“TD Bank created an environment that allowed financial crime to flourish. By making its services convenient to criminals, it became one.” “TD Bank chose profits over compliance in order to keep its costs down. That decision is now costing the Bank billions of dollars.” Those are the words of United States Attorney General Merrick Garland as he announced the largest ever (US$3 BILLION) penalty of its kind. What a humiliating day for Canada. The world can now point to TD Bank and this case as powerful evidence that fraud and other financial crimes have been accommodated by Canadian banks and our financial regulators. That is the harsh reality of this moment. Canada’s reputation as the home to the globe’s most trusted, safe and reputable banks has been dealt a humiliating and devastating blow. The facts in this case are deeply troubling. For six years, I have been doing what I can to encourage the last two Ministers of @FinanceCanada to give Canadians control over their financial data, to integrate new financial technologies into our financial system, and to encourage made-in-Canada competition. I’ve not been successful. The strategic and steady spreading of fears, uncertainties and doubt (FUD) slowed progress to a crawl and reinforced the status quo while the rest of the world raced ahead. Surely, this case proves that the status quo is no longer an alternative — that what we’ve been doing is NOT working. We MUST turn this moment into an inflection point, and do what it takes to turn this massive blow to Canada’s global reputation into a positive. But how? Our #BigBanks can never again be granted the position of dominance that they have occupied, especially as it relates to policy decisions in Ottawa. Our financial sector policy decisions (federally and provincially) MUST start to meaningfully include Canadian innovators, not just our biggest incumbents. Our regulators need to change how they are regulating. Competition and disruptive alternatives to the status quo can no longer be pushed aside because of resistance from the big banks. We must finally choose to prioritize the eradication of fraud and money-laundering here at home. Some early progress has been made from a policy standpoint, but the TD Bank case highlights an utter lack of operational progress. Let’s decide today, to build the world’s best and most innovative crime-fighting tools, and a financial innovation ecosystem that solves our own problems — and then go and sell those services to a world that also needs them. We must transform our financial system FROM one that fosters an organization is issued the biggest penalty of its kind, and TOWARDS one where we become the world’s best, most sophisticated financial crime fighting cops. (Don’t think we can? Just look at Newfoundland’s Verafin as an example of what our financial innovators can achieve… and then do a LOT more of that.) Let’s turn humiliation into opportunity. #CatalyzingCdnInnovation youtu.be/VTeWxEuTURE?si=1OaI…

Businesses, large & small, need accurate and easy-to-use carbon accounting tools to to quantify their carbon emissions & track their progress towards #NetZero. I cited Calgary’s @Arbor_eco as a great example of an effective software tool that already exists in the market. Canadians can count on the talents of our innovators to help us on every step of our journey towards #NetZero and, ultimately, #NetNegative in our fight to overcome the #ClimateCrisis.

This is not making Canadians richer in future. It is not and will not.

I don’t think @dbreznitz’s no-holds-barred view of 🇨🇦’s governance & results over 2½ decades is unfairly dark — and it is followed by hope. I totally loved the humorous insight at the outset, almost involuntarily vaporizing my morning coffee! theglobeandmail.com/business…

I had the honour of being one of the countless teenagers (and many others) that fell in love with Maggie Smith in the 1970s. It never waned… but she did seem to hit a perfectly perfect stride on Downton!

Maggie Smith… one of a kind, representing so much for so many.

Today, I had the great pleasure of engaging with Canada’s forestry leaders thanks to @FPAC_APFC (this is something that I want to post on separately because there was no shortage of discussion of the enormous opportunities, and the barriers that we can and must overcome). But what I am posting about right now is one of the closing speaker’s comments. @davidfrum provided an overview of the geopolitical environment that was clear, compelling, humourous and incredibly insightful. That was absolutely no surprise. During his engaging talk he also pointed to a historical moment in the peaceful transfer of power in the United States on January 6, 1961. The contrast with the events of January 6, 2021, 60 years later, is shocking. The then Vice President, and President of the Senate, was Richard Nixon. It was his highly unusual role to hand over power to his electoral opponent. In this video, he reads out the final tally of the electoral college results of the campaign where he ran against John F Kennedy, and lost. This moment in history is 15 years after the end of WW2 and during the height of the Cold War. Clearly, much of the world was no longer taking democracy for granted. We can only wish that we all will increasingly respect the perilous and precious nature of democracy as it was respected by Richard Nixon at that particular moment in time. It’s well worth watching. youtu.be/6z5PO9Cn818?si=nWcV…

I had the honour of being an election observer in polls east of Kyiv during 🇺🇦’s 1st presidential election of 2019 (the 2nd was a runoff between incumbent Poroshenko & challenger Zelenskyy). We all know who won. The first ballot was 44 names long. I never thought 🇨🇦 would exceed that!

I learned a ton by moderating a panel about how marketplaces are changing due to rapid advances in AI. Thanks to the @CompBureau, @RobinShaban, @Ben_Bergen, Prof @quaid_jennifer and @queensu’s Prof Robert Clark for helping all of us to learn, and consider the policy implications and possible responses. #CBSummit

We are getting poorer & this puts every social program at risk. Real GDP/person in 🇨🇦 is lower than in 2014. Regardless of whether you only care about social programs or economic well being, protecting our prosperity needs to become a #1 priority rather than something we take for granted. For more, watch this @trevortombe interview: youtu.be/X_XLhvownZM?si=jvDy…

At a medical appointment this morning & really troubled to see the number of #NoShows. The staff say it’s happening across the healthcare system. When so many have no family doc & limited access? Deeply troubling & incredibly disrespectful. ⁦@nshealth⁩ ⁦@TimHoustonNS⁩

You can’t keep handing out slices of pie unless you bake more pies. That’s not what’s been happening. Our continued prosperity has been taken for granted. The result? Real GDP per capita in Canada is lower today than it was in 2014. “Without improved productivity growth, workers will face stagnating wages and government revenues will not keep pace with spending commitments, requiring higher taxes or reduced public services,” the TD report states. That would be quite a legacy for a government that has prided itself on expanding social programs. Mark Carney is a pragmatist and a globally respected economic manager. He’s navigated some of the most challenging global events of the last decade and a half. But this current mandate may be one of his toughest. I firmly believe that, in the digital and data driven era, Canada can compete. But we cannot compete unless our governments (municipal, provincial and federal) drop their outdated processes and priorities, kill some sacred cows (like was done with the modernizing of our Competition Act), and internalize a sense of urgency. The way we frame the issue in our office is that an “Innovative Economy Needs an Innovative Government”. Some of the foundational elements were outlined in our Senate Banking Committee report in June 2021 called: Needed — An Innovation Strategy for the Data Driven Economy (lnkd.in/gzfrCCtb) One path is for Canada to aspire to be the most trusted data host and home to the most trusted AI services in the world — and then make it happen. #Prosperity #Competition #Innovation #Entrepreneurship #DataRights #IP

Completely agree Kyle. Time is of the essence.

If Canadians don’t invest in our economy, who will? The answer is, well, just about everybody else. As a result, our most promising businesses continue to leave. I don’t think we can blame those businesses — we’re better off focusing on our regulatory regimes (federal and provincial), tax structures and investment incentives. I offer some selected quotes from @SeanSilcoff and @tshufelt”s important story (below) about the precipitous decline in Canada’s previously robust investment industry. Canadians used to invest in Canadian businesses. No more. Most large Canadian retail investors have the bulk of their portfolios invested outside of Canada. And our pension funds: “…drastically cut their exposure to Canadian stocks, from 28 per cent of assets in 2000 to about 4 per cent today, after federal budget changes in 2005 that scrapped foreign investment limits.” Then there are the acquisitions of Canadian companies, almost always to a foreign buyer — resulting in opportunities, jobs and wealth leaving Canada just as our most promising companies begin to accelerate. “The trend is likely to continue. Private equity and venture capital firms are sitting on a record US$2.6-trillion in dry powder, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence and market research firm Preqin. ‘They are crawling all over each other, looking for Canadian deal flow,’ said Mark Borkowski, president of Mercantile Mergers & Acquisitions Corp. ‘They call every day.’” I’m grateful to Silcoff and Shufeld for taking the time to explore why this is happening. For example, they note that: “Regulatory changes made it difficult for advisers, especially those working for banks, to recommend junior names to clients. ‘They’re making so much money on structured products and mutual funds,’ Mr. Hopkins said. ‘The banks don’t need that hassle.’” An astonishing increase in regulatory burden has crippled Canada’s once robust ecosystem of independent investment dealers and small cap stocks. I would argue that regulatory burden has lead to even more control being exercised by our banks because it provides a very effective protection from competitive threats. Increasing regulatory burden is not a recipe for greater protection and is often anti-competitive. An example is 2021’s Know Your Product rule where the banks used it as a reason to stop offering independent (non-bank owned) mutual funds — a seemingly anticompetitive move that was eventually reversed. I often wonder, was it fear of having to be globally competitive that caused the banks to vigorously fight the proposed merger of the Toronto and London stock exchanges? TMX’s past president, Tom Kloet, who led that effort 13 years ago, eventually left to chair the NASDAQ. At some point, we have to address this crisis. We can no longer afford to have Canadian-fostered opportunities, jobs and wealth creation leave our country due in large part to an investment sector that is monopolized by a few. #InvestmentMatters theglobeandmail.com/investin…

…and nothing is impossible. Wow. Determination, focus, hard work and the ability to tell those who say it can’t be done to get the f#*k out of the way of those who are doing it… well, clearly anything is possible. Thank you Sheetal Devi for the inspiration you deliver.

Entrepreneurs can lead our fight to reverse the climate crisis! Watching the news lately makes it very clear that the economic, social and environmental costs of the #ClimateCrisis are increasing rapidly. Delays in climate policy action only increase the economic impacts and risks to financial stability, according to the @bankofcanada and the @OSFICanada (lnkd.in/d3Rf_amQ). We're seeing the reality of their assessment play out before us on social media, the nightly news and, increasingly, in our personal lives. We are at a "all hands on deck" moment if we are going to have any chance of handing our grandchildren a planet that even resembles the livability of the one that our parents and grandparents handed to us. To this end, we cannot afford to only reduce emissions, we must also prioritize the removal of carbon from the atmosphere (see OpEd below). So many elements are in place for Canada to become a global leader in carbon dioxide removal (CRD) through nature-based and industrial direct air capture (DAC) projects. For example, @DeepSkyCorp is focused on scaling the use of industrial DAC, ocean CO2 removal methods are being developed and scaled by Planetary, river-based CO2 removal methods are being scaled by @CarbonRun, and then there are enormously valuable agricultural and forestry CDR practices, and they sure need to see far more support across Canada. Each of these methods differs from carbon capture & storage (CCS) which is a point source method for permanently reducing the volume of new emissions from an industrial site, but does not remove past CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. One of these projects was recently profiled by @CBCDavid Thurton on @CBCTheNational (lnkd.in/dSbSQMCB). It highlights how an industrial carbon pricing method can help to attract foreign investment. Another CCS method is bioenergy carbon capture & storage (BECCS) where biomass is used to produce energy, and the resulting emissions are captured and stored. This approach is used widely across Scandinavia, and is currently being pursued and promoted by several groups in Atlantic Canada. There is an enormous amount of global investment available to CDR leaders. What does Canada need to do to attract that global investment? Build political consensus, social license, regulatory agility and investment-friendly market frameworks. As described, there are many different types of CDR, and each delivers a different value to investors. If we focus on providing those investors with the confidence and certainty that they need, then we have a good chance of turning them into crucially important partners in building Canadian CDR technologies & businesses. Canada's entrepreneurs can make this possibility a reality. It's inspiring! Please consider reading my OpEd: sencanada.ca/en/sencaplus/op… #CDR #DAC #CO2Removal #CCS #CCUS #BECSS