Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hi. Is John here. You may feel like 2023 is about to be a really complex year. No one seems to have a clear handle on inflation or the war in Ukraine or whether Donald Trump is going to make a comeback. And then there’s climate change. Demographic clifts and COVID variance kind of makes my head hurt. I didn’t even bother with New Year’s predictions this year as I just couldn’t think through the complexities that we seem to be drowning in. I suspect complexity is a word you’ll hear a lot in 2023, but don’t let it intimidate you. Even the world’s best computers are having trouble figuring out those complex problems. Winning Jeopardy may be easy. You just need to know every bit of information ever created, which, for a good supercomputer, is like a chip shot. But predicting the future requires a whole different level of thinking and computing. One could say it’s a quantum difference. That’s another word you may hear a lot this year. Quantum. Speaker 2 [00:01:00] Hi, my name is Stephanie Simmons and I’m the founder and Chief Quantum officer of Photonic Inc., as well as the advisory council co-chair of the newly-announced national quantum strategy for Canada. Quantum is a coming technological tidal wave, and we already have specific concrete examples of how it’s going to change the way we communicate and compute. Ultimately, information. The bits we use are physical objects that are manipulated according to physical laws. The information possessed by quantum systems is simply exponentially larger in scale than the non quantum bits we use today. Once we harness fault tolerant quantum technologies, which is to say trustworthy quantum technologies, we will be able to do certain things that are otherwise physically impossible to accomplish by any other means. Speaker 1 [00:01:43] India, Israel, Japan, Australia. They all have quantum strategies. And here in Canada the Federal Government is trying to help up our quantum game. It recently announced a national quantum strategy with $360 million behind it. So what is this quantum thing? And cannot live up to the hype in time to address the world’s most pressing issues, whether it’s climate change or international conflict or cybersecurity? This is Disruptors and RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse. Today, I’m excited to speak with an innovator on the front lines of the quantum computing revolution. Kristen Weed Brook is the CEO of Toronto based Xanadu Quantum Technologies. Just last year, Xanadu became one of the first companies in the world to successfully demonstrate quantum computation advantage. We’re going to hear a lot more about that in a minute. Christian, welcome to Disruptors. Speaker 3 [00:02:50] Thank you, John. It’s nice to be here. Speaker 1 [00:02:52] Before we get into some of the heavy stuff on Quantum, I love to know a bit more about your own background and journey, Christian and also the origins of Xanadu. But maybe we can start with the name of the company. What inspired it? Speaker 3 [00:03:06] It actually comes from the song Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John and written by ELO. Actually one of the funny sort of side note. So that is the actual movie itself was a bit of a box office bomb. And we’ve raised probably ten times the amount of money that made at the box office. Speaker 1 [00:03:22] Well, it’s a great tribute to the late Olivia Newton-John, fellow Australian. Tell us how you came from Australia to Canada and how the company got going. Speaker 3 [00:03:32] Like a lot of people at Xanadu and other quantum companies, I came from academia. So from Australia I did undergrad and University of Queensland in Brisbane and I did a master’s in Nash and Young Australian National University in Canberra and then started to finish my PhD back at University of Queensland as well. There I was working on quantum computing and quantum security as it relates to photonics or light, which is what Xanadu, it’s, it’s medium that it’s stores and processes information. After that, I was a post-doc at MIT. He continued in the same sort of research and then found a job at University of Toronto. As soon as I landed. I just thought, This is a wonderful place to be and live and work and been here ever since and became a Canadian a couple of years ago as well. Speaker 1 [00:05:28] Before we get deeper into this, I want to pause you there and help a lot of our listeners catch up to you on Quantum. So I’ll ask the killer Jeopardy question. What is quantum? Speaker 3 [00:05:38] Basically, we have computers now. We have security solutions on the Internet and so forth. They actually run according to the principles of classical physics or Newtonian physics. Or another way of looking at it is non quantum physics. And these are things that we’re very used to in our real world. If we throw to our Frisbee, for instance, we throw away and it doesn’t do anything weird, you know, even if there’s wind or throw it off, but it doesn’t suddenly go the opposite direction, for instance. Now, if you’re able to zoom into any object and you see it’s made of atoms and protons and electrons and so forth, if you threw a Frisbee near an atom and you you’re part of the around the atom, it will have different laws of physics that operate. And these are called quantum physics. So quantum really means quantum physics or laws of physics at the atomic level. And so if you can actually harness these properties at the atomic level or if you’re looking at photons as we are, then you can actually generate some very weird things. And there’s certain properties that we don’t see in our classical world like entanglement and superposition interference and so forth that actually operate. So long story short, there’s different properties of physics that happen on the atomic level that we can actually leverage to do some really cool things. And in computation, if we can leverage these quantum properties, we can see for certain problems dramatic speed up in how long it takes to run a computation in security. We can actually create secure methods of transmitting information that are not possible using classical physics. So it’s a game changer, though. The catch here is that these physical properties of the quantum atomic level a very hard to leverage. And the reason is that our world interacts with this atomic world and you lose entangled. When you lose a ship for position and you lose interference and so forth. So they’re very hard to extract. And that’s why it’s very difficult to build a quantum computer. Is these properties or these weight effects that we want to leverage. They’re very ephemeral and they’re very hard to actually loft out. Speaker 1 [00:07:45] Let’s talk for a minute about your computer. It’s called Borealis, which is a and it’s a photonic quantum computer. Last year, it reached what’s called computational Advantage, which made it solved a complex mathematical operation in a fraction of a second. I believe it’s something that would take the world’s most powerful supercomputer more than 9000 years, which is almost unfathomable. Tell us a bit more about Borealis. Speaker 3 [00:08:11] Yeah, it was a remarkable achievement. As you mentioned, it was a demonstration of quantum computational advantage or quantum supremacy. Sometimes they’re used interchangeably and it shows a very well-defined task that you sort of hit a classical computer and not even just desktop computers, but supercomputers and pick them up against a quantum computer, as it’s called Borealis and press go and you see how fast each of them solves. And like you said, under a second for our Borealis machine. But it would have taken 9000 years or more for a classical computer. This demonstration was the first time ever by a start up and first time in Canada. So that’s why the team is very proud about it. It’s a great achievement for Canada. And also quantum computing companies in Canada took about two years to build the hardware, and the hardware team started essentially when COVID started. So there’s all that sort of difficulty on top of it, which is a testament to a very small team as well that managed to build this. The very first demonstration was by Google, who uses superconducting qubits and think of them as electrons. So a quantum version of electronics, whereas ours is quantum photonics. They did a wonderful job. It was the first time that was demonstrated for us. We were able to do it live based approach, first time that was available on the cloud as well. And so that’s the key thing. This decade perhaps will be characterized by having these very challenging computers to build accessible over the cloud. So, yeah, it was a crazy achievement, was published and verified and sort of peer reviewed in nature as well. So the community really is excited about the achievement by the Xanadu team. Speaker 1 [00:09:48] When I first got to see Borealis, you took me on a tour last year and there was great excitement at the time because you were very close to that computational advantage. One of the things that struck me was the size of the computer. I mean, much bigger than anything I have access to, but relatively small given the enormous power of it. What all goes into the housing of these extraordinary machines that may change everything around us? Speaker 3 [00:10:12] Yeah, actually, you mentioned our building, so we’re on the 29th floor. As you know, John, you know, we were concerned before we moved in is every building swings a little bit. And would that affect our measurements? Would it affect our apparatus? And because most of the time you see photonic computers or quantum optics, as we call them experiments, they’re often in the bottom of a of a university building in the basement because you need to keep everything all the light closed off and so forth. So we were unsure about building one of these devices, but in the end, thankfully, none of the issues that we were concerned about actually played a role, which is great. And I think that speaks to the robustness of our photonic devices and chips as well. And one of the key things, you know, I mentioned this device has 216 qubits when you can start solving important customer problems. So around a million cubits physical qubits now it could be plus or minus, but that’s a good way to sort of think about it, you know, what is a magnitude away. But the key thing is some of the breakthroughs in Borealis are actually needed, and one of them is you need some sort of buffer or transmitting light through fiber optics. And when you look at a traditional data center, a data center has, you know, a certain amount of square footage and you’d have all these server racks within it, you know, one after the other, and they’re all talking to each other using light as well. But they’re computing, using electronics. So the way to scale up and it’s very reminiscent of the things we achieved in Borealis is you’re going to have many of these modules very much, say, multiple versions of Borealis, roughly speaking, but they’ll all be talking to each other using light or photons. There are theses and why we believe perhaps we have one of the edges when it comes to scaling up is the ability to actually network our devices because they are already photonic based. So what better way to sort of scale up if you have to use photonics, meaning that’s how you connect them using the fiber optics, then already a computer that’s computing using light based approach. Speaker 1 [00:12:07] This is a really exciting global race. The Chinese are very advanced in quantum computing. Google has been making great strides. Where does Xanadu stand up in the in the global rankings? Speaker 3 [00:12:19] You know, it depends on how you define this. So if you if you look at quantum supremacy or quantum computational advantage, we do have the most powerful quantum computer. Again, there’s a lot of caveats there which we try to be clear about. And, you know, one of them is for a specific type of problem. No customer use cases yet, but we’re only one of three demonstrations of quantum supremacy. The first was by Google, second by a great team in China and also now a third time by SATs. Which is the first time it’s available on the cloud for anyone with internet connection. Susanna do is in terms of that aspect is one of the leaders in the world in terms of photonics, definitely one of the leaders as well. You know, the hope is with photonics is what we’re leveraging now is we didn’t have to invent the laser, we didn’t have to invent fiber optics. We can order them from companies. And, you know, as you mentioned, I originally came from Australia. And what better country to leverage the photonics than Canadians history in photonics, industry, Nortel and others as well. So we’re able to leverage that, which is a great thing. And, you know, speaking to your point about where Canada’s can succeed, it’s also in this area as well. So I would say on those points, we’re definitely hitting above our bodyweight and also one of the leaders as well. Speaker 1 [00:13:31] Christian. I appreciate applications may also be a few years away or longer, but I wonder if you can give our listeners a sense of where you see quantum making significant differences in the economy and in society over the next number of years. Where do you think the applications will first be most impactful? Speaker 3 [00:13:51] Yeah, that’s a good question. And I would say applications are still a few years off. We’re more confident that once us or anyone else can reach millions of us, that’s where you can start solving important customer problems. The big picture is in terms of the buckets. So the main industries, the common ones that you would hear about, where a quantum computer can really outperform and really change the world in would be pharmaceuticals. So there, for instance, would be drug discovery. Another one would be finance. Common examples. There would be portfolio optimization. We hear about that. Another big one, which is where Zander’s really playing, is in material design and specifically next generation battery development. And another one that you often hear about is logistics. So let’s take Amazon for instance. They want to find an optimal path so they can save a lot of money in fuel and drivers. Time to make sure that doing the shortest path for a delivery. So these are the Commonwealth. They’re all complex systems, meaning if you add extra, extra elements to it, it doesn’t scale very well. So now I think in most industries focus is key. So each of these buckets or verticals, it could take a lifetime, each of them. So we’ve just focused on material disease, SARS and, you know, quantum chemistry, but more specifically next generation battery development. In our last round, we actually got an investment seriously from Volkswagen, and we’re actually been working with Volkswagen on projects the last year or two and will continue to do so as well. And we try to be very optimistic and say, look, this is the potential, but be realistic as well. Find that middle ground. And for us, it’s a case of investigating. If you had a million qubits and more for quantum computer, where would Volkswagen and other car companies use them to create a new battery that would be ten times faster to charge ten times longer distance on a single charge, You know, safer. All the usual metrics that traditional companies are looking at in the batteries are doing that as well. If you ran like the Borealis for 9000 years, you know, Volkswagen, other companies are not going to want to run a machine for 9000 years. So maybe even a year is a good metric, you know, So there’s a lot of different ways that it could help. But I would say these are the common industries that people talk about. Speaker 1 [00:16:03] It seems, and this will be overly simplistic, but that a lot of quantum computing opportunities are addressing future unknowns versus current computational challenges, which tend to be focused on current no ones and unknowns. Who is going into the vagaries of the future? Speaker 3 [00:16:20] There’s two things that I think about when you thinking about the hopefulness of a technology. One is that, as I mentioned, we’ve been building computers but not exploiting the full laws of the universe of nature. So we’ve done enormous historically, companies have done phenomenal work since the fifties and beyond and computer chips and architectures and up until the Internet and PC and mobile phones today. But the laws they’ve been using in order to create these things are not the most general sort of laws. So why I’m encouraged is that imagine if we can now use the most general laws of physics that we know about quantum physics. Imagine if we can leverage everything of that, that space. The hope is, is that the ability of problems we can solve also is proportional to that. The other thing, if we look back at history, I always like reading about the mid seventies and late seventies and the PC revolution with the apple, Apple one and Apple two and so forth, you would see a lot of the early advertisements were really for hobbyists, for the personal computer though I remember some of the early ads in the mid seventies were about advertising to housewives, said you can use your computer to look at a menu. And that was really the selling point, you know, apart from hobbyists and just having fun on these things and programing for, you know, abstract things. And it wasn’t till maybe 79 or so that they started come up with business applications. The spreadsheets for businesses were documents. And then we went into the eighties and more things games and so forth came more popular as well as a suite of applications. But those things, you know, maybe a few people could have imagined. And definitely science fiction writers have thought about all the possibilities going back 100 years and so forth, what the future may look like. But the actual applications were very much unknown and it was still selling. But look where we are today. Imagine if we, you know, said we can’t think of any other applications. Speaker 1 [00:18:16] Let’s take a quick break. When we come back, Christian SEABROOK, the CEO of Xanadu. We’ll talk about where Canada falls in the race for quantum computing Edge and who we’re racing against. Speaker 2 [00:18:30] You’re listening to Disruptors and RBC podcast. I’m Theresa Do. I’d like to share with you our latest agriculture report from RBC Economics on Thought leadership, called the Transformative Seven Technologies that Can Drive Canada’s Next Green Revolution. In it, we identify seven key agtech innovations we believe can both meaningfully reduce emissions and present opportunities for Canada to lead. Some, like anaerobic digester, carbon capture and precision technology, are ready to scale now. Others, like vertical farms, plant science and cellular agriculture, will be key solutions for the future. In every case, maximizing their potential will mean building the right platforms for collaboration among not just farmers and entrepreneurs, but also investors, corporates and governments. To learn more, visit RBC E-commerce Transformative seven. Speaker 1 [00:19:30] Welcome back. Today, I’m speaking with Kristen Wheat, Brooke, the CEO of Xanadu, about Canada’s place and potential in the development of quantum computing. Christian, there used to be a bit of quantum hype maybe a couple of years ago that suggested that the first team to achieve quantum supremacy would have a singular victory that only one supreme quantum computer would prevail. Has your understanding of quantum supremacy evolved over the last few years? Speaker 3 [00:20:01] Yeah. Yes, and that’s a good point. I do believe it depends on who you’re talking to in terms of the hype. I would say us and Google and a few others have always known that quantum supremacy is just a stepping stone, an initial achievement that the very difficult achievement but needs to be ticked off and then, you know, continued on. What’s the error correction and fault tolerance? The reason I say that, and I think Google has mentioned this too, when their great experiment came out, is there were a lot of naysayers that said even a quantum supremacy demonstration is not possible, meaning put aside applications for customers. Even if you’ve chosen an esoteric math problem, you still would not be able to beat a is a quantum computer. So I think those things were important. But also in our case too, and maybe with others, a lot of the technical demonstrations for Borealis are actually needed for error correction fault tolerance anyway. So it’s a rite of passage that I think was an important one for us as well. I think most people would have looked at it as a as a, you know, selling the pass through rather the be all and end all achievement. Now, though, getting back to your thought of one winner, to rule them all, even if a few companies came out tomorrow with a million qubits, which is not really possible or likely, it’s still a few years away. But let’s say that A, there’s still enough market and problems to go around, that it would be really hard to actually one company, even if it’s a Google, I’d be able to dominate every single vertical. For us to be a specific example, we’ve chosen next generation battery development to exclusion of everyone else, and that particular industry has a different supply. Chains have it has a different customer base, it has different sales and marketing. For us, we have to hire people that have background in quantum chemistry and batteries. So long story short, I think there’s more than enough for many winners. And you know, another way to perhaps look at it, maybe Xanadu dominates in Canada or North America and there’s another company that dominates in Europe as well. So a lot of different possibilities. But we all need to get to a million qubits first. Speaker 1 [00:21:58] Well, let’s turn to that point about national strategies. As I mentioned earlier, the federal government has announced $360 million to create a national quantum strategy. Why does Canada need this? Speaker 3 [00:22:10] I would say the first thing that comes to mind is building a quantum computer from the hardware point of view particularly is extremely expensive. It’s going to take a lot of money. And that money specifically was really going through the universities. And also that is a problem of the of the funnel of talent coming through and training them. The universities in Canada have been training these quantum physicists in quantum computing and so forth for the last two decades or more. And so having that pipeline come through, the companies in Canada, like Xanadu and others can actually leverage is important. Some money needs to be put there. Think of previous industries like the, you know, chip market or telecommunication market. These are very big markets. It takes billions and billions of dollars already. The other thing, if you look at competition, whether it’s friendly or not, the US has put ten times that amount of money roughly. So, you know, billion or two into the same sort of strategies. And so if we want to be competitive, it’s key for us to be able to have enough money to attract the talent as well to stop them from going to other places. China, I believe, has put in maybe 3 to 5 billion as well, something in a couple of billion or more. And Europe has done a lot as well. We’ve seen them being actively engaged. And thankfully, as you as you know, John, a week ago, the prime minister and the minister, the champagne visited us, which is great, and that was to announce Swift’s US Strategic Innovation Fund to reimbursement program of up to $40 million. And this shows you the amount of money that actually needs to go in and also the amount of jobs that it will create. And also the quantum Canadian ecosystem in general will create as well. Speaker 1 [00:23:44] Yeah, I mean, $360 million is a lot of money. I believe Canada is spending roughly on par with Israel and Russia, which are serious players in this. But India, I think, has committed $1,000,000,000 to to quantum the EU. Now, these are announcements, but it’s 7 billion and China again an announcement, 15 billion. Speaker 3 [00:24:03] Yeah. And then maybe another point, John, is Canada, Singapore and Australia. For the last two, two and a half decades, their governments have put in so much money in terms of the academic and university side where most of us have come from. And so it would be a shame for these countries and obviously Canada to not really be able to leverage as much as the talent pool and Xanadu has. I think 52% of the employees are from overseas and they want to. So far. Stay here. Speaker 1 [00:24:31] Is there a unique advantage that Canada has in that in that global competition? Speaker 3 [00:24:35] I think so. I mean, if you look at University of Toronto, you look at Institute of Quantum Computing in University World and other places in Vancouver and Montreal and so forth. We have the talent base here and that is really key. Some of the benefits for companies like the Shred program, we’ve been leveraging that from day one, which is grades two rebate on the through taxation, and it’s just helped start ups. It’s helped us to create 170 jobs now. The other big one is from our photonics based approach too. There are a lot of photonic engineers from Nortel and the history of telco companies in Canada. They’ve had a great history there and we’re hoping we can also leverage that as well. You know, if anyone’s listening that knows anyone that has a background, we are looking always for people that have the I would say not a quantum side, but they may have a, you know, optical engineering or electrical engineering. Speaker 1 [00:25:23] I love that spirit. Entrepreneurs are always recruiting. You give a very hopeful picture for Quantum. Some prefer to cast it as a kind of a black and white narrative, and that if darker forces achieve true quantum supremacy or get to that million qubits before others, they could do incredibly malicious things with technology. Do we need to be fearful of where Quantum could go as well as hopeful? Speaker 3 [00:25:49] Yeah, I believe most technologies have, as you mentioned, a darker last side. Most have that dual aspect of it. I would say it’s important to recognize that that’s the first step. So for instance, Internet security. Yeah, that’s still still far away. That’s probably the very least by the end of this decade. There’s certainly companies out there, if they’re not quantum in terms of their technology, but they’re the traditional codes that can shore up the Internet security again, you know, replace our existing codes. So there’s companies already working on one of the most drastic, nefarious aspects of quantum computing, which is Internet security. So those things are well underway and missed in the US is already working up a group of standards that people can sort of say, okay, well I can choose one of these, you know, two or three or four standards, implement them in my security device and so forth. So I think we’re in a good position at the moment because people are aware about these things that and are already working on solutions. Speaker 1 [00:26:43] Let’s end with a question of hope. When you hit that million qubit mark, what will be your greatest hope for where it goes from there? Speaker 3 [00:26:51] This sounds maybe a trial in some sense because it’s kind of obvious, but I hope if we hit a million, we’ve got over a thousand people we’ve given jobs to. You know, it’s kind of implied in all these things. But it’s amazing that we’ve already given 170 people jobs that can, you know, feed the family and provide shelter and all the basic necessities. Beyond that, it would be great if Canada can actually have a dominant company again in sort of hard tech. So we did have BlackBerry. There’s Nortel. We would like to have something of that scale one day with a different ending or maybe an ending that prolonged many, many decades. We have a goal of building a 50 year company. So that will be great. Whether of your work in Canada or where we’re helping our customers is providing useful this, you know, what are we actually doing for the world that someone is willing to hand over a dollar and receive a product or service from that. So very simple goals, but these things actually have a way of leading to the biggest accomplishments. Speaker 1 [00:27:51] Those would be great. Pardon the expression quantum leaps. Speaker 3 [00:27:53] Exactly. Speaker 1 [00:27:54] Christian, thank you so much for being a part of disruptors. Speaker 3 [00:27:57] Thank you, John. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Speaker 1 [00:28:01] That was Christian Weedbrook, CEO of Xanadu. You know, it’s fascinating to hear about a technology with such massive potential. And I think I know a fair bit more about quantum than before we started this episode, but I sure wouldn’t pick it if I ever got on Jeopardy. What I do know is Canada is globally competitive in this frontier of technology, and if we get it right, we can help disrupt positively all sorts of sectors and solve all sorts of challenges out there, whether it’s developing precision medicine or being on the right side of cybersecurity. The quantum race is just getting going and it’s going to be incredible to see where innovators like Christian and Xanadu take us in the years ahead. I’m John Stackhouse and this is Disruptors, an RBC podcast. Talk to you soon. Speaker 2 [00:28:55] Disruptors, an RBC podcast is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by Jar Audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit RBC dot com, slash Disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:03] Hey, it’s Theresa. Welcome to Disruptors. The 10 minutes where we dive into the latest innovation, tech and economic buzz. For this week’s take, we’re talking about Canada’s housing market, which is starting to cool down after a two year pandemic driven surge. The recent Canadian Real Estate Association, or CREA report showed that tides may be shifting in buyers’ favour. So what should aspiring first time homeowners like myself know if they’re looking to break into the market? And what should sellers be aware of in this changing landscape? To help us better understand how the chaos of the last two years is settling and what’s likely to come, as Robert Hogue, assistant chief economist at RBC Economics, he’s just released his latest monthly report, “Canada’s housing market taps on the brakes as interest rates rise”. Robert, Welcome to the 10 Minute-Take! Speaker 2 [00:00:56] Hello, Theresa. Speaker 1 [00:00:57] After the frenzied last couple of years, we’re seeing rising interest rates, predictably finally cooling demand for housing. And I’m seeing the phrase buyer’s market being bandied about across so many different headlines and news outlets. But you’ve been a keen observer of the housing landscape for years now. How would you actually describe what’s going on, especially compared to last year and before the pandemic? What’s the full picture here? Speaker 2 [00:01:23] Right. We’re starting from a well, from a starting point where the market was in a frenzy. I mean, the last since the summer of 2020, we’ve seen record months after record months in terms of home resale activity. So the starting point is extremely strong now. Should we be talking about a buyer’s market? I think it’s a little premature at this point. Will it become a buyer’s market? It could well be now. That being said, if the market were to become a buyer’s market, would that mean that buyers are finally like yourself? We’ll see great opportunities out there. The thing to keep in mind is that now we are, as you pointed out, at a time when interest rates are rising, mortgage rates are rising, especially that variable rates now are rising, which means from a buyer perspective, prices may kind of stabilize, maybe decline in some markets to a certain degree, but is going to get tougher because borrowing costs are moving up. Now, whether a buyer’s market will represent relief at last for a generation of buyers now, I’m not so sure. But one thing is getting clearer and clearer, though, is that those spiking prices that we’ve seen, especially over the last 12 months, are on the way to stabilizing in most of Canada. And in fact, and as you pointed out, the latest crop of numbers for the month of April is that we’re starting to see some some declines on a month over month basis, and the odds are they’re likely to decline a little bit more. So I think in a way, no, we’re leaving this frenzied market to a new phase of this cycle, which hopefully will bring a little bit kind of a cooler set of conditions, kind of a less of a fear of missing out, hopefully, so that the market will calm a little bit calmer. But don’t expect affordability suddenly to be right in front of us. I think the affordability will continue to be a major challenge. Speaker 1 [00:03:20] Right. And I mean, affordability was also a driving factor for many of my friends and peers deciding to move to sleepier markets during the pandemic. Nova Scotia. New Brunswick, Alberta. It’s the exodus out of the big cities that are busy economics as covered in depth. So with that in mind, as you look across the country, where are you seeing the most interesting trends or conditions and what’s surprising? Speaker 2 [00:03:42] You move, right? Right, right. And it’s an excellent point when we’re looking at the numbers for April, for example, you know, we saw Halifax, for example, still seeing huge price increases in a month and four month basis. There’s still tremendous pressure on that market. And and a big part of of that story is exactly what you described. You’ve got some very hot market over the past year where buyers were being priced out. And with the pandemic and no work from home opening new frontiers, we saw some significant movement towards other markets snowy exurbs of, of and Toronto or even cottage country. But we saw also a significant movement towards the Atlantic region where the locals are being a little put off because they’re seeing this this wave of Ontarians coming through with the larger budgets. But that that phenomenon is still ongoing as we speak, along. Speaker 1 [00:04:33] With interest rates leading to changing conditions. And I know that you mentioned that affordability still remains a challenge. It reminds me of an interesting term I came across in the latest courier report, buyer fatigue. And it’s not something that I’ve heard often. So can you explain to us what that means and how we’re seeing it play out? Speaker 2 [00:04:49] Now, we’ve been talking a lot about the lack of supply out there, but there was a lack of supply largely because demand was so incredibly strong over the last. Almost two years now. And a big part of that that I just mentioned a minute ago, the fear of missing out. But that that that has driven a lot of activity. A lot of people kind of precipitated that their decisions to lock in lower rates or no to buy at a time before prices were now have gone to high so that they were no basic in buying being priced out of market. And so all of these have led the way to tons of bidding wars which were now very common in large markets like Toronto and Vancouver. But those bidding wars have spread out across the country, and many markets had never really never seen them before. And now this tremendous pressure and frustration on the part of many buyers has led to that and buyer fatigue. Now they’re just like, okay, they’re done with having to try to outbid the competition. And now with a higher mortgage rates, now it’s making them more discouraged about entering those bidding wars. And the odds are we’re probably going to see a few and fewer of them. And when where there are bidding wars are probably going to see fewer participants. So it’s all kind of part of this cooling on the demand side that has basically started this spring. Speaker 1 [00:06:11] Yeah, I totally understand that. My partner and I have been trying to break into the market for the last year and a half and every time we feel like we had our savings goal, the market just gets a little bit further out of reach. So we gave up and I think that fits the pattern with a lot of folks across Canada. So the federal budget came out just a little while ago and introducing a number of measures to improve affordability, including building more homes and ending blind bidding, among others. How do these policies stack up, particularly now as we’re seeing the effects of higher rates on demand? What does this all mean for buyers? Speaker 2 [00:06:46] Right. Right. And in our view, is then that individually those measures, I think we counted something like 29 measures of housing related measures in the federal budget, and some of them address the supply side. But a number of them were targeting or trying to help no matter the affordability on the for buyers. And the thing to keep in mind is now some of those measures that were proposed are not effective right now, like a savings account for first time homebuyers. Now the government is stuck in 2023 and it’s a sort of program that will probably have an impact over the longer term. So our view is that individually, they’re probably not likely to to move the needle that much in terms of of affordability or trying to cool the market down. But in aggregate, overall, it could make an impression on buyers. But that being said, the bigger factor in the market right now is higher interest rates, that those interest rates are rising not only fast but a lot, especially on the variable mortgage side. So in our view, this is the game changer that the policy changes and those programs and proposed measures will probably contribute to some extend maybe at the margin. But the big the big one is higher rates. And this is, in our view, that’s leading to the turning point that we’re experiencing now in the market. Speaker 1 [00:08:14] Hoping to turn over now to the other side of the transaction and looking at sellers. How are they faring right now and what do you think they should be thinking about? Speaker 2 [00:08:22] I think they have to accept and realize that the market is starting. There’s a lot of expectations on the part of certain buyers that they saw that the neighbors down the street selling their house for one point something million and they’re expecting by putting the market up for sale now that it would fetch the same price, whereas in most of the country that they’re not going to get bids for the prices that prevailed just a few months ago. So maybe the strategies has to be revised. We’re seeing more and more realtors advising their clients now, not don’t set things up for a bidding war. And that’s an asset that an asking price that’s a little bit higher. So I think that they have to be to accept the new realities, to be more flexible, also to realize that they may not sell their home in hours. It may take a little bit of time and, you know, just a bit of a dose of reality when you look back in the history of the housing market and you don’t have to go that far back in most markets, it took like weeks and weeks to sell a home and not days. So I think they’ll have to adjust to this new reality. Speaker 1 [00:09:21] And a new reality. It definitely is. Thank you for joining us today, Rebecca. I really appreciate your time. Speaker 2 [00:09:27] It’s been my pleasure. Speaker 1 [00:09:29] And that’s a wrap for this week’s ten minute take. I’m Teresa Do. Join us next time as we explore innovation and how businesses and governments may have been thinking about it all wrong. We’ll chat with a globally known expert who recently wrote a book on the subject, as well as a winner of this year’s Governor General Innovation Awards. Talk to you soon. Speaker 3 [00:09:52] Disruptors, The ten minute take is created by the RBC Thought Leadership Group and does not constitute a recommendation for any organization, product or service. It’s produced and recorded by JAR audio. For more disruptors content, like or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and visit rbc dot com, slash disruptors.

Speaker 1 [00:00:01] Hey, it’s Theresa. This fall on disrupters, we explored some of the big topics on climate change and spoke with some of the big players taking climate action. We call the series the climate conversations, and it’s fair to say the conversations are ongoing. As part of that, we’re bringing you a special extended cuts of some of our most popular ones. Arguably, no sector has more work to do in meeting our ambitious climate targets than the oil and gas sector. It’s the biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada, but also the sector where we’re starting to see a ton of innovation and an emerging, more inclusive model for doing business. One of those who’s helping build that new model is JP Gladu JP as a board member of Suncor Energy, which has committed itself to becoming a net zero emitter by 2050. He’s also a principal at marketing consultancy and a former CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. As he explained When we talked earlier this fall. Sustainable development is supremely important to First Nations and Canada and essential to the future of energy companies such as Suncor if they hope to reach net zero. JP, welcome to disruptors. Speaker 2 [00:01:15] Theresa, it’s really nice to be here, thank you. Speaker 1 [00:01:17] From 2012 to late last year, you served as president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, whose mission is to promote, strengthen and enhance a prosperous indigenous economy. When you look back, how did the KP address sustainable prosperity during your leadership Speaker 2 [00:01:37] that you’re hitting on some and wonderful memories? It was transformative, not, I like to think, and one a great theme that exists that that I was able to build and continues on under the leadership of Tabitha Bull, my successor. Incredible time. The organization and I think what I feel most proud about is the growth of its programs and its presence and research. You and I both know if you don’t have great data, it’s hard to change policy. It’s hard to change thinking. And we are actually I say, I say we again. But the cap is as a leader, a world leader in developing research and research by indigenous people for indigenous people to influence outcomes. The PA program, The Progressive Aboriginal Relations, is a program that is set to and it’s been in existence for a while now that supports non-Indigenous corporations for the most part in long term, sustainable relationships across sectors, to work with indigenous entrepreneurs and communities, and for them to get better at understanding the indigenous sphere and how to empower that economy through business relationships. The action that I was most proud of, the one where I felt I could have retired and felt that, you know, I did my part in society and then fell off into the sunset was the procurement work, the strategy work great team. I hired this young man from Australian Aboriginal guy named Josh Riley, who worked for us for a couple of years, and he said, You know what we did? You know, Canada’s really great as a world leader and indigenous economy in many, many regards, but is not doing as great when it comes to government procurement and what we did in Australia as we we matched up with indigenous leadership with a prominent corporate leader to challenge the governments and other corporations to do better on their procurement strategies because the government, particularly in many parts of Canada, were not doing their part in procuring indigenous entrepreneurs and businesses. So they they’ve done a great job. So they said, Well, let me call up Mark Little, who was the CEO at the time of Suncor, and his team said Yes, Mark is going to stand on the front of the room with the ajp and challenge corporations and the government to do to set targets around indigenous procurement. Because Tricia, you and I know you can do all the great things in the world, but if you can’t bring in cash, cash is in our mind trading. So cash is king, you need economy, you need economic parity to be a partner, to have a voice. So Mark and I, we went to the government, we went to Parliament. We hit up all of the ministers in the right places and we got a commitment from them to set a five percent target. And Tabitha Bulls, the new CEO. I guess she’s not so new anymore. She’s been there since March of 2020. Dropped me a text not too long ago. I was saying, we did it. We got it over. It’s legislated procurement is making shoot. That’s going to translate to billions of dollars because what it is, it’s a handshake. It’s an opportunity to build business together. And most importantly, I think the relationships that have struggled for over 150 years, that’s incredible. Speaker 1 [00:04:50] And those conversations about procurement, economic parity, were there any opportunities to incorporate sustainability environmental issues in those conversations? Speaker 2 [00:05:02] Absolutely. There were six. Abe was an is an organization that is very inclusive. We all know that the energy sector is is transforming, you know, to sit on the Ontario Power Generation Board. And, you know, we have hydro projects. Nuclear is clean energy and we had sustainable equity partnerships with or OPG. Sarah, I got the way I still feel like I’m still part of the conversation every day. Speaker 1 [00:05:28] You know, the lingo Speaker 2 [00:05:30] with communities that are helping transform the way that we generate our energy sector. I want to talk a little bit if it’s all right, Teresa, one of the my roles since then, I’m the chair of the Board of Leadership Champions, and that is a group of companies and indigenous leaders from oil, gas, mining, forestry, energy think I mentioned finance and it’s my good friend Valerie Courtois and Cathy Wilkinson and Meredith and Mark. We’re all trying to find a place, and we’re developing some thought leadership with all these companies around responsible development around Indigenous. US protected conservation, because we need those natural services to be able to live a stronger future one where we can be proud of to hand an environment to hand down to our kids. So we’re doing some thinking around innovative financing and what economic reconciliation looks like and to bring those ideas to the forefront. There’s a lot of organizations and communities that are putting a lot of time into finding this balance and be happy to have more conversations about this with you. Speaker 1 [00:06:38] Yeah, I’d love to follow up on that, actually. Can you describe that connection between indigenous led conservation and economic reconciliation and how that might also apply to energy production? Speaker 2 [00:06:48] Yeah, it’s another great question for a long time. We’ve been shut out of the Canadian economy. We had, you know, the fur trade which sustained our communities, and then we were told our communities were told that harvesting furs was not appropriate anymore. OK, well, we don’t want to live in poverty. We don’t want government handouts. So what’s next? Well, we’ll look to the mining of a lot of our communities are in the north, so we’ll look to the extraction sectors to generate revenue, to generate income, to generate an economy when we talk about economic reconciliation. It means that we’re generating wealth and we’re managing that wealth and we’re empowering our communities. We know that we can actually find a better balance between extraction and indigenous protected conservation areas and sustainable development and more trees, because our natural service ecosystems provide billions, trillions of dollars that we don’t even think about when it comes to clean air, clean water. You know, think of all the health impacts that occur if you don’t have a clean environment. But we also, as an indigenous community, are having these tough conversations around, well, we’re going to transition. It’s going to take time. There’s still so much poverty, not only in Canada but around the world, 700 million people in abject poverty because they don’t have access to energy. So oil and gas is going to be a part of our economy for years to come. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be putting time and effort and resources and research into actually improving that technology. So there’s a balance to be struck, and that balance is going to be we’re not going to find that balance without the indigenous voice. We need to be at the table every step of the way from any kind of development to any kind of protected area and developing economies around those protected areas Speaker 1 [00:08:36] on more practical level. To what extent might there be concern among indigenous communities, especially those who partner with Big Oil and gas, big energy producers about developing these resources, which knowing that oil demand will not win for a while, eventually it will wane to some degree. So knowing that that long term demand will wane along with perhaps the value of these properties, what concerns are there around that? Speaker 2 [00:09:00] Well, I think the biggest concerns are, again, the question of balance, the balance of generating economies. So we’re not poor all the time in government handouts, but also making sure that we’ve got areas that we can rely on for our traditional activities in the clean water and the clean air. I mean, I just had my daughter visiting me up on my reserve the last five days of me or moose hunting and I’m on a lake. Let me let me paint this picture for you, and then I’m going to ask you as an example in Alberta with Fort McKay First Nation. I live on Lake Winnipeg and our whole lake is protected and it’s the biggest lake in Ontario surrounded by the Ontario borders. Beautiful. I hunt on it. I fish. I caught a beautiful speckled choke my fly rod. This weekend I released she is a female and she responded, But you know, we’re the guardians of the land and put us in that place so we can continue to protect her. But we also have a lithium mine site, just not because road access to our reserve. We have two hydro developments that we’re partners and we have a sawmill. We have old railway bed that goes to our community and we have the natural gas line that cuts across our community as well, that my grandfather, one of my grandfathers, helped build. We got all the resource activities there. And so we’re trying to find that balance to make sure that the land that needs to be protected is protected and that we are the ones that are also becoming the equity partners. And the decision makers in the way that resource projects get developed and that we also benefit from it. Now, if you look at maybe more pointed to your question about concerns for Mackay, First Nation is a prime example. You know, Chief Jim Boucher, chief of 30 plus years. He’s not the chief right now, but I will always call him. Chief is just an extraordinary leader. He talked about, you know, he was providing first, trapping first for his community. His community was doing that to subsistence living. And then over time, that went away and then they fought their oil and gas companies. And then they found their way to the table, the oil and gas companies, and then became this equity stakeholder in one of the biggest resource tank projects in history with Suncor, along with Mexico group of companies. But they also have Moose Lake, and I’ve been to Moose like a couple of times with my friends, Dave and Nicole, and it is I’ve been up a couple of stunning. And they drew a line, they said, no, no more encroachment of this lake. This is important to our community. No more development here. We will work with you in these areas that are appropriate. This area hands off and they won that and they led that conversation. So they got concerns. But they also have to provide for their for the young people. Speaker 1 [00:11:31] We had chatted with Marc Little from Suncor, as you know, of course, about Suncor’s work in partnership with Indigenous communities, and I think he had specifically cited the example of of Chief Boucher and the joint venture that they had established the First Nations there about basically providing stable prices to ensure that the volatility of oil doesn’t impact them. Do you see that as a model that can be scaled and replicated going into the future? And what other models might exist that would ensure over time that economic parity and reconciliation? Speaker 2 [00:12:04] That’s a great question. Now, I’m not surprised Mark talked about that. You know, the relationship that unmarked and Jim have, it was that of marriage. They would have their battles, but they’d always come back to the table and what’s best for our community and what’s best for the company, the end the economy and how are we going to balance this all out? And they got through it. And I think it’s an incredible model where the communities were able to hedge against the markets and have lower cost capital and have steady revenue to support their community while having an eye on on the development itself. I think it’s a wonderful model. The cutting edge opportunities in this country exist in a few areas. One is that our communities want to be equity stakeholders in a lot of the resource projects that look at TMCs. There are a number of indigenous groups that want to purchase that line. So we need to, as a country, find equity pools to develop, generate them so that communities can access capital at a reasonable rate and then province to have the ability to backstop the payments. So that adds economic certainty of a project. The other thing, and I know it’s still early days, but the province of Alberta, they’re talking about an energy corridor with Treaty eight, where the First Nations are going to be in. The 80 groups are going to be the ones talking about what’s appropriate, where that line goes, what’s appropriate for development. I sit on the board of Northern Resources and the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario, and it’s the communities that are driving the environmental assessment process for road infrastructure. Which brings me to the last point is our communities are absolutely tired of coming to the table last. Why does a regulatory process and the precedent for the most part is that companies go and engineer the hell out of a project, get their engineers to come to the table, wipe the hands and go, OK, let’s talk to the indigenous communities now and see what they think. I’ll tell you what those communities think. I think what the heck were you thinking coming up to us at the very end? Why don’t you come to us at the beginning when we know this landscape the best? And now with all of the legal precedents, we’re going to say, no, no way are you going to develop your project because you don’t respect us. And so it’s that mutual respect and reciprocity. We always have to go into the boardrooms and communities with to develop projects in a holistic way that is respectful of indigenous sovereignty and as well as the economic model. Speaker 1 [00:14:37] Have you seen that consultative process improving? Speaker 2 [00:14:40] Yes. Yes. I have a group that I am so lucky to advise Chief Charlene Gale’s the chair. She’s in fact, she’s the chief of Fort Nelson First Nation. Neil Edwards is the CEO. They are the executive director of the First Nations Major Project Coalition, and the government is supporting this group. It’s got so much great work. There are two streams when you engage this group as a as an indigenous community or as a proponent. Coming in there will walk you through the environmental because if you can’t do the environmental questioning and process to make sure communities aren’t going to be severely or negatively impacted, you’re not going to get to the business modeling once you pass the sniff test on the on the environmental piece. And you’ve got and this is the thing that I just don’t understand about some projects where they come to our communities last. If you can’t get the indigenous buy-in that your project’s done, do the hard work, get the buy and the economic modeling is going to get better. So then you go into the economic modeling and what the markets are saying and ESG and investment and, you know, investors third, they’re not dumb. They’re all asking, what’s the indigenous relationship like if you don’t have that nailed down in a progressive way? We’re probably not going to be interested in if we do, the cost of that capital is going to be extraordinary because the uncertainty that ensues. So the S&P C is this great organization that helps communities and corporations find that balance. On the modeling, the capacity there and the environmental, it’s a wonderful, wonderful organization. Speaker 1 [00:16:21] Coming up after the break, more of my conversation with J.P. Gladu. So stay right there. Speaker 3 [00:16:32] You’re listening to Disruptors, an RBC podcast. I’m John Stackhouse. Earlier this fall, RBC Economics and Thought Leadership released a report called the two trillion dollar transition Canada’s Road to Net Zero. It explores the costs and benefits of Canada’s shift to a carbon neutral economy and how it can fuel a new generation of Canadian innovation, from carbon capture technology to sustainable agriculture to the full potential of super charging electric vehicles. We look at all the ways for Canada to take a leading role in the fight for climate action and the economic opportunities those create. To learn more, check out the link to the show notes of this episode and visit our bbc.com. Net zero. And be sure to listen to and follow disruptors wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 1 [00:17:23] Welcome back in the second half of my conversation with J.P. Gladue. We talk about the role of renewables in Canada’s energy mix, as well as the concept of a just transition. And importantly, we discussed the vital role indigenous communities play in building that new energy paradigm. If I can pivot just slightly, so I know you wear a lot of hats and among the many hats that you wear, you sit in the Suncor board. As you mentioned, Suncor is transforming itself into a more sustainable energy producer and is targeting 2050 as the year they become net zero. What do you think about that target and what are the biggest challenges still to overcome on that journey? Speaker 2 [00:18:07] Yeah, it’s a lofty goal. I mean, but the thing is that not only Suncor, we’ve got Imperial Central Meg Cenovus, 90 percent of the oilsands producers are all committed to this. So you have more partners committing to technology. More partners committing to reducing GHG is getting better at water use, getting better at indigenous consultation, engagement and empowerment strength in numbers. So I think because of that commitment with all of these companies, it is achievable. It really is. When we think about the way that our investment is talking about ESG and global investments, they’re going to look at that and they’re going to go, okay, that we can, OK? They’ve got a goal. It’s going to be challenging, but it is possible. Suncor is an incredible organization, and they’ve had a great track record on a number of fronts. And just think about this from a global perspective. You know, when we think about the major oil and gas producers in the world, there’s only two out of the top six. There’s only two that you can invest in because the rest are state owned. And the one country that I’m referring to does that the best in the world when it comes to gender, when it comes to indigenous, when it comes to regulatory, when it comes to water, when it comes to everything else, we’ve got to reduce our GHG. And so when we do that, it’s competitive world and the oil and gas companies understand this. And when they reduce that, nobody’s going to touch Canadian oil and gas. And so we’ve got it. We’ve got it. We’ve got to hit that. That’s the path forward. We have to. Speaker 1 [00:19:45] And there’s still an open question on energy production at its most basic, whether it’s better to find ways to reduce the carbon emissions in traditional extraction or to shift focus to develop more renewable energy sources. And of course, it’s not just another question. Speaker 2 [00:20:01] It’s and it’s and Speaker 1 [00:20:03] so what would you say is the best path for the right mix to meet our future energy needs? Speaker 2 [00:20:08] The I think you said it’s the mix. I don’t know if anybody has a crystal ball on this because there’s so much uncertainty. We’re investing in hydrogen and we’re investing in carbon capture. We’re and we have to spend more time investing in our natural capital of trees. I think it’s one of the best carbon eating machines that I know as a forester. So, so, you know, companies like Suncor are investing the time and resources in those types of technologies, but we cannot rely just on one. It’s like a balanced portfolio. When I look at my RRSP or my investment accounts I’m distributed across. I’ve got some risky investments and you know, some of these investments that we’re exploring the technology, there’s risk. But the payoff could be amazing will be amazing if we can get some of them done. The natural capital is would probably be my easiest one. I mean, I know what the return on the capital of a tree would be. We’re going to plant more of those, but we also have to get better at our processes with the reduction of of the water, the reduction of energy required to extract oil out of the sands. We have to get better at that. We have to get lower emissions out of those processes as well. So we’ve got to look at these things, evaluate them, improve upon them, the stuff that’s not working. Let’s fail quickly, get that out of the way and let’s get the next one on the on the road. And you know, we’ve got a you know, we’ve got to play a number of fronts. We just can’t rely on one path because if we fall off a cliff, not one path and we haven’t spent any time on the other password dooms you. Speaker 1 [00:21:43] You often talk about a just transition. Can you elaborate more on what you mean by that? Speaker 2 [00:21:49] Absolutely. I went to the I went to fill up this morning. You know, I live in the north, I’m a hunter and I’m two hours from Thunder Bay, so I have a truck. And it’s always interesting when we think about environmentalism, it’s always easier to be an environmentalist when you ask everybody else to do the hard work. It really is. It’s it’s baffling. Sometimes, you know, DiCaprio comes up to the oil sands and, you know, chastises the oilsands for oil and gas development. When he flies around the world, it’s got a billion whatever boats and helicopters and they come on like, let’s be real here. But so the just chance I’ll get off my soapbox. But the just transition is yes. Yes. I mean, I sit on an oil and gas company. I also chair the boilers ship champions around conservation. I took my daughter hunting and a clean environment. We need both. And a just transition is the fact that we’ve. Got two sides here, and we’re trying to build a bridge and to meet that bridge to make sure that we can travel in a clean environment and a sustainable economy. The renewables, the batteries, the infrastructure for four battery cars, the wind, the solar. We just don’t have the capacity to meet world demand for energy. There is way too many people that suffer significant like deathly poverty because they don’t have access to energy. How is that? How’s that right in the world? So oil and gas is going to be here for quite a while yet. And that that demand, you can see in our price of our gas, you can see and Biden going over the they’ll tech companies, countries are getting more oil and we got oil up here, but it’s not going to happen overnight and we’ve got to make sure that we’re we hold corporations accountable to their targets. We need to make sure that we have a little bit more balance in the way that we. I’m a proud indigenous Canadian and the way that we develop our resource sector, it’s not perfect. It’s getting better. We see the goalposts and we’re trying to navigate between those posts and we’ve got indigenous inclusion. That is, it’s got to get better, but it’s definitely a hundred percent better than it was even 10 years ago. But that transition is going to take time, and we need to continue to measure, adjust, reinvest, measure, adjust, readjust to get there because there’s way too many energy workers. If we just said no more oil and gas well, our oil, our gas, the pumps are going to go through the roof, then Canadians go to our gas so expensive. And then all these people are going to be out of jobs with nothing, no vine to hold on to the poverty that will ensue because we don’t have the energy, the new jobs for these, for this transition. So it’s going to take some time. Speaker 1 [00:24:38] Yeah, exactly. And when we look at what’s happening in Europe and with the U.K., with their energy shortages, it affects all aspects of the economy and not just not just the energy sector. Speaker 2 [00:24:48] Yeah. And I think Canadians really care about it. I think we care about each other, even though there’s this provincial fights that happen, these transfer payments that were that Alberta started to question. I think we need there’s still a little bit too much polarization in Canada, but I do believe Canadians, you know, because many of our communities travel for construction, jobs, et cetera, and they bring those experiences from other provinces back home and they bring their experience and their culture and their food to other places like Fort McMurray, who’s got lots of incredible Newfoundlanders. And, you know, as an example, we care. I believe Canadians care Speaker 1 [00:25:24] if I can ask you to switch your hat again. Can you tell us a bit about your work with the Energy Futures Lab? Speaker 2 [00:25:31] Well, this is this is relatively new and they are part of the natural step. They asked me early while late spring, I guess early summer, if and again it’s a little bit sensitive and we’ve been very, very fully transparent. The group came to me a little bit late in the process, but they recognized that they had a big gap and that was the indigenous voice. So to carry it and agile on in the crew, you know, thank you for bringing me on. We’re doing our best. And I’ve got this amazing group of half a dozen indigenous leaders from Alberta, one from B.C., one from Ontario, and we’re trying to figure out a policy paper that’s been largely drafted. But there’s tons of room to inject our ideas and the indigenous voice around the criteria, like things like alignment around net zero and our trajectory, a forward looking ESG approach and economic viability building in Alberta’s incredible. They’ve done incredible work, so build on those current assets and strengthen the economy and in promoting an inclusive economy, which is the indigenous one to the building blocks. We’ve done lots of work. What does carbon look like? Carbon fiber, lithium batteries, hydrogen, geothermal? So we’re basically taking this indigenous voices and we’re applying our knowledge systems as well as our need for our economy. And they’ve got these incredible leaders that are on the table that are bringing their experience so that we can make sure when these policy ideas mature with our voice that we’re not going to make the same mistakes that we’ve been making for a hundred and fifty years when it comes to the lack of indigenous inclusion so that policymakers can see exactly what it means to have indigenous people at the table in the value and the experience, and quite frankly, the brilliance of these people that I get to work with Speaker 1 [00:27:26] or above to ask you more about that as we start to wrap up. What is your vision for the future of indigenous participation and leadership in energy production and natural resource development? I believe that the natural resource sector employs a large amount of indigenous peoples. If I state is correct. Speaker 2 [00:27:44] You totally got it. And what is it, seventy three point nine for seven percent of stats are made up. I’m going to make this one. I’m going to be as close as I can. But you know, my friend Kelly Lindsey runs an indigenous human resource development group. For years, I think it was his work. He talked about seven or eight Canadians out of 100 rely on the natural resource sector. I don’t think Canada even knows this. Seventy 16, 17 percent of our GDP, right, by the way, the oil and gas sector over the next 30 years, or one hundred trillion dollars that are 30 trillion dollars to our economy and it’s big indigenous people. To your point, Teresa think it’s around 17 or 18 at a 20 rely on the natural resource sector. So can you imagine if we don’t get this just transition right, what that is going to do to our people? We’re just getting into the job market. For the last 20 years, we’ve been shut out of the economy because of colonialist practices and racism for how long? We’re just getting a foothold. Understanding what it is to break the cycles of government dependency. And all of a sudden you rip the sectors that that our people rely on the most from underneath our feet. That’ll send us back decades, decades, decades, decades. So my vision for the natural resource sector and indigenous people and so we have more people looking like me, maybe not as funny looking sitting on corporate boards, you know, like my mum said, I got a face for radio, so having more of our people in those leadership positions. It was great. I was there a dozen indigenous people that are now in federal politics. I mean, we need more people at that level and we need the equity pool so that, you know, our vision is that our people are actually the ones doing the the sustainable extraction, running the companies, generating the benefits so that we’re not passive participants. You know, for a long time, we couldn’t get work. Then we got jobs and we started businesses and entrepreneurs and we started joint ventures and now we’re primary producers. I want to see more of that. I want to see two or three indigenous companies in the top hundred companies in the world. You know, that’s that’s the vision I have for our people in the natural resource sector, in this country Speaker 1 [00:30:04] and with the knowledge that indigenous youth are also the fastest growing cohort of youth in Canada. How do you see the next generation innovating in the sector? Speaker 2 [00:30:13] Wow. They are brilliant. They are bright, they’re on fire. I have an almost 18 year old daughter who educates me every time I talk to her. They really do have huge opportunities. There’s still significant challenges, of course, in our communities, which we know we don’t. We don’t have to get into. But when we think about the technology advancements, the opportunities to advance that those youth have so much ahead of them. When I when I look in, I stand on the shoulders of giants like a Phil Fontaine as an example, who’s a mentor of mine, who’s done incredible work. There weren’t a lot of Phil Fontaine’s in the world. Then you get to my group and you know, I get to work with the Clint Davis is the Sherry France, the Tabitha Bowles, the Kim Baird. You know, that group is larger. It’s a larger base, but we’re still very few and we are stretched to the max. And then I look at the youth coming up behind me, the twenty five to thirty five year olds who are being educated and are holding on to their cultures and traditions and communities, and their ability to be able to take that knowledge, combine it with their education. Watch out. These youth are going to transform Canada Speaker 1 [00:31:25] and the world. JP my my last question to you is what tangible, practical lessons or practices can we learn from indigenous stewardship of natural resources, the environment as we move into a lower carbon economy? Speaker 2 [00:31:39] And I think just sit down with our communities and and have some tea, go fishing, go something. The stories that emanate from just being around a campfire with our community members will enrich our lives. And I’ll tell you a little story in a second. The practical things that you can do is, you know, show up if you don’t show up, nothing’s going to get done, show up to community events, show up to business events, support organizations like the RCMP and NAC Mafiosi, and support those organizations that are doing great work procure from indigenous entrepreneurs. Because when you procure from those entrepreneurs, you’re building a relationship and you’re supporting a family or supporting a community and you’re supporting an economy, but you just got to show up. I mean, the practical things, just throw your fear based, your preconceived notions about who we are as people and show up, and that’s going to get you a long way. There’s a book Triple Crown. It’s been a while since I’ve read that, Jim. Apprentices, Buck and I was there today at a panel talking about his fucking and somebody asked me what kind of a similar question. And what struck me about Jim was that he read like one of the three crowns was the indigenous relationships, and he took the time to travel and meet with indigenous people to understand us. And I’ll just relate this back to my one of my very first forestry lessons. I was just a young little wet behind the ears and we were grading trees, one twos and threes. And I’ve told this story many times. So many of us heard this this last thing, and I apologize, but some of you may not have. But our prof said, You know, what’s that tree and what do you think it is? A one is called fine lumber to is lumber and pulp, and three is mostly pulp. And what kind of tree is? And so we are looking and I remember I visit, I remember as a yellow birch and we all started out one two one two and our tech said, Well, you’re all wrong. And we’re like, Well, what do you mean? It’s not one of you went to go around the other side of the tree to see what it looks like. On the other side, that could be a big split down. There could be a tree. So my challenge to your listeners is get up and walk around the indigenous tree if you don’t understand it. How can you work with us? Right? That’s the same thing as just show up, because that’s what’s going to progress this country. Speaker 1 [00:34:01] Relationships show up. That is such a simple yet effective and powerful statement. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us on disruptors. Speaker 2 [00:34:10] Thank you, Terry. So it’s a real pleasure. Speaker 1 [00:34:14] That was J.P. Gladu board director at Suncor Energy and a principal at Mokwateh Consultancy. We hope you’ve enjoyed these extended cuts from some of our most popular interviews from the climate conversations. A special multi-part series on disrupters. To hear the complete series, go to RBC dot com slash disruptors. Until next time, I’m Theresa Doe. Talk to you soon. Speaker 4 [00:34:41] 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/disruptors.