Down to Business

This week on Down to Business, Wendy Wong, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto where she is also a research lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society and Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Civil Society, discusses the ways that facial recognition technology has changed the world. Wong is an advocate for data literacy — being aware of the many ways our data is collected and how it's used.

With the Federal Election around the corner, leaders are rolling out their political platforms, including promises on housing and affordability. This week on Down to Business we talk to John Pasalis, president of Realosophy, about whether government can do anything about this persisting problem and what's ahead for Canada's housing market.

This week on "Down to Business," Deloitte chief economist Craig Alexander talks with Financial Post's Larysa Harapyn about the election issues dominating Canada's economic landscape: the recovery, underinvestment in business and infrastructure, and where post-pandemic prosperity is going to come from.  

This week on Down to Business, Natalia Mishagina, research director at the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Montreal, where she focuses on the future of skills and adult learning, speaks with host Gabriel Friedman to discuss technology's impact on jobs.

This week on Down to Business, urban planner Ashley Salvador talks about how Edmonton, a city with 50% more parking than it needs, is the first city in Canada to ditch minimum parking requirements. Most cities have way more mandated parking than necessary and it adds up to a huge impact on our economy, even affecting housing prices.

This week on Down to Business, Seamus O'Regan, Canada's Minister of Natural Resources, talks about the importance of the oil and gas industry to the economy and why he believes the carbon tax is the “most elegant solution” to emissions. 

This week on Down to Business, Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at University of the Fraser Valley, explains what climate change and extreme weather mean for Canada's food supply.

This week, on Down to Business, Heather Reisman, chief executive of Toronto-based Indigo Books and Music Inc. speaks with host Gabriel Friedman about how her business fared during the pandemic, when customer browsing abruptly came to a halt.

This week on Down to Business, Fabian Lange, Canadian Research Chair in Labour and Personnel Economics at McGill University, talks about how the pandemic has affected employment across Canada.  

This week, on Down to Business, Sharon Zhengyang Sun, trade policy economist for the Canada West Foundation, and a distinguished fellow for the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, speaks to host Gabriel Friedman about the implications of Canada's trade tensions with China.

This week on Down to Business, David Jacobson, a former U.S Ambassador to Canada, talks about the economic impact, both directly and indirectly, of closing our borders with our biggest trading partner.

This week Down to Business talks to Alex Himelfarb, a former clerk of the privy council, about why more than two-thirds of Canada's deaths during the COVID-19 crisis occurred in long-term care homes, 50 per cent more than in other OECD countries.

This week on Down to Business, Yale economist William Nordhaus discusses the economics of climate change.

This week on Down to Business, Financial Post's Larysa Harapyn talks to RioCan CEO Jonathan Gitlin about how the pandemic is changing the commercial real estate landscape.

As we look forward to a summer of possibly "getting back to normal," businesses struggle with the prospect of reopening, only to close again. In this first of a two-part series on reopening, Down to Business talks to Todd Barclay, CEO of Restaurant Brands Canada, about the impact and outlook for one of the economy's hardest hit sectors. 

This week Down to Business talks to workplace expert Doron Melnick who says a hybrid between working from home and in the office could be the best of both worlds. But before we get there employers need to address the challenges of integrating a workforce that's partially onsite and at home, including the biases that can bring.  

This week, on Down to Business, Ian Lee, an associate professor of Management at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, offers his passionate take on how Canada has squandered precious resources on a recession that wasn't a recession.  

This week on Down to Business, Neo Performance Materials CEO Constantine Karayannopoulos talks about brewing international tensions over rare earths and why we need them for the future.  

This week on Down to Business,Tariq Fancy, the former chief investment officer for sustainable investing at Blackrock, explains how he became a cynic about ESG investments.

This week on Down to Business, Li-Cycle's Ajay Kochar talks about the race to remake the North American recycling landscape.

High home prices and child care costs hurt Canada more than people think, economically hampering our next generation of workers and spenders, warns Manulife's chief economist.  

This week, on Down to Business, Brian Kingston, president and chief executive of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, and Benjamin Sharpe, a senior researcher and Canada Regional Lead at the International Council on Clean Transportation, based in California, talk about what lies ahead for the auto industry.

This week on Down to Business Clean Energy Canada's Sarah Petrevan talks about the economic imperative of nations going green. Canada, she says, is uniquely positioned to benefit from U.S. President Joe Biden's plan to transition to a low-carbon economy.  

This week, on Down to Business, Wesley Wark, an expert on national security and intelligence, explores the nature of Canada’s tensions with China.

This week, on Down to Business, it’s a story about creating the first transcontinental railroad, the corporate titans who invest in rail, the North American supply chains and trade they serve and about Hunter Harrison, who transformed the industry.  

This week on Down to Business, Jumana Saleheen, chief economist for the commodity research firm CRU, talks about the impacts, paradoxes and opportunities in the transition away from fossil fuels.

This week on Down to Business, to mark PDAC's virtual mining conference, Barrick Gold CEO Mark Bristow explains why he does not think the crisis is over and how the gold industry still has a lot of work to do.

This week Down to Business talks to Sylvain Charlebois, professor and director at the Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab, about 'Buttergate,' the hard butter controversy that cast a global spotlight on Canada's dairy business.  

This week Down to Business looks at how we are coping with the pandemic one year on and the challenges of vaccine rollout in Canada, perhaps the single biggest issue right now affecting the economic recovery

This week on Down to Business, Chris Doornbros explains how his company Calgary-based E3 Metals is working on technology to extract lithium from old oil and gas reservoirs in Alberta, and how this process could help revolutionize the way we use energy.  

Deloitte chief economist Craig Alexander talks about what lies ahead as we battle a second wave of the coronavirus and how the pandemic's legacy will be deep economic scars, but also opportunities and innovation.    

This week on Down to Business, host Gabriel Friedman talks to two financial experts with very different takes on the wild run-up in stocks brought on by Reddit message boards and online trading.

This week on Down to Business, economist David Dodge, former governor of the Bank of Canada, talks about missed opportunities during the pandemic and how the government now must find a way to invest money so that it increases the country’s productivity.

This week on Down to Business, Carleton political science professor Laura Macdonald talks about the angry mobs storming the Capitol and what U.S. instability means for Canada, and for the North American regional economy.

This week on Down to Business CIBC senior economist Royce Mendes tells us why he is more optimistic than many of his peers and how the economic recovery is already within sight.

This week on Down to Business Andy Yan of Simon Fraser University, who has earned a reputation as a keen observer of trends in real estate and small business, talks about how the pandemic has interrupted, accelerated and amplified trends and what our economy and cities could look like once we come out the other side.  

On this week’s episode of Down to Business, Trevor David, the owner, and self-described “chief cook and bottlewasher” at The Art of BBQ smokehouse in locked-down Toronto, describes how restaurants who have had their business cut by more than half in the pandemic are struggling to survive.

This week on Down to Business, Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain, a billionaire known for his ability to handle a crisis, says 2020 has generated new levels of anxiety and inspiration.  

This week on Down to Business, Shari Eli, an economist at the University of Toronto, explains what history says about the long-term effects of welfare and work programs and talks about the recovery from the pandemic and who is affected most.

This week on Down To Business, Tom Blackwell, a reporter for the National Post, talks about how we are not getting the whole story on the new COVID-19 vaccines and how it’s a mistake to think they can end the pandemic.

This week, on Down to Business, Meredith Lilly, a former trade adviser for Stephen Harper, discusses how Canada’s trade relationship with the U.S. has evolved.

This week on Down to Business, the former governor of the Bank of Canada talks about the state of Canada’s affairs, including its economic recovery and any potential impacts from the U.S. election.

On this week’s Down to Business, the National Post's Richard Warnica talks about how the province has not been able to meet its testing needs and the lack of foresight behind it.

This week, on Down to Business, Dani Reiss, chief executive of Canada Goose, talks about how his company stepped up when the country found itself facing a critical shortage of personal protective equipment.

This week on Down to Business, Dalhousie’s Megan Bailey sets the record straight on the historical, legal and environmental facts of the dispute that has sparked shocking violence in southern Nova Scotia.  

This week on Down To Business, Gabriel Friedman talks to CIBC Deputy Chief Economist Bejamin Tal about how high housing prices in the middle of one of the worst recessions in history have exposed Canada’s income inequality crisis and where the housing market is going from here.

This week on Down To Business, Gabriel Friedman talks to pulitzer prize-winning analyst Daniel Yergin on the future of energy and Canada’s oilsands and how pipelines have become the new political battleground.

This week on Down to Business, Cedric Smith, an analyst at the clean energy think tank, Pembina Institute, talks about the opportunities for this country in the green economy.

This week, on Down to Business, Justin Scheck, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and co-author of Blood and Oil, a new book about Saudi Arabia, discusses how the oil-rich nation is trying to diversify its economy. The book takes a closer look at Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who has been making huge bets on tech companies with money from the country's oil revenues.

The last recession gave birth to the gig economy, in which companies like Airbnb and Uber convinced people to monetize their houses and cars. COVID will make changes too, in commerce and beyond. This week, on Down to Business, Anindya Sen, an economist at the University of Waterloo, talks about how consumer behavior has changed during the pandemic and how that in turn could change our economy.  

BHP Group, one of the world’s largest mining corporations, is known for iron ore and copper, petroleum and coal, not potash. But that may be changing. This week on Down to Business, host Gabriel Friedman talks to BHP’s new chief executive Mike Henry about the mega-miner’s interest in mining potash in Saskatchewan and how climate change is changing the commodities game.