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RBC Thought Leadership John Stackhouse Page 4

John Stackhouse: The Wab Kinew Way

Author: John Stackhouse

John Stackhouse is Senior Vice-President in the Office of the CEO at Royal Bank of Canada, where he leads the bank’s enterprise-wide research and thought leadership agenda on the economic, technological and social forces reshaping global markets. In this role, he helps inform RBC’s strategic perspective and positions the organization as a leading voice on the future of growth, competitiveness and innovation.

John is a nationally best-selling author and, before joining RBC, worked as a journalist for 25 years at The Globe and Mail, including terms as Editor-in-Chief, editor of Report on Business and foreign correspondent in Asia.

I visited Winnipeg last week and there’s a new energy in the air. The election of Wab Kinew as Manitoba premier—one of the first Indigenous persons to lead any province—has put a new spotlight on the province, its role in reconciliation and leadership in the race to Net Zero.

I met with Premier Kinew to discuss his climate policies, insights from the RBC Climate Action Institute, and whether Manitoba could be a new model for Canada’s transition. He kept returning to a single word: hydrogen. His NDP government wants to make Manitoba a green hydrogen hub, even though the province is running short of surplus industrial power. Kinew is also keen to advance electric vehicle adoption, especially for the buses, trucks and farm machines that account for a third of Manitoba’s emissions. He has a hometown advantage in New Flyer Industries, a global player in electric and hydrogen buses, but needs a growing economy to finance the transition.

More electricity generation and transmission will be an added challenge for Kinew’s promise of reconciliation. His province’s population is 20% Indigenous, the highest in Canada, and new projects will face growing tests of “free, prior and informed consent.” The same challenge will face the NDP’s promise of critical minerals production. (The province claims to hold 29 of 31 key minerals, including lithium.) Kinew said he is hoping to see “enthusiastic consent” exhibited through business partnerships.

Manitoba’s other great climate opportunity? Agriculture. I visited the University of Manitoba’s Glenlea Research Station, south of Winnipeg, to see Canada’s oldest soil sequestration test site, aimed at capturing greenhouse gases. The station is also developing technologies to capture gases from the province’s four million cows, hogs and pigs.

Manitoba is home to only 1.4 million people. It will need all the climate tech it can develop to harness their—and the province’s—energy.

The backdrop for the 27th United Nations Climate Conference was always going to be an odd one.

Sharm El-Sheikh is a beach resort town built by the Israelis during their occupation of the Sinai Peninsula in the 1970s, and dedicated pretty much to the hedonistic pursuits of European and Arab charter groups. Picture a faux Roman amphitheater, a Hollywood theme park and 10-lane highways through the desert. And then picture 30,000 climate actors, advocates and activists crowding into the Tonino Lamborghini International Convention Centre to tackle, without a hint of irony, the future of our consumption-based society.

From the get-go, COP27 had to be a kind of Truman Show of climate conferences—a conceit wrapped in a bubble, cloaked in a narrative at odds with reality outside. In the centre of that bubble, in a “blue zone” of temporary hangars that gave the feel of a military encampment, climate visitors tried their best to draw in the world and project their intentions back. The stakes were otherwise too high. But the odds of success were also daunting.

During a year of economic disruption, this was a critical chance to reconcile the growing tensions between energy security, climate security and economic security. Here are some of my takeaways of what was achieved and what was not.

1. The “Implementation COP” needs more implementers

COP26 in Glasgow was all about ambition, with nations committing to deeper emissions cuts by 2030 to ensure the world meets its Paris agreements. Sharm El-Sheikh was meant to be about implementation plans, and how countries can do what they say. Five G7 leaders came: France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Britain’s Rishi Sunak and America’s Joe Biden.

They each must have noticed a sign, “Act Now,” on their way into the main hall. The European Union upped its goals—remarkable given its energy crisis. So, too, did Indonesia. Canada noted the prevalence of climate action, from carbon capture projects in Alberta to green steel mills in Ontario and manure methane plants in Quebec.

Biden, in his keynote speech to COP27, recommitted the U.S. to its promise of cutting emissions by 50% from 2005 levels by 2030, a key part of his presidency. Businesses, too, came with greater commitments; there’s been a ten-fold increase in companies with science-based climate targets since 2019. But those implementers are still a minority. Among 196 countries, only 29 came to Egypt with revised action plans.

2. 1.5 may not be alive for long

A signal achievement from Glasgow was the endorsement of the 1.5-degrees-Celsius imperative–that is, all climate action needs to contribute to containing global warming to that threshold, after which catastrophic results accelerate. “Keep 1.5 alive” was the Glasgow mantra, as it’s the threshold at which, according to the UN climate scientists, we can say goodbye to coral reefs such as the ones off the beach at Sharm. To contain temperature increases, the world needs to cut emissions by roughly 50% this decade.

Instead, we saw emissions rise 1% last year (even more in the U.S.) and are on course for a 10% increase this decade.

A draft Sharm declaration maintained the rhetorical commitment to 1.5, but in the corridors there was a striking number of questions about the authenticity of such commitments, and whether the world should begin focusing on a more realistic ambition, such as “well below 2.0 degrees.”

3. Coal’s not dead

Glasgow declared a death knell for coal. What a difference a year makes. Germany is using more coal. China and India, too. But it’s not inevitable.

If COP27 can claim meaningful success, it might be through the curiously named JET Partnership, for a Just Energy Transition. The partnership of wealthy nations and financial institutions is designed to help developing countries wind down coal. JETP had its first partner in South Africa, and moved quickly at COP27 to sign on Indonesia, to help it reach peak power sector emissions by 2030 and get to Net Zero by 2050. Vietnam may be next.

The costs are enormous, and raise concerns about burdening poorer countries with more debt–and likely seeing them shift from coal to natural gas, which still warms the planet.

But the effort also misses the elephants in the room. China consumes 50% of the world’s thermal coal; India close to 20%. Neither is moving quickly away from it.

In fact, India sidetracked the COP discussions with a provocative challenge of its own, to cancel coal when the rest of the world agrees to cancel oil and gas. There weren’t many takers. African nations were among the most vocal at COP27 for an enhanced role for gas, which they see as an essential energy source as they transition away from coal and wood.

4. The oil COP?

Sharm El-Sheikh proved to be a good summit for the oil industry. For proof, you only needed to look out your window on the drive in from the airport. A 10-lane road, financed by the Saudis and named for King Salman, took COP-goers past another striking display of Saudi swagger.

The green-lit, twin-dome Saudi Innovation Park, built in a patch of desert next to the main conference centre, was an early indication of how the oil world, led by OPEC, has shifted to its front foot.

UN Secretary General António Guterres kicked off COP with a provocative metaphor—“a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator”—that captured the point, but his PR machine met its match on the test track. The Saudis, who share the Red Sea with Egypt, vowed to increase oil production and intend to produce oil past 2100. The United Arab Emirates, who will host COP28 in Dubai, described the region as “superheroes.”

The Arabs argue they will develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies that will bring their net emissions to zero. Indeed, the Saudis plan to open the world’s biggest CCS facility by 2027. Environmentalists have fought to marginalize so-called abatement technologies, to ensure they don’t facilitate more fossil fuel production. Expect that debate—reduction versus abatement—to define the Dubai COP.

5. A loss for developing countries; damage for the UN

If host Egypt had one ambition for COP27, it was to win global support for “loss and damages”—a popular term that essentially translates as compensation for countries hardest hit by climate change and least able to pay for it.

Pakistan was a poster child for Egypt’s campaign; the diplomatically savvy South Asian country used pretty much its entire COP presence to advocate for a mechanism to compensate it for some of the estimated US$30 billion in damages it has suffered from this year’s floods caused by global warming and early snowmelt.

Sadly, the Egyptians didn’t think through the levels of concern from the wealthy countries they hoped would pay. The U.S. has a deep allergy to anything in the UN that hints at reparations, not least because of legal fears (never underestimate the influence of government lawyers) over unlimited liabilities. A draft agreement recognized Egypt’s concern, but offered only pennies to the dollars that developing countries were pushing for.

6. America’s back. China’s not

A striking feature of COP27: America’s climate ambitions. Fresh from midterm elections that kept the Senate in Democrat hands, Joe Biden landed in Sharm El-Sheikh en route to the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, to promote his Inflation Reduction Act and the US$370 billion it will allocate to climate.

His administration has a tech-forward approach, betting on five key technologies: batteries, heating and cooling systems, electricity grids, aviation fuel and de-carbonization of the chemical, steel and cement industries. It’s clear the U.S. is going to use more carrots than sticks to get to its 50% emissions cut and assert itself globally as a clean-tech superpower.

A few years ago, China wanted that mantle. Today, it’s a diminished power as the Xi regime struggles with a hostile relationship with Washington, rapidly aging demographics and COVID lockdowns. China has not abandoned its green ambitions as it’s still one of the world’s leading developers of wind and solar power, and electric vehicles. But Beijing’s no longer the climate champion it was during the years of US President Donald Trump, nor is it a leader of nations. The rest of the world may be more dependent on the U.S. than ever. For better and worse.

7. #WTF: Where’s the finance?

There are not a lot of economists at a COP, which is too bad, because economics drive political action. No more so than when money’s getting tight. The sharp rise in interest rates this year is quietly becoming a drag on climate policies, especially in developing countries.

Few appreciate this more than Mark Carney, the former central banker who helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero at COP26. Carney’s alliance now consists of 550 financial institutions in 50 countries, representing trillions of dollars in assets. It’s a grand coalition with a grand promise to mobilize capital for Net Zero—and it’s leading to a grand array of criticisms.

Carney came under fire at COP27 for overpromising and under-delivering; for most developing countries, the capital hasn’t arrived. The concern even fuelled a COP-meme, #WTF, as in “where’s the finance?” One reason is a lack of sufficiently large projects.

Egypt tried to bend that curve at this COP, announcing a massive renewables project. Carney believes the world needs US$1 trillion a year of projects like that to quadruple the ratio of renewable energy to non-renewable investments to 4:1. The capital is there. But a challenge lies in the U.S. Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign against inflation, which has jacked up U.S. interest rates and attracted a lot of capital to, well, the U.S.

8. Agriculture, the new climate champion

Believe it or not, this was the first COP where agriculture took centre stage. Pretty surprising when you realize the food supply system accounts for roughly a quarter of global emissions.

The UN, and many of its members, have shied away from tackling agriculture as they don’t want to alienate farmers, who are central to global development. But increasingly, agriculture is viewed as a climate solution—perhaps even a net positive to the world if farmers can turn their soil into profitable carbon sinks. With a newfound spirit of ag innovation, the conference devoted a day to agriculture, and the “blue zone” of pavilions had plenty on display from every continent.

More sustainable fertilizer practices and lower emitting fertilizers will be key. So, too, will new technologies like anaerobic digesters that turn animal emissions into energy. China, which accounts for 20% of the world’s methane, needs to be a leader on that front.

But the most contentious opportunity may be regenerative agriculture—a series of practices like cover cropping and no-till farming that ensure soils capture and sequester greenhouse gases. The U.S. is racing ahead with voluntary markets that will allow companies and investors to pay farmers for harnessing their soil in return for carbon credits. Other countries are more cautious, knowing soil science isn’t quite advanced enough to prove how much has been captured or stored.

9. Hello, atmosphere. The ocean’s calling. Rainforests, too

This was also the first COP where oceans got a serious look. That’s appropriate as Sharm El-Sheikh is not just a desert town; it sits next to some of the Red Sea’s finest coral reefs, which face extinction if more progress isn’t made.

I sat in on a session with Prince Albert of Monaco, Sylvia Earle, the great oceans champion, and Johan Rockström, a pre-eminent climate scientist with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research. Rockström explained what rising temperatures are doing to the world, and to oceans.

The Arctic is already 2C degrees warmer, which is not only leading to ice shelves disappearing into the sea; it’s disrupting air currents and leading to heat waves like the one that engulfed Western Canada in 2021.

Some 93% of that excess heat is absorbed by oceans in a massive energy transfer that’s changing life deep below the surface. Global ocean heat was at a record high in 2021. Cue the storm surges. This kind of interplay between oceans, land and air has been appreciated by scientists for centuries but lost a bit of its imperative in recent years. That’s changing, as biodiversity and climate are again seen as two sides of the same coin.
It will be a central theme of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal in December, and got a big endorsement in the final days of COP27 from the incoming Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula, as he is universally known, got a bigger cheer than Biden, pledging to renew the fight to save the Amazon. It won’t be easy, not when an anxious world is looking for economic growth more than natural growth. But Lula’s message on biodiversity was clear: “There is no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon.”

10. Whose COP is it anyway?

This was the first COP in memory where Canada had a national pavilion. It wasn’t techie like India’s pavilion next door, or bold like America’s. But it did, in that Canadian way, stand out as inclusive. With a design that felt a bit like an upscale donut shop (there was even free coffee), the venue gave voice to more views and experiences than perhaps any other I saw.

Activists, Indigenous leaders, corporate executives, mayors, entrepreneurs, investors—it was Canada in full. And in a way that’s an enduring challenge for COP. This one, in Egypt, adhered to the strict laws and security standards that barred any serious form of protest. Even Greta Thunberg, the young environmental activist, didn’t see the point in being there. Across a major road, a Green Zone was set up for community groups and activists, and was actually more interesting and enjoyable than the conference halls. But even there, one didn’t get the impression the world was on edge.

COP benefits from a diversity of voices, which has grown over the years. Only the most arrogant or naïve delegates believe they have a clear answer to the world’s challenges, and only they would not welcome differing views.

As the world adds Sharm El-Sheikh to a long and growing list of COP hosts, and turns its mind to Dubai, that curiosity will be needed more than ever. It may just be Canada’s best contribution to COP28, and beyond.

John Stackhouse is senior vice-president in the Office of the CEO at Royal Bank of Canada, leading the organization’s research and thought leadership on economic, technological and social change. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail and editor of Report on Business. He is a senior fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and sits on the boards of Queen’s University, the Aga Khan Foundation of Canada and the Literary Review of Canada.

Are you planning to take a trip this summer? After two long years of COVID-related complications, Canadians are finally traveling freely again. The cruise sector is back in business, outdoor festivals and other big public events have returned, and of course, air travel is booming, leading to long lines at Canadian airports, thanks to all the pent-up demand from people forced to spend most of the pandemic on the ground. Thankfully, there are technological solutions to some of the headaches associated with booking a trip.

On this encore episode of Disruptors, an RBC podcast, hosts John Stackhouse and Trinh Theresa Do explore the “new normal” for travel and tourism with Hussein Fazal. Fazal is the CEO of SnapCommerce, whose flagship product, SnapTravel, is an AI-powered half-bot half-human service that helps customers book hotel rooms, flights, and car rentals, either through their website, or through SMS, Messenger and WhatsApp.

But despite the fact services like SnapTravel have been logging record traffic, there may be a dark lining to those silver clouds. Inflation is at a 40-year high, gas prices are soaring, and Europe remains engulfed in geopolitical turmoil. It’s fair to say that for those in the travel industry — or folks hoping to travel — there may still be some turbulent skies ahead.

Notes:

To learn more about SnapCommerce and its flagship product, SnapTravel, check out its website here.

In the episode, Theresa mentions new travel statistics and trends from the RBC Consumer Spending Tracker. To read more, follow this link.

Also mentioned is a new RBC report that looks at the importance of boosting women’s pay and participation in the labour force—and presents some possible solutions. The report, called, “Equal Measures: Advancing Canada’s working women in a post-pandemic economy,” can be found here.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hey, it’s Theresa. It’s now the first full week of July, which, for many families across Canada, means time to hit the roads or jump on a plane. In this special encore episode of Disruptors, we revisit a conversation John and I had with Hussain Faisal, CEO of SnapCommerce, just before the March break about his flagship travel e-commerce product, SnapTravel, as well as some of the challenges facing an industry that’s struggling to keep up with exploding demand. Have a listen.

Speaker 2 [00:00:35] Hi. It’s John here. And.

Speaker 1 [00:00:36] Hello, it’s Theresa.

Speaker 2 [00:00:38] Theresa, you know, we’ve had a lot of false starts through this pandemic, but as we tiptoe into the spring of 2022, it really does feel like things are taking off. Just look at airports over the recent March break, people in big crowds heading off to all sorts of destinations. And I’m really intrigued by the rise of it’s almost reverse flight shaming. All my friends who are flying off to destinations far off are kind of mocking people who are stuck back at home. It wasn’t so long ago when they were being shamed for getting onto an airplane.

Speaker 1 [00:01:12] I actually love flying. I love getting to the airport early, sitting in the lounge with a glass of wine and a nice book or a magazine and me to start a vacation. But my partner and I, we went to the Caribbean a few months ago, and the requirements just getting into the country were extremely stringent. Multiple documents, validation portals and vendors that you got to go through. It’s stressful, but hopefully opening up soon and starting to fuel up normal again.

Speaker 2 [00:01:37] One of the false starts I mentioned last fall, I did get into the air again. I went to London, England to run in a half marathon.

Speaker 1 [00:01:45] Awesome.

Speaker 2 [00:01:45] And it was the first flight I had been on in ages and found it really unnerving. And of course, it was chaos at the airport to get onto the plane. All sorts of procedures that people were just not ready for. So maybe we’ll all just adjust back to to flying and traveling as quickly as we’ve adjusted to other things.

Speaker 1 [00:02:04] Like let’s just setters and we’re not alone either. New data from RBC Economics just released mid-March confirms that travel spending has finally touched pre-COVID levels. In Canada, though, domestic tourism still outpaces international travel, of course, and the changes to Canada’s entry requirements meant an immediate bump in Canadians booking these long delayed trips abroad. And it’s also spurred international travelers to consider Canada once again. But, John, rising prices and geopolitical uncertainty definitely puts some of that momentum at risk.

Speaker 2 [00:02:34] Well, I saw right, Theresa? I mean, we are seeing anything but normal in the new normal. We’re seeing inflation that very few predicted. Maybe it will ease through the year, but there’s no indication that it’s going to drop precipitously. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has rattled global markets and disrupted air travel as well in a significant part of the world. The next few months are not only going to be curious to watch, but they’re going to be a real test for the travel industry. There’s no doubt a lot of turbulence ahead and with a lot of innovation. And we’ve got a great conversation coming up about how those tensions may get resolved. This is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse.

Speaker 1 [00:03:25] And I’m tryin to raise the dough. In this episode of Disruptors, we’re looking at the return of Travel post-COVID and exploring how everything from technology to global politics will affect how we travel this year and beyond. To help us on this journey, we’re speaking with somebody with his finger on the pulse of Canadian wanderlust. Hussein Faisal is the CEO of Toronto based SNAP Commerce, its flagship product. Snap Travel is an AI powered half bot half human service that helps customers book hotel rooms, flights and car rentals through their website, as well as through SMS, Messenger and WhatsApp. Husain and his business partner and Rishi have raised more than $100 million over the past five years, including a 2018 investment from basketball superstar Steph Curry. Hussain, welcome to Disruptors.

Speaker 3 [00:04:18] Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 [00:04:20] So last year was a good year for snap travel, over $1,000,000,000 in sales, but it’s been too long years of little to no travel for most Canadians coming out of the pandemic. What’s been your biggest learning about how travel is restarting and changing? Has anything surprised you?

Speaker 3 [00:04:36] Yeah, so actually a lot of time to have this conversation. The first thing I tell people actually catches them quite a bit by surprise, and it’s that COVID had almost two years ago. There was obviously a huge drop in travel and everyone kind of froze. But just a few months after that, we saw that U.S. domestic travel picked up. So obviously, the international travel has completely changed with all the restrictions. And I’m on being nervous. Even people within the U.S. might say, you know, flying across the country, that was an issue, but people stayed locally and they were traveling. So in Canada, we’re a bit more conservative and we didn’t travel as much. But in the US, domestic travel picks up after just two or three months. That completely surprised me. I mean, we actually saw us getting up to almost pre-pandemic levels just a few months into the pandemic, which is a little bit crazy.

Speaker 2 [00:05:24] Saying do you think that’s a fundamental difference with Canadians or are we just kind of a beat or two behind where Americans were and maybe are?

Speaker 3 [00:05:32] Well, there’s a couple of things going on. So first of all, I think it’s just Canadians being more conservative than Americans. That’s just the way it works. I think there’s more people in the U.S. who just didn’t believe in the virus, didn’t care about the virus, then let’s stop them. And then secondly, I think just the geography of the U.S. and just a lot of places where Americans can go. So and there’s a lot of cities where you can go to nearby beach towns and nearby vacation spots. And there’s just more of that geography and more of that of that. Hey, I can drive under 100 miles and I can go somewhere and get away. Whereas, you know, we’re a little bit more spread out and maybe don’t have so many destinations to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 [00:06:10] Did you notice an impact when the Federal Government announced that there were relaxing COVID testing requirements?

Speaker 3 [00:06:17] Yeah. So that was almost instant. So we looked specifically at Canada and you look at international travel. That’s where as soon as those types of announcements come in, you see the changes almost immediately. So you see search volume go up, you see international travel go up versus domestic as a ratio. And then the other thing you also see is how far in advance people are booking. So people used to be pretty nervous and they would say, hey, I’m just going to wait and then maybe book a day before or two days before. But as things start to open up more and more now, people are starting to plan further in advance and they’re saying, I’m going to go plan for the next holiday and the next holiday and start booking way in advance.

Speaker 2 [00:06:57] So who’s saying there’s so much we want to talk to you about, but I wonder if we can get a sense of snap travel story. Give us give us a sense of the business model and where you’re going to take it as consumers get back on the road and in the air.

Speaker 3 [00:07:10] So the business started about five or six years ago, and when we started the company, we just started to snap travel as we’re talking about today, which is really about helping customers save money on hotels and giving them that great service. Right? So our customer will come in, they’ll have a conversation with us, similar to if you were talking to a travel agent, you can get some great deals. Then we make sure we use messaging to maintain that relationship with the customer, offer them a great service, be there for support and just build that relationship over time. What we have actually been working on and what we’ve expanded into in the past couple of years and as we talk to our customers is they’ve been looking not just to save money on travel, but looking to save money, needing to save money in other areas as well. So we’ve actually sort of expanded into what we call snap commerce now a sort of a parent company. And we’re on the verge of releasing some pretty exciting stuff around shopping and around fintech and helping our customers save money across everything they buy. But the core travel business is one that continues to do well and continues to grow. So you referenced sort of a billion in sales that sort of, you know, cumulative over time. We’ve sort of got to that point with almost half of it just coming last year. And that business continues to grow. And now with the easing of restrictions and with people being with COVID, sort of hopefully the last time, now, you know, going away, we’re seeing that demand pick up. I was kind of looking at that same survey stats earlier. And, you know, 67% of people plan to take a trip in the next four months. So, I mean, there’s three of us here and I’m planning to take a trip for the next four months. And I guess one of you, hopefully one of you are as well to prove the stats that I have. And one in five will plan to take two or more trips in the next four months. So really is an exciting time seeing travel open back up.

Speaker 1 [00:08:52] Staying on your platform for a second, I’m really curious why you chose to go down the road of a relationship based travel approach, because it seems to me that we went from a period where we relied on travel agents to help us get these deals booked, but then we shifted to a largely DIY looking at the aggregators like Expedia and building our own itineraries. So why did you choose to go back to that travel agent approach?

Speaker 3 [00:09:16] Yeah, so I would I would think of it more as a hybrid, right? So I would say the major misconception that people have when they think about travel over messaging is that we are this like ultimate travel bot that has great natural language processing technology and can read your mind and you can say, Hey, I want to stay at a nice four star boutique hotel in New York and we know exactly what we want and give you a great recommendation. That’s just not how it works, because I don’t know, you do research and when you’re searching for New York, I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. And even if I knew what you were looking for and I gave you a recommendation, you probably still want to see all the options, right? So I want to see let me see, because I don’t know the tradeoff between price, location and quality. So we use messaging as sort of an entry point. And if you’ve used the service, what you’ll see is very quickly we take you to UI where you can use filters and you can see a map and you can see a list and you can sort of pick the hotel that works for you where messaging is helpful because it allows us to do some very interesting things, right? So after you’ve run your search in New York, we can continue to track deals for you. So if we find something that pops up and we know you’re interested in it, we can send you a message and say, Hey, Teresa, we know you were looking at this hotel. You know, the prices dropped 20 bucks. Go take a look at it. Right. Do you have a specific question? You can just pick up your phone and say, hey, I have a question. You know, during COVID, this is actually a huge benefit for us because there are a lot of people who wanted to travel, but they were nervous and they wanted to know what’s the COVID protocol, what’s the even or even or refund policy is right there. Hey, what’s the refund policy? What happens if I get COVID right? So messaging is great for retargeting. It’s great for continuing the conversation. It’s a great for support, but it’s not necessarily better for the initial search. And in browsing like a user interface is the best way to search and browse and we continue to do that. So messaging is sort of that hybrid approach that we use.

Speaker 2 [00:11:00] If you give away the secret in your secret sauce of saying what? What is it?

Speaker 3 [00:11:06] I mean, we’re super data driven company. I would say everything we do is around looking at data to help us optimize everything and we then using that approach and just continuously optimizing. So that means optimizing supply. You know, what are people searching for? Let’s go and get the best supply of their optimizing demand. What the best demand channel can we match that optimizing product where people are dropping off in the funnel? All right. And maybe if I sort of go back to that messaging approach that we talked about earlier, that’s an example. Right. So initially it was all messaging. So you can then say, hey, I need a hotel in New York. And then we would say, okay, well, you know what kind of hotel you’re looking for? Do you prefer boutique hotels or chain hotels? But like, okay, what’s your price range? We would ask all these questions to try and give you the perfect recommendation. But when you look at the data, every additional question you ask just results in more drop off. Just show me. Show me why you don’t like don’t keep asking me questions. So so you know, we said okay. Well, why don’t we you know, if someone says, hey, I want a hotel. Only now is really your city and your dates and like, you got to cure all your options. Go take a look. And we’re glad to use messaging to answer any questions or to be able to target or have a conversation or do things like that. But the data driven approach tells us to stay focused on getting the customer a great deal and getting them that deal as fast as possible.

Speaker 1 [00:12:16] So something that is really cool with the app is there’s an option to layer in food and nightlife and other different aspects of cities. And the way that it manifests on the platform is through a heat map, which I thought was really interesting. So if I’m looking for a hotel in Chelsea, New York, I want to know, okay, is this hotel going to be close to where I can get all the great foods that I want to eat while I’m in New York? And as you were putting together the platform and as you’re continuing to evolve the how are you taking into account changing consumer preferences for travel?

Speaker 3 [00:12:48] Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. And maybe that goes back to what I said about being data driven. So we’re always, always, always talking to our customers, even when we do have any idea. So like, let’s say the heat map, right? So you would think that the heat map are a great feature and the reality is that it is, but we don’t take anything for granted. So if we want to put on a heat map, we’ll go and AB test mosaic and let’s have the traffic bill, the heat map, half the traffic will run without the heat map. And then we’ll sort of see what happens. We’ll see the conversion rates. Our friends will see their facilities, their friends. We’ll see the repeat rate there for us to be customers come back again. We like the experience. So it’s talking to customers, keeping an eye out for what sort of product innovations out there, but ultimately being data driven and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t.

Speaker 2 [00:13:30] Suzanne, tell us a bit about how you see the travel industry model and where you want to position yourself. Something I found always fascinating about travel is in some ways it’s a fixed pie. There’s a certain number of people and only so much we can travel. And therefore, over the decades we see vertical integration or attempts at diversification. Are you looking at vertical integration, looking for different kinds of opportunities in travel, or do you see it’s now travel’s future maybe outside of travel?

Speaker 3 [00:14:01] Yeah, I mean, we’re looking outside of travel and not for any other reason. And that’s really what our customers are asking the sport right to our customer just saying, hey, you just got me a great deal in a hotel. But what I could really use is to save money on X and save money on Y, right? And that’s sort of where we’re leaning towards. And moving to other verticals, specifically on your comment about the travel industry and sort of it being a fixed pie, I think that some of that’s sort of true but also changing and that we have customers now, or at least the new generation who are wanting to spend more money on experiences than spending money on things. You’re seeing almost like a shift in percentage of disposable income that gets spent on travel and experiences, which is different with previous generations. It’s like, okay, I’m going to have this much money to spend on trips, are going to go on one trip a year or whatever it is. And now the new generation saying, you know, I’m not going to own a house, I’m not going to own a car, am going to, you know, take the disposable income I have and spend it on trips and experiences. So that’s happening. And then secondly, I think that people are even doing more local trips and I think COVID actually accelerated that. Right. So before when you would say, hey, I’m only going to go to one or two trips a year because you typically be thinking about getting on a plane and going somewhere. And now with COVID, there was this period of time where people were okay traveling, but they didn’t want to get on a plane, so they would start to take more and more local trips. So you started to see this change was like, Hey, I can go on one or two local trips here and I don’t want to international trips here. So we are starting to feel like it is expanding.

Speaker 2 [00:15:32] Coming up after the break, more of our conversation with Hussein Feisal. So stay right here.

Speaker 1 [00:15:38] Please take your seats. What you’re listening to, Disruptors and RBC Podcast. I’m Theresa Doyle, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership recently published a report called Equal Measures Advancing Canada’s Working Women in a Post-Pandemic Economy. And it will look at the importance of boosting women’s pay and participation in the labor force and tackle some of the possible solutions. Among them establish greater parity between maternity and paternity leave, and reduce the financial burden of taking parental leave. Create more opportunities for upskilling and pathways for women into senior roles, and recruit more women into the skilled trades. To learn more, check out the link in the show notes of this episode and visit RBC Dotcom Thought Leadership and be sure to follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Turn off all electronic devices.

Speaker 2 [00:16:31] Welcome back. We’re talking with Hussain Faisal about the return of travel coming out of the pandemic, as well as some of the storm clouds on the horizon that could disrupt the recovery. We can’t talk about travel without recognizing what’s going on in the world and specifically the war in Ukraine and what that is doing, not just to that country and the region, but the disruptions it’s causing globally. Flights are being rerouted. That’s probably the least inconvenience out of this, certainly from a Ukrainian perspective. But oil prices way up. How do you think that’s going to impact travel?

Speaker 3 [00:17:07] It’s obviously super sad and super unfortunate to see that happen. I mean, when this started, we actually blocked any hotel bookings in Russia. We blocked anyone from making bookings in the currency. It’s just extremely sad to see that type of unprovoked aggression in our hearts out to the to the people in Ukraine. And again, we’re seeing some increase in gas prices. We’re seeing some changes to inflation. But I think, again, all that stuff normalize over a longer period of time. So I’m not I’m not too concerned about the long term ramifications of that right now for us, or at least the way I think about personally is just obviously, no one wants this war to continue. And we’re sort of our hearts are with the people of Ukraine. And that that’s the most important thing.

Speaker 1 [00:17:48] As we are coming out of the pandemic. Very high inflation and high costs or something. This tension between the fact that it is frankly getting much more expensive to travel and yet we all still want to do it because of the pent up demand of the last couple of years. So from your perspective, how sensitive are Canadian travelers to price increases and who is actually doing the traveling this year and next? Like who can afford to?

Speaker 3 [00:18:11] Yeah, it’s you know, first of all, I would say it’s not just Canadians. I would say everyone is price sensitive. It has been some very difficult times for people in COVID. And there’s definitely a large segment of the demographics that have had a difficult time during COVID. And now saving money is even more important. And then and then the opposite of that sort of what you mentioned is that we see prices starting to go up because there’s all this pent up demand and people have been waiting. So. So I would say there’s definitely a demographic that has been saving money as that pent up demand and is ready to go. And then, unfortunately, there’s another part of the demographic that is now in some ways somewhat priced out. I mean, I expect we’re going to see things normalize. And I think that over the next 6 to 12 months, we’re probably going to see a lot of people traveling like way more than usual to make up for them. For the past two years. I mean, one of the one of the most interesting stats I have for you is that typically on any given night, about 30 to 40% of hotel rooms across the US go empty. So that means there is excess capacity and obviously it depends where you’re going. There’s some boutique hotels, a fancy Boujee beach that are going to be sold out every single night for an entire year. But if you’re going to Vegas, where there’s tons and tons of hotel rooms or you’re just a lot of places across the States and even across Canada where there’s just a lot of supply, you’re going to have empty hotel rooms. So there are rooms available and eventually the market’s been to normalize. These hotels are going to look to maximize their revenue to fill up those beds. The biggest tip, I would say, in terms of booking is just kind of really being aware of the booking windows and knowing how far in advance to book. So often you’ll get the best deals when you’re booking 2 to 3 weeks in advance when you wait to last minute, could have a chance. But there’s also a risk there that, you know, you end up with hotels that sell out or end up filling up. And when you book too far in advance, you’re probably not leaving yourself the opportunity for a hotel to say, Hey, it looks like we may not be at capacity. I think we’re going to we’re going to do a price drop over here. Right. So. So ideally, you can you can sort of book 2 to 3 weeks in advance of your booking well in advance. You’re doing that with a good refund ability policy. So if you see a price drop, you can go and say, I’m going to catch my booking and rebook.

Speaker 2 [00:20:21] Hussain You mentioned Canadians desire to travel internationally. And of course a lot of people, not just Americans, but Europeans and Asians, are going to be traveling again. How do we get them and how do tour operators and hospitality operators get them coming to Canada and spending more time and money in Canada as the world opens up?

Speaker 3 [00:20:39] I think that in general, as a country, we probably need to do more. One of the things that I was really excited about, and this is about four or five years ago, MGM was going to come here and they were going to come to Toronto and they were going to build out a complex. They were going to build out a casino. They were going to build a theme park. They were going to build sort of a water park. They were going to build, you know, a mall meeting rooms. They were going to build a train from the airport straight to the MGM property. That’s the type of stuff where you can say, Hey, now. Now there’s a whole other reason to come to Toronto and make this destination. Unfortunately, in order for MGM to do that, they wanted to obviously have a casino in place. And that’s something that the city ended up rejecting, which is very disappointing because, I mean, I understand some of the problems that come with having a casino. And I think there probably would have been some ways to mitigate those problems. But net net, you talk about a major company like that. Again and putting in a major infrastructure project that makes Toronto more of a destination so that at a country level or even a city level, we need to start thinking about doing things like that and building more of this infrastructure.

Speaker 1 [00:21:56] One of the great gifts that the pandemic gave us gift circuses, has been just the ability to connect with people across vast distances through a screen. To what extent do you think business travel will come back, and how do you see airlines, airports, hotels changing their business model now where they previously relied on that lucrative business traveler?

Speaker 3 [00:22:19] Yeah. So this is this is an interesting question that we talked about. So I can tell you internally how we think about it. So we are now approaching 200 employees. We are about to 60, 70% here in Canada, but 30, 30, 40% in the U.S. and globally. These are just executives who used to travel quite a bit. I used to travel almost once a month to New York, to San Francisco. And obviously in the pandemic, it was almost two years of almost no business travel. I just recently I made a couple of trip to New York and San Francisco. What it feels like is that some business travel’s going to pick up. There’s still no replacement sometimes for having dinner with someone or meeting in person, but I just don’t think that’s going to be at the same scale as before. So I expect that a lot of staff and a lot of meetings can just happen online, but that’s like deep relationship building of those strategic partnerships. That’s the type of stuff that I think is going to happen in person.

Speaker 2 [00:23:14] Hussein As we move towards close, I wonder if you could share some parting thoughts on how we as travelers may be changing? Something that fascinates me about travel is that it brings humans together. And we probably all long to be on those crowded streets in Manhattan or even those awkward moments of being squeezed between people getting to their seats on an airline or trying to find a spot on a crowded beach or a seat at a crowded cafe. And yet, after two years of pandemic, all that kind of seems weird now. Is that going to be the normal again any time soon, or are we, as a traveling species, going to be a little different coming out of this?

Speaker 3 [00:23:55] I think that’s I think it’s a little back to normal. Some some lifestyle changes have happened. Like there’s been people who move from downtown to the suburbs and people who are, you know, have more space and maybe are working from home cause they’re just not going out as much. But I think the next time you’re going to get into a crowded coffee shop or a crowded beach, you’re not going to think twice about it.

Speaker 2 [00:24:12] So if I hear you correctly, what you’re saying is I’m going to have to stand elbow to elbow with people again to appreciate a painting at the at the moment.

Speaker 3 [00:24:19] I think so.

Speaker 2 [00:24:20] I think all of I’ll look forward to that moment. Hussein, thanks so much for being on RBC Disruptors.

Speaker 3 [00:24:26] No problem. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 [00:24:29] John. That conversation has me itching to plan my next trip, maybe even with an AI powered chat bot. I really love the optimism that Hussein had about where travel is going and the opportunities we might have to travel. Given the changing nature of work, that extra flexibility means that you might be able to do two weeks in a far off city as long as you can check into your computer every day and get your deliverables done. And at the same time you’re in a new place. You can close your laptop and then go out and explore a new city and eat great food. I always comes back to food for me. That’s what I’m really, really jazzed about. How about you?

Speaker 2 [00:25:07] Yeah, it makes me want to get on a plane probably 2 to 3 weeks from now. But I also realized how technology really is changing travel. Not in the ways that maybe some of the extreme thinkers thought that we’d all sit in our basement with our VR goggles on and go places without having to leave home. But it’s technology that is optimizing the ability to travel for all of us. It’s not only making it more affordable and accessible, but as Hussein was saying, we’re getting better and better deals. Maybe not as good as we’d like all the time, but with technology getting better, the opportunity to travel will improve with it.

Speaker 1 [00:25:48] This has been a special encore episode of Disruptors. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. Next week, join us for the latest tech and innovation buzz with our ten minute tech series. Until then, I’m Theresa Do and this is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon.

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.

Back-to-school season will look very different this year. Most Canadian youth will return to physical classrooms after more than a year of on-again, off-again remote learning that took its toll. The numbers show that students experienced increased anxiety and depression from the stress of social isolation and the challenges of virtual learning, among other factors.

Recent research from Ontario’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) shows a large majority of children and youth experienced harm to their mental health during the first wave of the pandemic, with 70% of school-aged children and 66% of preschool-aged children reporting deterioration in at least one these key areas: depression, anxiety, irritability, attention span, hyperactivity, and obsessions/compulsions.

Mental illness is estimated to cost the Canadian economy $50 billion annually. If we’re to address the cascading issues surrounding it, 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.

In this Disruptors episode from Oct. 2020, host John Stackhouse interviews two leaders in the youth mental health field, Dr. Yuri Quintana, Chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Joanna Henderson, clinical psychologist and director at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Together, they explore how technology can and should play a role in helping young Canadians with their mental health struggles.

Listen to hear how when properly applied, technology can provide more access to services, knowledge and support.

And for those interested, try the Resiliency Quiz to learn more about how resilient you are today and the strategies you can adopt that will enhance your life-long resiliency. This quiz has been developed by Strong Minds Strong Kids, Psychology Canada with support from RBC Future Launch.

You can also check out these three articles from RBC’s 9-part Resilience 101 series that profile youth mental health leaders and organizations from across the country: How Going Virtual Helps You Access Services and Support, Creating New Life Lines for Youth in Rural Communities, and Taking a Small Town Approach to Youth Mental Health in B.C.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast

How Tech Can Reshape Mental Health Care – for the Better

The unprecedented disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has made this an extraordinarily challenging period for us all.

In-person interactions have been replaced with digital. We can no longer gather and socialize in lunch rooms, hallways or classrooms. Activities that bring our youth joy can’t be experienced the way they used to be. Coupled with new feelings of loneliness and fear of the virus, our country’s longstanding mental health crisis has worsened. Even before the pandemic, an estimated 75% of youth with mental health disorders did not access the specialized care they need. Wait times for counselling and therapy were often six months to one year in Ontario, for example. That backlog has only worsened these past months.

Another culprit? Our devices. The Canadian Pediatric Society says high school students now spend more than 7.5 hours per day on various screens, with 20% of high school-aged children logging five hours per day on social media alone.

There are clear links between screen time and mental health – and anxiety rates among youth are through the roof. Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, a physician and brain scientist at Duke University who joined us on a previous RBC Disruptors episode, says our brains are continuously adapting to the new things we’re doing in our lives – such as interacting with technology – and rewiring themselves. New research from the University of Calgary shows that 96% of those aged 25 and under report feeling moderate or high levels of stress as a result of the pandemic.

So how can we harness our increasing reliance on screens in a positive way, to deliver meaningful mental health support? With COVID forcing so many aspects of our lives to go digital – fast – the time to create lasting change is now – but there’s lots to consider.

“What we should be doing is co-designing,” said Dr. Joanna Henderson, a clinical psychologist and a director at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. Henderson was one of our guests on the most recent episode of RBC Disruptors, which delves into the potential risks and rewards of our growing dependence on technology during the pandemic.

Simply moving counselling sessions over to Zoom won’t cut it, she says

“Using technology to deliver services isn’t just about taking what we do in person and then offering it through the technological interface,” Henderson said. It is instead about leveraging the technologies that young people already use to develop new kinds of services for youth that deliver the kinds of support they need.

But users should be careful – there are thousands of problematic “health and wellness” apps, none of which should not be viewed as a one-stop solution. There are “probably 50,000″ healthcare-related apps out there, Said Dr. Yuri Quintana, chief of the Division of Clinical Informatics at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Many of them don’t get used and part of it is that the style, the content and the way in which people connect to them haven’t been designed in proper ways or evaluated in proper ways,

Quintana believes a blended approach works best, noting that people have different needs, and may require a combination of approaches (apps, telehealth, in-person services) tailored to different individuals. He says it’s about creating new and different models by understanding how virtual services can be leveraged as part of an overall approach

“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. Part of what we need to do now is develop the research to understand what types of technology are appropriate for what types of individuals and what kinds of situations,” said Quintana.

“This COVID pandemic really has woken up people to the need to make services more accessible to everyone,” he said.

RBC’s committment to supporting youth mental health

RBC Future Launch is a 10-year, $500-million commitment (now in its fourth year) to help Canadian youth prepare for the jobs of tomorrow. The program provides funding to community partners across Canada which help youth access through: work experience, skills development opportunities, networking solutions, and/or mental well-being supports and services. Future Launch has released a report that examines how mobile apps can help address youth mental health issues.

RBC Foundation annually invests over $9MM CAD into the youth mental health sector across Canada and specifically as it relates to the innovative integrated youth services model: in the last 5 years, we have invested over $4.5MM across Canada in individual sites as well as provincial and national initiatives.

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.

This is turning into a one-issue election, in two very different parts.

Biden supporters feel COVID is the top issue, by a 42-23 margin over the economy. Trump supporters feel the economy is the top issue, by a 68-9 margin over COVID.

Which means Trump can’t afford for COVID to be the ballot question, especially since 48% of voters say they don’t trust him at all when it comes to the pandemic. In fact, the economy is the only issue in the top-10 list of voter concerns where he scores better than Biden.

These numbers are from the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, conducted by Hart Research, and they show a consistent and strong lead for Biden.

But as Molly O’Rourke, a Hart Research partner, told a webinar hosted by RBC Capital Markets, there’s plenty of room for asterisks. The biggest risk is that “polling is weakest where it matters most” – among older, less educated voters in the swing states that Trump won narrowly in 2016.

On several counts, Trump faces challenges:

  • few voters (28%) feel the country is moving in the right direction, which tends to signal the mood for change;
  • interest in the election (81%) is at a new high;
  • voters are taking the election very seriously, with 83% saying the outcome matters (it’s usually about 55%);
  • his base is shifting, with his lead among white, non-college educated men falling from 38 points to 19 points in one month;
  • Biden’s lead with suburban women has grown from 9 points to 25 points in one month;
  • Biden’s lead with seniors has grown from 4 points to 27 points.

O’Rourke cautioned that polling has been disrupted by the pandemic, with serious limits on qualitative in-person interviews that give pollsters a truer sense of public sentiment.

But even in limited encounters, she’s been struck by the number of voters, including “ambivalent” Trump supporters, who use the word “exhausted” when they talk about the need for change. In a period of massive disruption, they see Trump as a source of disruption, and Biden as a source of calm.

She doesn’t see voters giving Biden a mandate to do much more than get rid of Trump and get rid of the virus. There’s much less interest in the bolder change agenda that many Democrats are hoping to implement if they secure control of both Congress and the White House.

Nearly 30 million votes have already been cast – five times as many as in 2016. And many of those ballots won’t be counted until after election day. That could be an advantage for Trump, whose supporters are more inclined to vote in person on November 3. O’Rourke suggested a “red mirage” on election night could prompt him to declare victory, even though Biden could be declared the winner days or weeks later.

The delayed results could also hang over the Senate, which is proving to be much more challenging for the Republicans. The Democrats need to flip only three of the 35 GOP seats up for grabs to secure control of the upper house, which O’Rourke said is “a very strong possibility.”

With so much up in the air, she expects the election to be “a major test of faith that people have in our institutions, and a test of our two-party system playing by the rules. I’m honestly nervous about it, and there’s plenty of opportunities to get derailed.”

O’Rourke urged one word for election night: “patience.”

For more, you can see Molly O’Rourke’s latest polling slides here.

 

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Twenty years later, as we reel from a global pandemic, it’s almost 30%.

On a day meant to recognize young people, it might not feel as though there’s much to celebrate. The COVID crisis has battered economies worldwide, and it’s hit youth especially hard. Graduating in a recession can have long-term impacts on the careers of young people, including slow wage growth and stunted progression up the ladder, as noted in a 2019 RBC Economics report.

But as we rebuild our economy, we’ll need the energy and creativity of young people to reimagine what’s possible.

In an RBC Disruptors podcast from September, 2019, we spoke with two 20-something entrepreneurs who pursued their own ambitions. They share how they dove headfirst into their ventures, while also navigating the barriers of being young entrepreneurs.

Not many young adults in Canada imagine themselves as the next Elon Musk: only 1.7% of the country’s entrepreneurs are under 30.

The Internet and record low interest rates have made entrepreneurship more accessible than ever, and yet the rate of young Canadians starting their own businesses has been relatively flat since the 1980s. The shine of the start-up world diminishes when placed in the context of rising student debt levels and unaffordable housing in major cities.

At our recent RBC Disruptors conversation, we heard from two 20-something CEOs who nevertheless joined this tiny minority—and haven’t looked back.

Braden Ream is the founder and CEO of VoiceFlow, a software platform making creative tools for voice interface designers building on Alexa and Google Home. Julia Kirouac is the founder and CEO of NudFud, a company producing sweet and savoury snacks with a focus on nutrition.

Ream and Kirouac shared 8 tips for starting your own business—and why your 20s might be the perfect time to do it.

1. Just Do It

When you’re young, you can dive in headfirst, full of energy and free of responsibilities. The risks are lower in your 20s—you can live on little, and people won’t judge you for gaps in your resume.

2. Don’t Focus on Your Age

Young entrepreneurs may struggle to be taken seriously. Ream suggests not bringing up your age—it’s not what’s important anyway. “You don’t want to be the best 22-year-old CEO in Canada; you want to be the best CEO, period.”

3. Ask Questions

On a fundraising trip to Silicon Valley, Ream was getting frustrated after dozens of rejections. When he started asking questions, he learned that his presentation wasn’t speaking to investors. People wanted to hear more about the voice tech market, and less about his particular product. He tailored his presentation—and started landing investors.

4. Find Mentors—plural

You’ll need go-to people for different things. (Don’t complain to your investors about your product’s failings!) Find someone who can giving you financing advice, someone else knowledgeable about your industry and someone else you can rant to when things aren’t going right.

5. Learn as You Go

Everyone fails—and it’s an important experience. Particularly if you lose money, it’ll be a lesson you don’t forget. “Failure teaches you how resilient you are. Either it’s going to break your spirit, or make you come back even stronger,” Kirouac said.

6. Be a Sniper, Not a Machine Gun

Starting a business will definitely be a grind, but you can maximize your output by staying focused: prioritize your time effectively, and work on the right things. As Ream put it: “You can either be a sniper or a machine gun.”

7. Take Care of Yourself

Self-care isn’t talked about enough among entrepreneurs. It can become a competition, how little sleep you’re getting by on. That’s going to catch up to you. Get a good night’s sleep, eat well, and lean on your network. “Don’t be an island, definitely reach out,” Kirouac said.

8. Pave the Way For Others

It can be tempting to move to the U.S. But every company that decides to stay in Canada, like Shopify has, paves the way for more success stories. According to Ream, “It may be tougher, but we can pay it forward to future generations of entrepreneurs.”

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Before the COVID pandemic, the International Data Corporation projected data creation to grow to 175 zettabytes by 2025, 10 times the amount of data created in 2017. That number could soon well be higher, given the lockdowns that have forced businesses to rapidly pivot to online.

Few other companies understand the importance of data as much as Pelmorex Corp, which owns the Weather Network in Canada and El Tiempo in Spain. It’s the third largest weather platform in the world, attracting 60 million users to its business each month.

In an RBC Disruptors conversation from February, 2020, Pelmorex’s CEO Sam Sebastian shared how Pelmorex uses data to create insights for its clients and how companies can collect and capitalize on data as a resource to grow their business and gain an edge.

With COVID upending traditional business models and accelerating the shift to digital, it’s more important than ever for firms to tap into data and use them to power their growth. Understanding how customers behave, sales trends, and yes, even the weather forecast, will be critical to succeed in the new economy.

Data isn’t the new oil. It could soon be much bigger.

Heading into the 2020s, data is worth more than $200 billion to the economy, according to Statistics Canada. That’s almost as big as the value of Canada’s established reserves of crude oil, at roughly $300 billion.

When it comes to regulating this new virtual resource, the public can be just as conflicted over it as we are over the stuff in the ground, as the federal government may soon discover.

Sam Sebastian, one of the country’s leading data executives, worries governments may want to exert themselves too much in the name of privacy protection. And that may hold Canada back in a new era of growth in the so-called intangibles economy, where firms with a growth mindset around data are excelling.

Sebastian’s company,Pelmorex Corp, owns the Weather Network in Canada and El Tiempo in Spain, making it the world’s third largest weather platform, attracting 60 million users a month to its business of “weather information systems.”

Sebastian, who spoke at RBC Disruptors, our regular event series exploring innovation, believes excessive regulation could stifle a new generation of innovation on the internet, including universal, free access to information like weather forecasts. About 70% of Pelmorex’s revenue model is advertising-based, which depends on user data.

To keep that data flowing, Sebastian argued, we need a principles-based approach around transparency and user protection – and to be careful not to hinder the ability of smaller companies to compete.

He pointed to Europe’s new law, known as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as having an unintended consequence: it was designed to protect individuals but may have benefitted large companies like Google and Facebook because they have the resources to stay compliant with complex regulations while small and medium businesses are left vulnerable to potential fines and penalties.

“I don’t know if governments are always the answer,” Sebastian said.

The Trudeau government is exploring the biggest changes to privacy legislation in 20 years. And while many entrepreneurs and business leaders like Sebastian have pushed for a principles-based approach, privacy advocates want clearer rules and restrictions, especially in new fields like artificial intelligence.

Sebastian said Pelmorex uses a simple and transparent approach to data management to build the Weather Network into the country’s fourth most frequently used app. One example: the terms and conditions page on its website is only 1,972 words. AccuWeather’s is 4,000; Facebook’s is 12,000.

The keys to capitalizing on this rich new resource are to:

  • find ways to use data to become more relevant to customers;
  • build public trust through data;
  • use data to be more efficient to shareholders;
  • enhance data to be more impactful to our communities and our world.

Tell your users what you’re doing and why, and outline in advance what you want to do, Sebastian counselled the audience. “You just have to communicate in a way that’s pretty straightforward.”

Companies need to take an entrepreneurial approach to data, not a legalistic one. With only 400 employees, Pelmorex has been able to gain 60 million monthly users.

To develop a more entrepreneurial culture around data, the company created a separate “Data Solutions” unit that has its own culture, speed and freedom from revenue-driven targets. It’s also used acquisitions, like its 2017 purchase of Addictive Mobility, Canada’s largest mobile-first data management and media buying platform.

The acquisition reminds Sebastian of the lessons he learned about growth culture from his time working at Google – that it’s not about the free food or relaxed workplaces so much as the opportunities for employees at all levels to feel like they’re changing the world with their work.

He also knows Pelmorex’s growth is fueled by more than data. The company employs 50 meteorologists to keep ahead of Google’s surface-level weather reports, melding the art and science of forecasting.

Beyond daily commutes, weather is a huge variable in many businesses around the world. Pelmorex is able to offer value to other businesses, taking their sales data and matching it up with historical weather data to help businesses understand what to expect over the next 14-day forecast, and make informed decisions.

For all the focus on privacy, Sebastian worries we’re not focused enough on security. Last year, three in four Canadians had their data compromised. Many of us don’t understand how our data is used, or how vulnerable we might be to a hack.

To learn about how Pelmorex Corp is using AI and machine learning along with location, weather and behaviour data to generate insights, listen to our podcast episode.

The COVID pandemic has locked down much of society and driven many of our activities online – working, shopping, entertaining, and catching up with friends and family.

 

And because technology has allowed us to carry on with as much of life as is possible, our dependency on it has only deepened. It’s become a common pattern – glued to our screens for work all day, and then connecting with close ones through video conferencing in the evenings. Rinse, repeat.

But what effect is all this technology having on us? In an RBC Disruptors conversation from June 2019, Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, a physician and brain scientist at Duke University, said that the human “brain is continuously adapting to new things we do in our lives and rewiring itself.”

In the age of Zoom meetings, the lessons and insights he shared are as relevant as ever.

Read on / listen to learn how technology is changing the brain and mind – and what advice Dr. Doraiswamy has to share about keeping our brains balanced between our natural world and our digital one.

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Technology is doing more than changing our world – it’s actually changing ourselves, too. How is all that time we spend on screens changing our brains?

Dr. Murali Doraiswamy, a physician and brain scientist at Duke University, says there’s cause for concern: an estimated 8%-10% of people in North America show signs of a serious addiction to the Internet and gaming.

Nevertheless, he’s a techno-optimist. Thanks to its neuroplasticity, the human brain can rewire itself – it matches the tech that serves us. Going forward, we may become super good at typing, or mastering voice tech devices.

The key is to balance our screen time and our time in the real world. Dr. Doraiswamy shared five things we can do today to keep our brains in prime operating condition.

1. Get Up From Your Desk

It’s a challenge in an era when everything seems urgent – but don’t sit in front of your computer for more than an hour at a time. It’s not good for your productivity. “We are so over-scheduled, we are constantly in a task-oriented mode,” Dr. Doraiswamy said. Get up and walk somewhere, go to a coffee shop. That break from emails and meetings will help to shift your brain from a task-orientated way of doing things to a more creative and productive mode.

2. Go for a Walk in Nature

Hands down, the best place to reset your brain is in nature. When you take a walk in nature, you’re combining the trance-like state that walking puts you in, with the sense of tranquility nature provides. This contemplative time activates the brain’s default mode network. This is the part of the brain that allows you to unlock solutions to deep problems, and inspires a sense of collective well-being in people. You just need to give it free time to do its job.

3. Meditate

Everyone should be meditating for a minimum of 20 minutes a day, preferably outdoors. Start with an app, if that helps. Like walking, meditating activates the brain’s default mode network. It’s good for your brain in the long-run, too – studies show novice meditators and expert meditators have different brains. The later have less age-relate shrinkage in their brains, and the parts of the brain involved in judgement and morality are more stimulated.

4. Have a Good Conversation Every Day

The number one predictor of how long you’ll live isn’t your blood pressure; it’s your social connections. Every day, have a deep, meaningful conversation with a friend – not over Skype, but in person. These deep personal connections are vital for physical and psychological well-being. “Don’t mistake social media for what brings true meaning into your life,” Dr. Doraiswamy says.

5. Stop Checking Your Phone Before Bed

An hour before you go to bed, stop checking your phone. If you look at your phone just before going to sleep, your brain is still processing those last few emails for at least another 15-20 minutes. Early research also suggests that the blue light emitted by devices may interfere at night with our sleep cycles, meaning you’ll sleep better if those last few minutes of your day are spent with a book instead.

The Silicon Valley – and Canadian-founded – tech darling raised another US$100 million last week, adding to the US$225 million it attracted from private investors in June.

That gives Instacart a valuation of US$13.8 billion. Not bad for a company that University of Waterloo graduate Apoorva Mehta founded in 2012 when he decided his former employer, Amazon, couldn’t figure out the fresh food business.

Mehta once called grocery delivery “the largest market in plain sight.” Delivery services had been around since the 1800s but failed to transform in the Internet age because they didn’t put the customer first. Instead, they expected people to wait for refrigerated trucks that operated on a company’s schedule. A bit like the cable guy.

Mobile apps and the gig economy changed that, allowing intermediaries like Instacart to access different suppliers and hire freelance “shoppers” to get groceries to you on your schedule.

COVID-19 turned the model into a rocket ship. In the U.S., Instacart’s share of the online grocery market spiked to 55% in the third week of May, up from 30% in February, and customer order volume has been up by as much as 500% year-over-year.

But that doesn’t spell the end of grocery stores.

“Customers love their local grocery stores, and that connection has been built over generations,” Instacart President Nilam Ganenthiran (also a Canadian) says on a new episode of the RBC Disruptors podcast.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast |

See transcript

While Instacart works with several chains, it pioneered its Canadian model with Loblaw, the retail giant that employs 200,000 people across several subsidiaries, including Shoppers Drug Mart, No Frills and Real Canadian Superstore.

The partnership, formed in 2017, accelerated through the crisis as Canadians opted to shop from home for almost anything.

Sarah Davis, Loblaw’s President, says the shift is now pushing the company to focus on both its store and digital experience, and consumers want both – for different reasons.

“We really do want to have a sense of our customers feeling like they belong with us and this sense of emotional attachment to us,” she says on the podcast.

She thinks consumers will still value the choice and curation that goes into the store experience. But demand for the convenience of delivery – especially for seniors and busy parents – is growing too.

Pre-COVID, only 1.5% of Canadian groceries were purchased online, compared to 7% in the US and 10% in the UK. In April, research done for PayPal by Angus Reid found that 30% of Canadians had shopped for groceries online.

What else have Loblaw and Instacart learned from the crisis?

1. Our relationship to the home is changing.

Now that remote work is a norm, we’re developing new habits: spending evenings in, gardening, baking bread and knitting. Loblaw is selling more knitting needles than ever. As spending habits change, stores need to be nimbler with inventories and supply chains.

2. The future of grocery will be a blend of digital and in-store.

Grocers need to position themselves to deliver digital experiences and connect them with a rapidly changing store model.

3. Proximity matters.

Canadians want to feel connected to their food and to their local grocer. A part of community is knowing where your food comes from and supporting those who produce it.

4. Understanding the consumer has never been more important.

Data needs to help create a seamless end-to-end experience that not only makes it easier for customers to interact with brands, but enhances their relationship with the store.

5. The grocery experience should be fun.

Food is personal and shopping for it should be an enjoyable experience that can be shared.

There are 2 to 3 million Canadians living, working and studying outside our country – and 10 per cent of them are in the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. This kind of diaspora strategy is how many countries such as Israel, Singapore, and India are taking on the world in a more networked and digital age.

No group better epitomizes that approach than the C100, an association of Canadian expats in the Valley that has helped build Canada’s tech ecosystem. For the past decade, it’s taken on our national innovation challenge and helped drive policy change, develop talent streams, and connected Canadian entrepreneurs with the world.

“Our ambition really is to build the preeminent global community of Canadians in tech and to take this model that we have built in Silicon Valley to markets everywhere,” said Laura Buhler, Executive Director of the C100. She joined the RBC Disruptors podcast, along with C100 Co-Chair Andre Charoo, to discuss how Canada has transformed into a global tech leader and how it can sustain its momentum.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Simplecast

The last five years saw sustained year-over-year growth in venture capital investment into Canadian tech companies. And in 2019, the volume of VC invested in Canada had its greatest uptick ever with a 40% increase over the previous year.

Buhler said it comes down to Canada’s entrepreneurs. “In order to have investment, you need a founder or founders and an ambitious team who are talented enough and passionate enough about a problem to go build it and solve it.”

Few companies have attracted more investment into Canada than Ottawa-based Shopify, which has been heralded as Canada’s quintessential talent magnet.

“Having Shopify and its enormous growth … is really important for flows of capital,” said Charoo.

And coming up behind Shopify is a whole generation of promising tech companies founded by Canadians returning home after experiences in Silicon Valley –

Michael Katchen of Wealthsimple, Ray Reddy of RITUAL, and Andrew D’Souza of Clearbanc, to name a few.

It’s likely why we’ve seen an explosion in tech jobs. Over the past five years, 80,000 new tech jobs have been created in Toronto alone – more than San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. combined.

What can the Canadian tech ecosystem do to build on its impressive growth? Here are five takeaways.

1. Expats are an asset.

Canadians in every part of the world have the ability to network and plug our entrepreneurs into their local ecosystems. We need to tap into our diaspora networks to create strategic opportunities that accelerate the growth of our companies and our talent.

2. Seize the moment right now.

The restrictions that the United States is putting on immigration are a big opportunity for Canada to attract top global talent. It’s time to step up and show that in Canada, we do things differently. We value inclusion and we can foster success.

3. Pay up for talent.

Top tier tech executives in the U.S. get paid a lot more than in Canada. And to bring that world-class talent here and keep it here, we need to think about how to match ambition with compensation and ensure that we’re not undermining success. That includes our tax system.

4. Buy Canadian.

Procurement is a recurring theme on our podcast, and there’s never been a better time to support Canadian businesses. Large corporations and governments can invest locally to develop a thriving ecosystem that can compete on a global stage.

5. Innovation is happening coast to coast to coast.

It’s not just a Waterloo or Vancouver thing. From Whitehorse to St. John’s, Canadians are building sustainable and innovative businesses that are solving big problems. Some of the most successful, scalable companies are found in our smaller centres. So wherever you are, don’t be afraid to look beyond your own backyard. You might see exactly what you’re looking for.