their family situation, village situation. We want to make it accessible, but how can the country be more strategic? So, for example, we know our health care system needs a lot of help right now, over hundred thousand jobs available literally in nursing and caregiving. All we need to do is point the ship to to the direction of which easier path to get into those colleges that get faster, processing time for the government to partner with companies like us to be able to access talent all over the board to bring the smartest and most driven people to this country, to the gaps that we have. We know software developers, we know data scientists. We know engineering in general is one of the areas that we in Canada. We really have a lot of positions of and for our country to grow and write the next chapter of the rest of 21st century. These are essential jobs. Speaker 2 [00:21:34] Martin, we’re seeing right now just massive job vacancies in Canada. In June 2021, we saw job vacancies surged past 700,000. You know, every day on LinkedIn, there seems to be another, you know, x number of job postings listed. But if we dig underneath the numbers, anecdotally, people are saying they’re still having trouble finding a job that even though they’re reaching out, these companies have a lot of postings. They can’t seem to get past the recruitment stage, if at all. So I’m just curious, what are you seeing in your work? What are you seeing in the tech sector and beyond about what could be behind? This this tension and what should employers be thinking about as they’re looking to recruit for their companies? Speaker 4 [00:22:17] Very good question. So there are a couple of things happening at the same time that is affecting the job market and we need to like break it down because the couple of effect is going together. So number one, the right now is a prosperous economy, as you said, seven hundred thousand job vacancies. That means we need a lot of people. A lot of companies downsized during the pandemic. Now they need to go back and those people already went somewhere else or they changed jobs, so it’s harder for them. The other thing that is happening people is almost two years that we are literally working from home, right? They are staying home. And Canada was one of the, I’d say, more restrictive countries in terms of keeping people distance. And I think too, one way or another, everyone is kind of affected that there’s something might not going the way that they want in their personal life and they need changes. The other thing that is happening is especially in the younger generation that for a long time the market was employer market and now is the employer market. And when there are so many jobs, a lot of people talked about what are the other means in life. You know, you see the rise of social challenges that we’ve seen in Black Life Matters in the United States. The environment is a big topic, right? Health care is a big topic. People want to do something good. People want to have a meaning with their life because Covid kind of opened a lot of people’s eyes that what are we doing? They are not robots. So a lot of people are looking for something to be able to have a big impact, and they’re searching for that. Speaker 1 [00:24:04] As we come out of this pandemic and kind of think of not just the great resignation, but the great reshuffle and people moving jobs, how do we need to be thinking differently about the kind of optimization of choices out there, either before us or somewhere far away, and ensure that we’re all making kind of the best decision with the best information? Speaker 4 [00:24:25] John, I have a mentor, his name is Howard Behar, he was the president of Starbucks for a long time. And one of the advisors he gave me is right your core values. What is your personal core value? What are you after? If you want to run or if you want to go to work, you put the OK from here to go to downtown Toronto. It takes like forty five minutes. OK, this is the part, and that’s what we are building at ApplyBoard. We are building a base for your life. And yes, we have started with international students because that was the starting point. I had to start from somewhere because that was what my life was. But what it is underneath is like, who are you? What you would like to do and what are the options for you to get there? People go and they just say, Oh, I need a job, why do I need a job? Think a little bit about it. You know, what are you seeking for? And I think our education in K-12, we need to invest more in our K-12 education of teaching students to ask why and be less worry about the content. Because content these days are commodity. You can find it on the internet. You don’t need to teach someone like necessarily all the how to write a new code because they can Google and find in GitHub a similar libraries and they figure it out. But what we need to teach them is to ask why? And that’s something that we humans don’t do it much. Speaker 2 [00:25:57] It’s such a profound way to think about the work about think, thinking about how work fits into our lives. What do you think it would take to have more CEOs and more aspiring CEOs to think the way you do and to view the world? Speaker 4 [00:26:13] Similarly, I think it starts from the CEOs themselves to be able to go and talk to people what they think and talk about their vulnerabilities and talk about their values. I think it’s important to talk about these things as much as it’s important to talk about market events. Market came down said This does that does that, and that’s why I love to talk to people, said what is the impact of apply board? Here’s one thing last week we had a day that for everyone to apply board employees, one students will enroll because of the work of us in that day alone, enrolled in a university. So when I go, I tell them, I tell my employees and I tell our investors. I said, today I’m sleeping better because I feel every two of us change one person life. Speaker 1 [00:27:03] Martin, I wonder as we move towards close, what do you think will be the biggest difference about? Work coming out of the pandemic from the way it was before the pandemic, Speaker 4 [00:27:14] the definition of work, the value of human being to themselves, to the respect of human being, to themselves, that they are not trading over time for money. We are going to a place because we want to have impact, because we love our teammates, because we want this mission to happen in the world, and I hope this is the outcome of it. Speaker 1 [00:27:37] That’s a great point to wrap up on. The meaning of work will change. The meaning of work has changed. The economics of work has changed as well. It’s going to be amazing to watch the next few years unfold. Martin, thank you for being on RBC Disruptors. Speaker 4 [00:27:52] Thank you very much for having me, John. Speaker 2 [00:27:57] What a fascinating set of conversations we’ve had in our program today. Two very different thinkers and speakers on this massive issue that we’re facing right now. The great resignation. What were your takeaways? Speaker 1 [00:28:10] Both David Card and Martin Basiri explained from very different perspectives. How work will continue to matter a lot to individuals and to the society. David Card said one of the biggest surprises for him and he’s won a Nobel Prize from the pandemic is the resilience of the labor force. People want to go back to work and many of those who are employed or who have gone back to employment are putting in a lot of hours and their quality hours because there’s a meaning and purpose and perhaps greater return to what we engage in. But it also speaks to the power of technology and even automation. If we can think about deploying technology wherever and whenever we’re so-called working and use our brains and our human ingenuity and instincts to pursue perhaps a higher purpose than just the task at hand. It’s not so much work. Speaker 2 [00:29:07] Exactly. And that’s the optimistic view about this whole great reshuffle, right? Is that you finally now, maybe not. Finally, but you have this opportunity to seek out that work that is appealing to you if it’s not at your company. Maybe it’s another one next door. And because we can work from anywhere, the opportunities seem limitless. Speaker 1 [00:29:25] Theresa, maybe we need to start calling it the great redefinition. Speaker 2 [00:29:29] I like that. Although it asks the question, what are we redefining it to? Speaker 1 [00:29:33] That’s for a future episode. That’s all for now. Thanks to our guests David Card and Martin Basiri. Speaker 2 [00:29:39] And join us next time when we’ll explore how Canadian employers and workers are preparing for a new era of climate action. Until then, I’m Theresa Do. Speaker 1 [00:29:47] and I’m John Stackhouse. This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon. Speaker 5 [00:29:57] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc-dot-com-slash Disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hi, it’s John here. This fall on disruptors, we’ve been exploring some of the big topics on climate change and speaking with some of the big players who are seeking climate action. We called the series the climate conversations, and it’s fair to say those conversations well, they’re just starting as part of that effort. We’re bringing you special extended cuts of some of our most popular climate conversations. Katharine Hayhoe, a Toronto-born climate scientist, was one of our earliest guests in the climate conversations and a passionate advocate for finding common ground through dialog. It’s actually the title of a TED talk she gave called the most important thing you can do to fight climate change. Talk about it, which has been viewed almost four million times. We talked with Katherine about what individual citizens can do to affect change and to change minds. Here’s more of that conversation. Katharine, welcome to disrupters. Speaker 2 [00:00:57] Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 1 [00:00:58] I want to start, Katharine, with a question about optimism because so many climate conversations are negative or pessimistic. You’re an optimist. Speaker 2 [00:01:09] I am, and I would like to say that I’m a rational optimist because I am a scientist and as a scientist, I see all the bad news firsthand. In fact, I get it hot off the press, so to speak. I look at the data myself, and the science does not give us a lot of hope. When we look at what’s happening to our world, climate is changing faster than any time in the history of human civilization on this planet. And that’s why it matters. It’s not about saving the world. The planet will still be orbiting the sun long after we’re gone. It is literally about saving us. But what I’ve noticed wherever I go, and I literally got this question even twice yesterday, once talking to medical students and then once talking to an academic group every single day, almost I’m asked what gives you hope? And so that’s actually why I wrote the book is because I figured this enough doom and gloom out there. We enough of us are activated. We’re concerned about it. The majority of Canadians understand that it’s a serious issue. So what can we do about it? It turns out that hope comes from action at that interesting and not recycling. And though, you know, every little bit helps. But specifically, when we get out and we use our voice to advocate for change when reengage with others, when we speak within the place where we work or the neighborhood or a kid’s school or, you know, an organization we’re part of, obviously our city and our province and at the national scale, when we use our voices to talk about why this matters and what we can do to help fix it, we don’t have to be David Suzuki to do this. I’m absolutely convinced that every single Canadian can do this. And when you look to the past, when you look to massive issues like slavery and women being able to vote and civil rights in the states and apartheid in South Africa, how did the world change before? It wasn’t because a prime minister or a president or a king or a CEO or even a celebrity decided it had to. It was when ordinary people used their voices to say, You know what? The world can and must be different. That’s how change happened. Speaker 1 [00:03:09] What can each of us be doing more of? I mean, I recycle, and as our longtime listeners know, I’m an active biker, but I don’t think I’m doing nearly enough. What can each of us be doing more of? Speaker 2 [00:03:21] Well, it’s so interesting because when I first started to talk to people about climate change, I would get that question immediately. And, you know, I would say the traditional things that we would all say. I would say, Well, you know, have you changed your light bulbs? Have you looked at where your electricity comes from? But then I thought to myself, Is that really enough? So I stepped on the carbon scales myself. I stepped on, you know, all right. I went to a carbon footprint calculator and I calculated my carbon footprint. And I was absolutely shocked because the number one source of my personal carbon emissions was not my light bulbs, and it was not even the car that I drove. It was not my hydro bill. It was my travel. And I’m not talking about like travel. The yoga retreats in Bali. The last time I went on an actual vacation, I can’t even remember. I mean, just to see family. It was travel to scientific conferences and to talk to people about climate change. I thought to myself, Well, this was ridiculous. Speaker 1 [00:04:16] The irony COVID. Speaker 2 [00:04:18] So I decided that pre-COVID I was going to transition 80 percent of the events I did to virtual events, whether people liked it or not. And if I traveled, I was only going to travel by bundling my events together so I would go somewhere and do like five, eight, 10. I think my record so far is 29 events and six days, which is kind of crazy, but it’s a very effective use of your time and your carbon. But then and here’s where being a scientist comes in. I started to calculate, OK. So I did this, and here’s how much I could reduce my carbon footprint. And I also got solar panels and plug in car and address food waste and diet stuff like that. What if everybody else who’s concerned and activated did it too? How much impact would that have on our national emissions? A fraction, a very small fraction, not even a third. And so I thought to myself, Well, this is not the answer. This is not the most effective thing that we can be doing. So that’s what I did this deep dove into. How is the world changed before? Was it because individual people took individual steps and that’s all they did? No, it’s because individual people use their voices to advocate for change in the larger sphere that they are in. So you’re at RBC? I’m at a university. I just joined. Make sure you need it as it’s called in Canada. The global affiliate of TMC, each of us is embedded in a place where we can use our voice to talk about how wherever we are can work together to make a difference. Speaker 1 [00:05:44] We’ve just come through the summer of the apocalypse and felt like in many parts of the world. Did that dent your optimism? Speaker 2 [00:05:53] Unfortunately, it did, because with climate change, a big part of our problem is something called psychological distance. We all agree it’s a big issue. We agree it will affect future generations and plants and animals and people living over there. But you know, we’re the north. We sort of see ourselves as invulnerable to global warming. We see it as a distant issue. And studies have shown that as we decrease our psychological distance, as we’re able to say, look, that crazy heat wave out west, it was one hundred and fifty times more likely because of climate change. The wildfire season we had back in 2017, it burned about 10 times the area because of climate change. The floods that we’re seeing there a hurricane category one passing over Newfoundland, we’re seeing climate change loading the weather dice against us. And so studies have shown that when we’re able to connect the impacts of climate change to our lives, our lived experience, our activation increases, our concern increases. But then you get Covid and I live in Texas. I live in a place where I know people who lost their lives and with their dying breath or saying, this isn’t coronavirus. I know people who their families then did not wear a mask or get vaccinated. And then they got Covid. And I’m thinking to myself, have I overestimated the human capability for self-preservation? Speaker 1 [00:07:12] That’s such a good point, because here we have a clear and imminent threat to our public health, but to each of our lives, and it’s a struggle to come to collective decisions around masking and vaccinations. Climate is clear and present, but it doesn’t pose that immediate threat to most people’s lives. How on earth are we going to change behavior for a longer term threat when we can’t adequately change collective behavior for an imminent threat? Speaker 2 [00:07:40] I still believe we can do it because I’ve seen it happen despite COVID. And that is if we truly address the two biggest things that are holding us back, which despite the headlines that we see with many politicians in the US and even some politicians in Canada as well, despite the climate denial we see in the headlines, the real problems most of us have are not issues with basic physics that we’ve known since the eighteen hundreds. If we really had issues with that basic physics, we wouldn’t be flying or using stoves or refrigerators because the same physics, the real problems we have are, again, we don’t think it matters to us and we don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. So if somebody told you that an asteroid was going to hit the Earth, but there is nothing you could do, you just be like, Oh, well, you know, I’ll leave that up to NASA, and I’ll just go on with my life because there’s nothing I can do. Maybe, you know, hug my kids a little tighter and hope for the best. And that’s sort of the way we feel like with climate change, as if it’s an asteroid headed for the Earth and there’s nothing we can do. Except, you know, like I said, older kids a bit tighter and hope for the best. But the reality is with climate change that there’s everything that we can do as individuals. In fact, the only way the world has changed before, again is when individuals decided that it must and it had to. But it all starts with something that I learned when I was doing my undergrad at U of T for the first time. So up until then, like I learned about climate change in high school, I learned about deforestation and air pollution and biodiversity loss. I learned about environmental issues and I thought about environmental issues as issues that are serious issues that people like changed at all. And David Suzuki and David Attenborough are taken care of and the rest of us wish them well and watched their documentaries. That’s sort of the way I thought of environmental issues. So I was studying astrophysics at U of T. I was planning on going on to graduate school, to study galaxies. And I needed an extra course to finish my degree and I looked around. There was a brand new class in the geography department over and said Smith, if anybody’s familiar with you chief. And I thought, Well, that looks interesting when I take it. So I took this class on climate science, and I was completely shocked to learn that climate change is not only an environmental issue. Climate change is a health issue. It’s an economic issue. It’s a national security issue. And most of all, and this is what completely changed my own trajectory. It’s a humanitarian issue. It directly and disproportionately impacts the poorest and most marginalized, most vulnerable people right here in Canada, homeless people living on the streets and Halifax indigenous peoples whose traditional way of life is literally crumbling before their eyes. It affects them more than anyone, and they’re the ones who have done the least to contribute to the problem. And you know, the United Nations has these very basic sustainable development goals. You know, no poverty, no hunger, clean water access to basic health care and education and gender equity. There’s no way to achieve any of these goals if we leave climate change out of the picture because it’s as U.S. military calls it, it’s a threat multiplier. So what I realized is that whatever your priorities are and whatever minor, you know, being a mom, being a parent, caring about the place where I live, loving, you know, loving winter sports, needing snow and ice to do them whatever my priorities are. It turns out that climate change already affects every single one of those, so it doesn’t have to be a new thing on our list or something that we have to try to force up our list, rather because of one, two, three, four and five on our list. We have every reason we need to care about climate change, and I think that that is key to beginning the conversations in a place that helps us connect directly to this issue from the heart based on our identity and who we are. And then recognizing that, you know what? We have a voice that we can use to advocate for change because I love my child, I love my city, I love my outdoor hockey rink. I love the place where I grew up and the fact that I see it changing. I love clean air. I don’t want it to be choked by wildfire smoke because of what we love. That’s why we can make a difference. Speaker 1 [00:11:44] You’ve argued as well that climate is about values, and we’re also talking to Mark Carney, who has a book called The Values and I think would agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but you’re also saying it’s a rational decision. And I just wonder how we can balance in our conversations just the rational decision that saves you money or saves you time or makes your neighborhood safer versus the moral decision that this is about values and our collective being an even more existential questions Speaker 2 [00:12:18] in most cases for most of us. Those two are not incompatible. In fact, often they’re very compatible. So making our neighborhoods healthier, for example, has a direct impact today. But it also typically reduces carbon emissions or takes up carbon from the atmosphere through investing in urban tree planting that also cleans up our air. So there’s and, you know, making our neighborhoods more resilient to flooding, for example, obviously helps ourselves with our insurance rates and the safety of our homes. But it helps us to adapt and build resilience to the impacts of a changing climate. So. So most of us, those aren’t incompatible. And honestly, I have a really funny story. My book, probably my favorite story of my colleague John. His dad lives in a rural area of Australia and his dad is a fiscal conservative, but he’s also an ideological conservative. And so in Australia, like in Canada, many conservatives reject the science of climate change because they don’t think there’s any solution other than destroying the economy. So its solution aversion masked with science sounding arguments because if you say it’s real, but I don’t want to fix it, that would make you a bad person, and most of us don’t want to be a bad person. So John’s dad would drag up, Oh, there’s more polar bears now than there ever were. You know, what are you saying? The Arctic is melting died every time John went home for dinner. And so John went back to school. He got a p, h d and cognitive psychology to understand denial. He created the world leading skeptical science website that lists 198 science’s sounding arguments against climate change and provides peer reviewed responses. Do you think that changed his father’s mind? I suspect not correct. It did not. But then there was a rebate on solar panels in his dad’s area, and so his dad got solar panels started to save a ton of money every month he would spend on his power bill, saying, John, look how much money I saved. It reinforced his own identity. It it fit rate with one of the things at the top of his priority list. And so two years later, John was sitting with his dad and out of nowhere, his dad said, Oh, you know, global warming. I’ve always thought that was real. And John was like, Why not only had he changed his mind, but he had forgotten that he had ever denied it because the solutions change his mind? You know what? There is nothing wrong with that. Speaker 1 [00:14:31] The great Jerry Maguire line. Show me the money, but you touch on a serious challenge that there are groups, large groups of people not necessarily connected to any one religion per se, but they tend to be identifiable groups by geography or some other demographic points, and the views tend to be fairly entrenched. We’re not seeing that kind of shift that you just cited of. John’s father, you’ve been wrestling with that for, for many years. How do you shift large groups of people that tend to reinforce each other’s beliefs and in fact strengthen their groups by reinforcing those beliefs? Speaker 2 [00:15:14] Well, you’re absolutely right. No one wakes up in one morning and decides, I’m just going to reject 200 years of physics. People wake up every morning and they check Facebook and they scroll through what other people in their social group are thinking about and talking about. They go on the internet and they visit the website of whatever organization whose values and views they share. They listen to today, not just to, you know, the national and not just to, you know, you know, everybody grew up listening to, you know, Peter Mansbridge or Walter Cronkite in the U.S.. No, everybody now listens to customized media that reinforces what they already believe. And so it isn’t that we read all the data and facts first, and we make up our mind second, as Jonathan Haidt, who’s a really interesting thinker, says in his book The Righteous Mind, he says, You know, we as humans, we make up our minds first based on what our social group, our in-group decides about various controversial issues like who to vote for in the budget and immigration and nationalism and climate change and masks and vaccines and Covid and racial issues and indigenous justice issues. We make up our mind based on what our group says, and then we engage in motivated reasoning where we go out and we search the internet to find out why we’re right, not whether we right, why we’re right. So how do we change that? People have put a lot of work into trying to figure that out, and I was part of a really interesting experiment a couple of months ago in the states called New Climate Voices. They got me and a Republican politician and an Air Force general and a libertarian to make short little videos about why climate change mattered from our different perspectives. And I was sharing a faith based perspective since I’m a Christian. They aired them in specific congressional districts in the U.S. on social media. And then they tested opinions among the general public in those congressional districts. And they found that among conservatives among Republicans, opinion shifted wide because they had somebody in their in-group telling them why this mattered to for the same reasons that they would care about it. I have this awesome student who works with me, and she started to help me on my social media and her grandma said, I don’t know why you’re working on this. Nobody believes in climate change. That’s just so those myths that they make up to make people vote for the liberals. And so my student, she’s like, Grandma, just listen. Just give it a listen. OK, you know, I’m doing this for a reason. So her grandma listened to just a couple of the videos and she sent her the ones from a Christian perspective, and her grandma completely changed your mind, and now she is button holing all the ladies in her church, telling them why. If you’re a Christian, you have to care about climate change, so change really can happen, but it has to happen, as you yourself said, not when we’re waving judgy fingers at people and saying you have to be just like me. I have a list of these 10 new green commandments, and if you don’t do those, you don’t really care about this issue. Change happens when we show people that who they already are is the perfect person to care. And in fact, caring about and acting on climate is a more genuine expression of the values they already have than what they’re doing right now. Speaker 1 [00:18:28] Coming up after the break, more of my conversation with Katherine Hayhoe. So stay right there. Speaker 3 [00:18:38] You’re listening to disruptors, an RBC podcast, I’m trying to read the Dome earlier this fall, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership released a report called the two trillion dollar transition Canada’s Road to Net Zero. It explores the costs and benefits of Canada’s shift to a carbon neutral economy and how it can fuel a new generation of Canadian innovation, from carbon capture technology to sustainable agriculture to the full potential of super charging electric vehicles. We look at all the ways for Canada to take a leading role in the fight for climate action and the economic opportunities they create. To learn more. Check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit our bbc.com. Net zero emissions to listen to and follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 [00:19:29] Welcome back. In the second half of my conversation with Katharine Hayhoe. We talk about climate lessons coming out of the pandemic, as well as the role of social norms in changing how we approach climate action. I sometimes think about smoking and cigarettes, and it’s, you know, an imperfect and maybe a bad analogy, but that that has been a decades long struggle with behavioral change. And when I think about some of the behavioral changes we need for true climate action, maybe there’s some lessons we can we can draw that out. And even though with smoking, all the science is there and many of us smoked regardless, we knew the risks that that we were taking and we did it anyway because it was maybe enjoyable, definitely addictive. But it was also cool. And one of the reasons it was cool was Hollywood. The cool people in film more often than not seem to smoke. And that’s still an issue. But Hollywood has bent and that that establishes or reinforces norms. And I wonder, in terms of climate and our own behaviors, what kind of norms in terms of mass media pop culture, we may need to start to challenge or think about to help change our own thinking and our own behavior. Speaker 2 [00:20:51] I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, that’s that whole idea of social norms, the idea that we determine what’s acceptable and what’s not, because we always, as humans have these antenna, these invisible antenna up that are taking, you know, sort of taking the measure of what’s going on. So is it acceptable to have a plastic water bottle? No. Well, I better not have one. Is it acceptable to drive a giant gas guzzler? Oh, well, not really. That’s not cool anymore. It’s called the fast electric car. Better think about that next time. So you’re right, that has a huge impact, and that has played a big role in the changes that we’ve seen in the world. Before that I mentioned everything from, you know, women getting the right to vote to civil rights, to all kinds of changes. It’s been changes in social norms where people like that’s just not acceptable anymore. And how do we figure that out when we see other people doing it and when we hear other people talking about it? So, you know, get your solar panels or do whatever it is that you’re doing, but then talk about what you’re doing. That’s how you can change people. And in my book, even talk about how their scientific studies showing the impact of contagion, that the number one, for example, with solar panels, the number one predictor of whether you’ve got solar panels is whether there’s somebody else within about a kilometer and a half of your house that has the that’s the number one predictor. It’s contagious literally in a good way, not a bad way. Speaker 1 [00:22:03] You mentioned Covid, and it’s been challenging and continues to be challenging in so many ways. It also illustrated how we can have a significant impact on emissions. Now, we don’t want to go through pandemics to decrease our carbon footprint, but we decreased our carbon footprint last year in ways that we’ve not been able to more positively engineer through decades of trying. You stopped flying as much. All of us are flying less. Maybe that has a material impact. Maybe it doesn’t. But what other lessons should we draw from the pandemic in terms of behavioral change and adjustments that we can carry forward into post-pandemic and healthier years ahead? Speaker 2 [00:22:48] So at the height of the lockdowns last year in spring at global carbon emissions dropped by almost 20 percent and overall over the whole year they dropped by seven percent. And during that same year 2020, 90 percent of new energy installed around the world, some of it in the poorest low income countries of the world that don’t have a lot of fossil fuel resources, 90 percent of that energy was clean energy. So we saw some really significant shifts in the way that we’re living. And in fact, it’s estimated that in some places, in some very polluted places in China, it’s estimated that the reduction in air pollution from the lockdowns because of course, air pollution just falls out of the sky within a matter of days, maybe at most weeks, whereas carbon emissions stay there for, you know, decades. The U.S. air pollution might have saved just as many lives as were lost to Covid, because what a lot of people don’t know is a really shocking number. And that is that almost nine million people die prematurely from the particulate emissions, from air pollution, from burning fossil fuels alone every year. And where we are with Colvard right now, I think we’re somewhere over four and a half million premature deaths. And you know, don’t get me wrong, any premature death is a tragedy, but we’re so conscious of Covid. Yet somehow we’ve normalized nearly nine million premature deaths a year from burning fossil fuels. And so forget about the carbon. Just think about the impact on our health. Think about the impact on worker health for a business on personal health. Think about the impact on people in low income neighborhoods, which are often the ones most exposed to pollution. Think about the health impact in low income countries where they don’t have access to the health care system that we benefit from. I mean, there are all kinds of benefits that are entirely health related that are even. Larger than people getting the Covid vaccination, I mean, that is just insane when you think about and I feel like that is the conversation that we need to be having. Well, we’re going Speaker 1 [00:24:49] to have some of these conversations because of the Glasgow Climate Conference. Governments have made some extraordinary commitments this year, including the US government. Is it enough? Speaker 2 [00:25:00] It is not yet enough. I think of these international commitments sort of like a potluck dinner. Right now, we don’t have enough food on the table to feed everyone. We need to up our ambition and we need to up our delivery. So we’re at something like, I think, somewhere around three degrees Celsius and we need to be down at two or even one and a half. And so coming out of Glasgow, I would be so pleased and so happy and so relieved if we really had commitments, especially from the biggest emitting countries in the world. And, you know, we often think, well, Canada, such a small country, why does it matter? We’re actually number nine on the list of the top 10 cumulative carbon emissions emitters of all time. So sure, you know you’ve got China and the US and India and Russia and the EU, you’ve got them right up there at the top. But we’re not that far behind, so every little bit matters. And in fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts it really perfectly. They say every year matters, every bit of warming matters, every action matters and every choice matters. And so if we came out of Glasgow with countries making those choices, recognizing that it’s not about the environment, it’s about us, it’s not about the economy, it’s about actually saving the economy from the risks and impacts of climate change. It is about all of us and our human systems, our supply chains, our food, our water, our health, our infrastructure, tens of trillions of dollars of infrastructure built for conditions that don’t even exist anymore and will not exist again during our lifetime. If people finally realize that it is literally as a title, my book says it’s about saving us and put that on the table. I would be the happiest person in the world. Somebody asked me just the other day. They said, Well, you know what? If magically the climate solution were solved? Would you still study the planet? I said, no, I’d open a yarn shop, preferably on Vancouver Island. Speaker 1 [00:26:48] Why aren’t I Speaker 2 [00:26:49] just enjoy it? It’s something I get great joy and pleasure from it. Speaker 1 [00:26:52] Perfectly good. That’s perfectly great, in fact. You mentioned the economy, and I don’t think we talk enough about climate as an economic opportunity, and I’m not trying to be cavalier or materialistic about it, but just to frame it differently. We’ve got a really interesting piece of research coming out of RBC on pathways to net zero for Canada. Calculating that it’ll probably be a two trillion dollar project for us over the next 30 years. And a lot of people hear that number and think $2 trillion of my Lord, there go the tax increases and we’re saying no, actually that $2 trillion, this is manageable. Most of it may be private money, by the way. It’s not all up to government. In fact, it’s going to be much better if it’s not government money and it’s going to be investment. This isn’t wealth transfer, it’s not tax and spend. This can be the biggest investment project we’ve seen in nearly a century, and that will have all sorts of multipliers in terms of jobs and incomes and prosperity for communities pretty much everywhere. This isn’t about one sector, it’s not about the oil and gas sector or about Alberta. This is about every sector, every region. And I appreciate that’s kind of a high level economics thinking. But how do we translate that conversation into a meaningful way for everyone who does worry about their job, who does worry about their paycheck, or at least the trajectory or flatlining of their income? For students who are wondering if they’re going to have a job or if they’re going to be in the gig economy forever, how do we take these kind of big macro concepts around the economy and bring it down to the individual household and neighborhood level? Speaker 2 [00:28:35] Well, first of all, I’m delighted to hear that you’re doing this because we need the voice of organizations and institutions like RBC. And what you’re doing in its native form is going to be incredibly influential among the people who think in those terms. And those people need to hear your voice, not mine, because you are somebody who speaks that same language and understands those same concepts. And you’re right, it’s about opportunities. It’s about, you know, when a couple of years ago, I remember just before Christmas, I was at one of the malls in Mississauga and there was a lineup of 200 people outside the Apple Store. They were waiting for the new iPhone. And we had just come up from the state. So my husband had just gotten his, so he literally took his life. And he’s like walking down the road, going, Yes, it’s great. Look at it. Here it is. So were those people told they should get it? Were they told they had to get it? Do they have somebody waving a judgmental finger at them telling him this better if they got it? No. They wanted it because it was better. And really and truly and honestly so many solutions to climate change, from technological solutions to lifestyle solutions, to the amazing, nature based solutions that Nature United does with their Emerald Edge project working with. First Nations tribes out in British Columbia. There’s so many solutions that are good for us that when you actually hear about what they are, you’re like, Hell, yes, I love that. How can I be part of it? And so I feel like that’s what we haven’t done as we haven’t communicated that enthusiasm, that opportunity, as well as the financial risks. So you just said, you know, here’s what we have to spend to get there. But what about the risks that we’re avoiding through building resilience and adaptation and to encouraging other countries to come along with us? Because, believe me, they are watching and we can influence them too? So what are we avoiding? What are we gaining and how do we understand that the future’s coming, whether we like it or not? And it’s up to us, and this is literally a science fiction here. The future that we see is up to us. It is in our hands. It is our choices that will determine this. Will our civilization be able to continue or not? That is what is at risk. Speaker 1 [00:30:37] We’ve been having a fairly optimistic conversation, which I appreciate, but there may be people listening who say that’s not the full story. There will be people. There will be sectors. There may be regions that will be losers in this transition. There has to be a bit of give for the take, if you will. Mm-Hmm. How do you have that conversation with those regions you come from Texas, which may and there’s incredible things going on with renewables in Texas and so many other sectors, but there are plenty of people in Texas who think they will be long term losers. And I’m not trying to pick on Texas. It’s just an illustration of many times around the world who feel this way. How do you engage people who feel they see writing on the wall? That is not for them? Happy writing. Speaker 2 [00:31:23] Well, first of all, I think the most important thing is to be proactive about that engagement. Acknowledge it upfront. Don’t wait for them to tell you. Think of it and look at it yourself and realize, Hey, there’s a lot of people who are just trying to feed their families. They have a well-paying job in Alberta and the oil and gas industry, or here in West Texas, which is also the home to the oil and gas industry. And they’re not doing it. They didn’t get that job because they wanted to, you know, help destroy civilization as we know it. They picked that job because we need energy and energy is something that is inextricably linked with human well-being around the world. Access to electricity specifically is one of the major metrics that determines our level of well-being. So when I had the chance to talk to the board of Big Oil and Gas Company here in Texas a couple of years ago, I was invited to speak and I thought to myself, what? I can’t do it unless I figure out how we can connect over something we share first. I’m not going to go in there and start with something we disagree on. I have to start with something that we agree on, and if I can’t do that, I’m not the right person to have that conversation. So I thought about it and thought about it some more. And finally, I was probably like unloading the dishwasher or something when it occurred to me. That’s one of the best thoughts come. Finally, I realized, You know what? I am profoundly grateful for fossil fuels. Imagine what a woman’s life was like. Imagine what anyone’s life was like 200 years ago. It was short, miserable and filled with bone-breaking repetitive tasks that left them no time for education, no time for leisure, no time for travel, no time for anything that we enjoy doing today. Energy has transformed our lives. In fact, thanks to the medical advances that were part and parcel of the industrial revolution that I’m pretty sure that’s why I’m alive. I’m sure I would have died at an early age from some horrible thing, let alone, you know, when you get to the point where you’re actually having a child or some type of very high risk activity like that. So I actually started off by telling them how grateful I was for fossil fuels and how I realized that they were doing this because it helped people. And we need energy. And the solution to our future is not to just pull the plug. It’s to figure out new ways of getting energy. The same way we don’t use a Model T Ford today, the same way we don’t use the party’s own telephone in the same way we need energy just as much, if not more in the future than we did in the past. But in the same way, we’re transitioning to new sources of energy. So how can we work together to try to figure out how to get those new sources while still providing good paying jobs for people who have these skills who again are just trying to support their family and be part of the local economy? And I can tell you it was amazing because I went in and meeting all the arms were folded. All the pastor was leaning back. Everybody was giving side I to the one guy who invited me like, Why did you invite her to speak to us? He sort of read the brainwaves, but when I said that? You could see like the arms were unfolding, people were leaning forward, and then one guy finally said, he’s like, You get it. We’re not the bad guys. We’re doing this because people need energy. And I was like, Yes, that’s right. And how can we keep on making sure they get energy in the future? And so that conversation was supposed to be about 40 minutes and end up going two plus hours. Everybody wanted to know what’s really happening. How is it affecting people and how can they be the good guys? And when we come at it with that attitude of most people do really want to be the good guys. Not all the time. I mean, it’s not some magic, you know, panacea, but a lot of the time we can end up having much more constructive conversations. And when we come at it with the idea of You’re bad, I’m good and I’m going to fix you. Speaker 1 [00:34:53] Katherine, you are an optimist in Speaker 2 [00:34:55] my in my good moments. I absolutely am. Speaker 1 [00:34:57] And it’s contagious. Katherine, thank you for being on disrupters. Thank you for having me. That was Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist with the Nature Conservancy and author of Saving US a Climate Scientist Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, which was published this September. Stay with us in the weeks ahead. For more extended cuts of our most popular interviews from the Climate Conversations, a special multi-part series on disrupters. To hear the complete series, go to our bbc.com slash disruptors. Until next time, I’m John Stackhouse. Thanks for listening. Speaker 2 [00:35:38] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc.com slash Disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hey, it’s Theresa. I think it’s fair to say that this past year has been unlike any other, we are all looking forward to a return to something that looks just a bit like normal this fall. For some, it might mean those tentative first steps back into the office. For others, it could involve seeing a live show somewhere, anywhere with other people sitting next to us. But perhaps no group is more excited or anxious, or probably both about the return to this new normal than Canada’s youth. After a year of on again, off again in person learning, students are coming back en masse to the classroom in September in many cases. Unfortunately, they’ll also be bringing with them a year’s worth of mental health baggage. Covid presented a singular challenge to the mental well-being of all Canadians. But youth who are so reliant on social interactions for their development were particularly hard hit. This past May, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa reported that 50 percent of all patients visiting its emergency department since the start of the year sought treatment for some form of mental health issue. Mental health is a growing concern for our educational system, our health care system and ultimately our economy, according to the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Mental illness is estimated to cost the Canadian economy 50 billion dollars annually. If we’re to address the cascading issues surrounding mental health, we need to intervene sooner. We need to develop the tools, technologies and approaches that will ensure that the youth of today become the healthy and prosperous leaders of tomorrow. This is Disruptors and RBC podcast, I’m trying to raise a. On today’s episode, we revisit an in-depth conversation between my co-host, John Stackhouse, and two of Canada’s top experts in the field of mental health. This is a cause close to our hearts here at RBC. Since 2008, we’ve invested more than 40 million dollars to help support the mental health of children and young people in Canada in 2020 alone. We raised eight million dollars through the reimagined virtual RBC race for the kids. We also partner with a wide variety of national organizations that are similarly committed to the cause. The need for action on mental health is growing. And as John explains in this conversation, which first aired last fall, so too is the need to do something different.

Speaker 2 [00:02:54] Consider just a few alarming statistics,

Speaker 3 [00:02:56] three quarters of mental illnesses emerge between the ages of 16 and 25

Speaker 2 [00:03:01] when most people are just joining the workforce. One in five Canadian post-secondary students is depressed or battling other mental health issues. And Canada’s youth suicide rate is the third highest in the industrialized world. Mental health is a journey that no one should take alone. And in that spirit, I’m joined today by two remarkable leaders in this field. Dr. Joanna Henderson is a clinical psychologist and director of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health here in Toronto. She’s passionate about models of care for young people. Dr. Yuri Quintana cut his teeth here in Canada and is now the chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics

Speaker 3 [00:03:39] at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Speaker 2 [00:03:42] He’s also an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Joanna, Yuri,

Speaker 3 [00:03:50] thank you for being here and welcome to RBC Disruptors. Thank you. Thank you very much. What do you specifically focus on young people with your work?

Speaker 4 [00:03:58] Young people have, as you were pointing out, some of the highest rates of mental health needs. And they’re also our opportunity to change the future. Young people are on developmental trajectories that take them through their childhood, their adolescence, into young adulthood and into the next stage of life where they start to function autonomously and they need the skills and support to be able to do that successfully. If we don’t intervene early, we miss a tremendous opportunity to support young people in their development,

Speaker 3 [00:04:33] as we mentioned earlier. Young people are at a much higher risk of mental illness, yet they also have access and an affinity to technology that previous generations didn’t have is not an advantage or disadvantage.

Speaker 4 [00:04:46] From my perspective, it’s an advantage. It’s unavoidable that young people are connected to technology. It brings with it some risks. It brings with it some challenges to young people. And it also brings opportunity for us to leverage their connection to technology to in my view, what we should be doing is co designing with young people the kinds of technologies and interfaces with technology that help them in their lives.

Speaker 3 [00:05:15] When you think about technology and mental health, a friend or foe, I think when it’s properly applied, it can be very beneficial to many people, not just patients, but also people who are friends of the person that’s needing help. And for health care providers, unfortunately, sometimes technology is poorly implemented or people use it for purposes that weren’t approved. And so there are some potential dangers. But when properly applied, it can certainly provide more access to services, to knowledge and support services. And we’re trying to help individuals as well as organizations use that technology in the best way possible. It’s still early days, early months in this pandemic and in terms of some of the social change it’s led to. But the increase in screen time is phenomenal for all ages, but particularly for young people. Do we know yet if that is causing significant risks to mental health, Yuri? Well, I think the evidence with technology and apps is still in its early stages compared to other fields. Certainly, I think not having connection with other people face to face is something that people are looking at very strongly in terms of the detrimental effects of that. But the reality is that because of the infectious nature of this disease, we do have to keep physical distance and maybe social distance isn’t the right word, you know, because I think we do need to remain connected with each other. So I think technology can enable us to remain connected with our friends, with our health care providers. But it’s also true that spending too much time connected to technology doesn’t allow you sort of individual time to disconnect and decompress. And so there are some innovative technologies that, for example, monitor your screen time and alert you when maybe you do need to sort of disconnect and spend some time on nature. So I think we need to find novel ways to use this technology such that it complements our lifestyle rather than gets us even more addicted to the technology and isn’t helping us.

Speaker 4 [00:07:18] I think one of the challenges with technology and the interfaces that we’re currently using to connect, they lead to a sense of monotony, a lack of engagement, a lack of productivity. And we haven’t really been able to leverage the capacity of technology, I think, in ways that can really create opportunities. Given that we have to use technology so much, we need to be able to use it intentionally to support young people and continuing to feel productive. And I think there’s a risk in talking to a computer screen or staring at a computer screen for many hours, for example, of not feeling productive. And so it’s figuring out how do we support young people in doing what they need to do, like school or other things through technology, and pair that with actual activities that engage them with the real world and allow them to have that feeling of belonging and productivity that’s so essential at this developmental stage

Speaker 3 [00:08:24] and enjoying what you’re doing some of that through. Can you give us a better sense of what you’ve been working on and how that’s playing out?

Speaker 4 [00:08:31] Sure. So with Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario, where a network of mental health services across the province that up until the pandemic had a strong focus on being placed based so espace in the community where young people had co created the space. And could go to that space when they needed support and were able to access services with the pandemic, we needed to transform the way we offered service to young people in the context of our doors being closed, physically closed in some cases, or our physical services, our in-person services being greatly reduced. Initially, what happened was because we were in the context of the pandemic, people retreated to a position of, well, this isn’t a space for youth engagement. This isn’t a space where we can connect with youth to figure out the solutions to this big problem of how are we going to offer services. And instead, it is one that serves Ontario. We really pushed and we invested in continuing to have youth at the table to design our response. And we were able to really understand from young people that using technology to deliver services isn’t just about taking what we do in person and then offering it through the technological interface, but is instead thinking about how do we take the robustness of technology to offer new kinds of services and to use the kinds of things that young people already using technology to also deliver the supports that we need to deliver in the pandemic.

Speaker 1 [00:10:15] During the show, we also heard from Shanna McCracken, Shanna is the executive director of Frame, an Ottawa based network that connects mental health, health and social services framework’s with youth and young adults to accelerate the integration and implementation of youth care in Canada. Here’s what she had to say about gaps in our system that were revealed by covid.

Speaker 5 [00:10:38] What we’ve heard resoundingly over and over again from young people and their families is that, no, we do not have enough access. We are not seeing impact in their lives in the way that we would hope to as a system. And so I think what covid has done is that covid has really laid back there any sort of barrier or any gap that existed previously has been further highlighted through covid and the rapid pivot that our system has had to do to virtual service. Not all young people in their families have access. Not all young people in their families, and now even fewer than before, have the ability to navigate a very complex and often siloed and fragmented mental health and substance use system.

Speaker 3 [00:11:26] Joyner, what goes through your mind when you hear that

Speaker 4 [00:11:29] Shawna’s right on the mark, we hear that over and over again from youth and families, that their experience of the system is that it is fragmented, that there are multiple barriers, that it’s very difficult to access the services they need and want to be able to achieve optimal outcomes. The pandemic has definitely created even further gaps for young people who are particularly disadvantaged. We had young people who didn’t have enough food to eat. It’s really hard to address mental health concerns if you don’t have enough food to eat. And so we really need to think holistically about the needs of young people. We no longer can think of a system that’s divided up, you know, takes one young person and divides them into their physical health needs, their mental health needs, their educational needs. These are not separate things. Young people need to be thought of holistically. And the services we provide need to cut across all of those different areas. And we as a system have an obligation to work holistically and to integrate our services in ways that make sense.

Speaker 3 [00:12:34] So if I could pick up on that, I think the two key points that both China and China have mentioned is access is very important. And the types of wellness hubs that China has been meeting really creates a very welcoming, non-threatening environment where you can sort of access a whole range of support services. But we also need to sort of create virtual environments where people can access information services. One understudied area is social determinants of health. These are sort of different challenges that people have, economic circumstances or educational circumstances or where they live geographical. And so we need to start learning how to scale. And here’s where technology could help. But it needs to be done in a way that’s sensitive to the diversity of circumstances that people have. And so this Covid pandemic, as horrible as it is, really has sort of woken up people to the need to make services more accessible to everyone. Right now, we’re physically challenged because of the infectious disease nature. But how do we make this available to rural areas? How do we help those people who have other factors? And so I think a comprehensive evaluation of this needs to look at social determinants of health and how do we personalize services both on site and online that meet the individual’s needs. You both touched on the question of safety. I wonder if I can draw you deeper into that, because it’s hard for anyone of any age to discuss mental health and certainly to open up about it to and to seek help, given the massive disruption we’ve had to the way we live, the way we study, the way we commute. I wonder what you’re learning about the way that young people seek help. They’re no longer necessarily around the social safety of a school, for instance, or of a place of worship or of a community center where they may feel more comfortable. How is that being addressed? The challenge of safety in a more virtual world, even when it’s in a new physical environment like the kind you’ve been creating?

Speaker 4 [00:14:46] I think it’s a critically important issue to address. We’ve heard from young people in part their reluctance to engage in virtual counseling, where it’s a conventional in-person counseling, but now delivered virtually stems from concerns about being able to engage with mental health professionals safely and structurally as a system. We also make that worse by sometimes putting in place policies and procedures that are intended to protect the service provider, perhaps from liability or other things, like requiring people to be in a fixed place while they engage in virtual therapy so that if there was an emergency, we’d be able to locate them. But what that means is young people who might, when they want to have a confidential conversation, go for a walk or sit in a car so that they can feel comfortable. They have confidentiality. Those options aren’t open to them. So systemically, we’re creating barriers to young people being able to safely engage. And I think we you know, the pandemic has really shone a light on our failure. I think we really can look back now and see that we didn’t take those into consideration. And going forward, I would strongly advocate that youth need to be at the table in thinking about pandemic planning. They have great ideas, but we need to engage them and we need to engage them in the planning stages.

Speaker 3 [00:16:10] What should we have done differently in pandemic planning?

Speaker 4 [00:16:13] I think if we look at the education system and the transitions that needed to take place, what we can see is that there was tremendous immediate focus on how do we ensure that the curriculum. Continues to be delivered. How do we ensure that young people continue their learning of academic skills and what people were slower to respond to, where the broader needs that school needs for young people? If we had engaged young people in a planning process? I expect that they would have flagged for us very early on that many young people get meals at school. Many young people have adult allies at school that help them stay safe, then help them identify when things are unsafe at home or unsafe in their personal lives, and that the social supports and their mental health needs are often being met in the school system. And when we pivoted in the education system, those pieces were not the immediate focus when in fact young people will tell you all of these other needs are also met in that system. So how are we doing that as well? And there has been important work to meet the mental health needs through the school system. Some important investments for sure, but it wasn’t there at the outset. So that might be one difference that would have been in place if we had planned together.

Speaker 3 [00:17:35] That’s a great way of describing some of the challenges that have been bubbling up over the last many months. It makes me think of the metaphorical but also real hallway conversations that exist, whether it’s in offices or schools, hallways and the like, are where we often have the most honest conversations, where we share our feelings, where we come to grips with our problems in ways that we might not want to do in the more formal setting. And I don’t think we’ve figured out yet how to use technology for the hallway conversation that we need.

Speaker 1 [00:18:11] Hey, it’s Teresa again. I hope you’re enjoying this encore presentation of disruptors. And our look back at the pressing issue of youth mental health. If you like what you’re hearing, I’d encourage you to check out some of the many conversations John and I have had with Canada’s top leaders over the past year, such as our recent look at the burgeoning world of virtual medicine, where I talked with three of Canada’s health care innovators. You can find past episodes of disrupters at RBC, dotcom disruptors or wherever you get your podcasts. Now back to John Stackhouse.

Speaker 2 [00:18:46] My guests today are Dr. Joanna Henderson of CAMH and Dr. Yuri Quintana of Harvard Medical School. I want to bring in another clip from Shawna MacEachern, of Frayme

Speaker 3 [00:18:56] we asked her about whether the shift to online mental health treatment during the pandemic is the right direction.

Speaker 5 [00:19:05] I think it depends what we do with it. I think it depends on if we will invest in understanding what works and what doesn’t. We can’t just keep adding things on to our system. We also need to make space to remove parts that are not meeting the needs. Covid could be a catalyst for us to take an opportunity and build something together that can be different. But I think it could also be something that creates a lot of damage. And I think we will see that for young people in their families and mental wellness overall in our country in the long run.

Speaker 3 [00:19:41] I sometimes think that this pandemic is like a white board for society and we have a chance to erase stuff that we want to leave behind and start drawing a new year. I’m wondering how we integrate online and virtual elements in mental health treatment while still staying in touch with the human aspect of keeping some of the traditions that we built up over the years. I think that’s a great question. And I think one of the challenges that providers will need to face is how to develop the right blend of services, both technology based and in person based for different individuals at different stages in their life. And so, for example, apps and in online systems could create new ways of communication, some which might be actually more beneficial and convenient. For example, text based chatting with a health care professional might actually be more beneficial for some people in certain circumstances. For example, if you don’t want to be overheard as to what you’re saying, but not everybody wants to have, for example, a text based chat or an online experience, and it depends on the particular circumstances. So part of what we need to do now is develop the research to understand what types of technology are appropriate for what types of individual and what kinds of situations.

Speaker 4 [00:21:01] I think another important point that Shonna made is just how do we also unemployment things that aren’t working because that challenges our system as well. And I think with technology, just like with in-person services, apps, other pieces of technological interventions as well as in-person interventions can become established without any evidence that they are actually helpful, then it becomes really difficult to implement them, to get people to stop using them or to stop practicing in a particular way. And that’s going to be as important as we shift to new ways of working. And we really think about transforming how we offer services. How do we get rid of old ways of working that may no longer be helpful or no longer contribute sufficiently to the well-being of young people? So that’s going to be important as well.

Speaker 3 [00:21:58] I think one of the quiet stresses of this crisis is the I’d call it the too much syndrome. There’s just too much of everything. It’s overwhelming. How are you thinking, both of you, about this incredible explosion of mental health apps that we’ve seen as not just during the pandemic, it was happening before. What does that tell you about the world around us? Joanna, maybe start with you.

Speaker 4 [00:22:23] I mean, I think it tells me a few things. I think, you know, the market reflects and influences, you know, young people. And so young people want apps. They want helpful things on their phone that can guide their behavior to help them feel strong and resilient when they’re faced with challenges, you know, at the same time. For me, it’s very concerning because I think what we’ve seen we’ve seen good apps be developed using evidence based approaches, co creation commitments to concretion. Working in that way takes time and commercial sort of opportunities are simultaneously arising. They arise more quickly. You know, many, many apps are being made available that we don’t know. Not only do we not know if they’re helpful, but we don’t know if they could be harmful as well. And so it really, you know, although young people are really keen to have apps as part of what they can use to support themselves and to support their peers, they also want to be sure that those apps can be helpful and useful. And we as a system, I think, need to ensure that we have appropriate policies in place to to regulate some of that.

Speaker 3 [00:23:42] And that’s kind of scary that many of these apps could be harmful. How do you assess what makes a good app and what makes an app perhaps harmful? So in the work that I’ve done with Johanna and a whole range of experts both in Canada and the United States, we took both a pragmatic approach of evaluating the methodology of how it was designed, but also a scientific approach for evaluating the outcomes. And I think that’s very key because a lot of these apps, we don’t have any long term studies and some of them don’t have any studies. Many of them don’t have any studies evaluating that. And so we need to invest in doing these evaluations and then being able to transfer that knowledge to health care providers to guide them towards what is known to work or what isn’t working. I think because of the need, there’s a rush for people to commercialize this and nothing wrong with sort of developing a business. But in that. People may not be actually properly designing these, and some of the apps may not have the best intent in mind, and so one of the things that we call out is to actually know who is developing it and whether there’s any scientific or health care professionals involved in the creation of that. One of the dangers is that some of these apps may be collecting all kinds of information without consent and without the best interest of the patient who needs to be providing oversight. Is this something the government needs to regulate health bodies need to take more ownership of? Or is it up to the technology platforms or each of us as consumers and patients, if you will? So I think there’s a role for all of those groups. But definitely I believe that science and health professionals need to play a leading role in this. And those could be scientists within the government or the government working with universities and other institutes. You know, when you think of what kinds of medications you take, you wouldn’t take something that hasn’t been evaluated or a medical equipment that’s been used. You expect experts who are properly qualified without commercial bias to have evaluated the safety of those devices. And so that’s part of what we’re discussing through these roundtables is who should be involved and how do we organize this? It has been done in other areas. So, for example, cancer treatments are very well funded organizations and it is happening in mental health. But we need larger organizations, larger efforts, and we need to look particularly at the aspects of technology because there are ways of collecting massive amounts of data from your phone and sharing it. And that needs to be certainly regulated. Do there need to be warning labels or some sort of tagging on apps to say that someone like you, Yuri or Joanna have studied it? Canada has looked at this and acknowledges that efficacy? Probably likely. I mean, I think when you look at Cigarette’s, they have warning labels and there was a lot of pushback on those labels. I think when you look at medications that are dispensed, you know, there are government agencies that do that. Certainly, I think something that hasn’t been evaluated for therapeutic use needs to have some sort of label. And we need to have that discussion as to what should those labels be and how should they be informed and how should we be thinking about the data challenge, because everything we touch digitally systems, algorithms, learn more about us every time we use a device. But there’s dangers, particular dangers when it comes to mental health and mental health, perhaps. How should we be thinking about that frontier? Because I can also imagine maybe in some ways it could be helpful, but something we would want to approach with caution.

Speaker 4 [00:27:31] Absolutely. You have it exactly right. There’s potential. There’s opportunity there. The ways that people interact with their phones, the things that they may post on social media, may ultimately be able to provide us with early warning systems for young people who are really starting to struggle. However, having control over one’s data, being able to consent in a way that’s informed, having information shared with you that is digestible and understandable to the person reading the information is critically important. And ultimately, I would argue we need to have young people engaged in these conversations so that the policies we do develop keep their needs and their interests at the heart of the discussion because those easily get lost. When we start to, you know, talk about commercial interests and government regulation, we can lose sight of the views of young people who are profoundly impacted by some of these things.

Speaker 3 [00:28:33] This is such an important conversation and I’m so glad we’re having it. A lot of challenges here, a lot of unresolved problems. And as we move towards close, I want to get a sense of what keeps you optimistic, what motivates you. You both work with young people who are often more creative, strong and resilient in all sorts of ways during what’s keeping you motivated and hopeful about the state of mental health care for young people right now in the midst of this extraordinary pandemic. I think what’s keeping me optimistic is that I see a growing collaboration from all kinds of disciplines health care, basic science, engineering, social sciences, government, private sector nonprofits, a growing number of people who recognize that no one group can solve this problem alone. And I think that collaboration will be key to move forward. And so even though there is a lot of challenges, I think we just need to continue to build on these collaborations. And I’m very grateful to the collaboration that I have with many Canadians who I’ve been able to stay in touch with. Even though I’ve moved to different cities around the world and I think Canadians are generally much more collaborative and engaging and have a sense of values of society, and I think that will position Canada to be a great innovator in the mental health, space and technology space. Joint of these can be dark days, dark weeks, especially as we move towards winter. What’s keeping you optimistic about the future?

Speaker 4 [00:30:04] Definitely the young people I work with. We have many young people who have had terrible experiences at the hands of the system, and yet they still stand up and put their hands up and say, I want to be involved in making it better. We have community members. We have corporations who are coming together and across the country. We have so many people who understand that system transformation means that we need to work differently. We can’t just keep doing the same thing and expect different outcomes. So that’s what keeps me going and keeping a focus on really thinking about how we want the lives of young people to be different in the future.

Speaker 3 [00:30:42] This is a universal challenge, mental health. And I think we were moving towards accepting that before the pandemic hit. There’s not a family, not a community in this country that doesn’t have mental health challenges. And we’ve become more comfortable speaking about that with each other. Nowhere near enough, but we’re moving in the right direction. And this conversation has been really helpful. And the work we’re hearing about is critical to helping us as a society move towards a more critical approach to recognizing the quality and efficacy and value of those assets. We need them. We need technology, but as they say, handle with care. I’ve also learned from this conversation that while we need more science in all areas of our life and we need more science in mental health, we also need to think harder about patient centricity and finding ways for patients to actually lead what we’re doing in mental health. That may be harder in this remote existence that we’re all getting used to also may maybe easier. It’ll be easier if we make it so, and that, in a way, comes back to all of us. So while this is a universal challenge, it’s also a universal opportunity for us each to play a positive, constructive role in our journey towards a better state of mental health.

Speaker 2 [00:32:11] My guests today have been Dr. Joanna Henderson, director at the Center of Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, and Dr. Yuri Quintana an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. My thanks to both of you for this important and really timely conversation. Thank you. Thank you. I’m John Stackhouse

Speaker 3 [00:32:28] and this is RBC Disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:32:31] And I’m Teresa Do. Thanks for joining us on this special look back on youth mental health. Here’s hoping for a better school year for all students. Join us next time for a brand new episode of Disruptors as we launch our third season in September. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 6 [00:32:53] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by JAR audio. For more Disruptors content, like or subscribe, whereever you get your podcasts and visit rbc.com/disruptors.