Speaking of Business with Goldy Hyder

How can Canada be an energy leader in a world demanding both growth and sustainability? It’s a question Cenovus Energy CEO Jon McKenzie is seized with every day.

“When I think about the Canadian energy industry and what we are and where we've been and where we're going, I think the opportunity is immense,” he tells Goldy Hyder on the Speaking of Business podcast. “This is an industry that Canada competes on at a global scale.”

Canada...

Canada as a country is energy rich, but is it making full use of the energy, especially the electricity, it produces?

In this episode, Goldy Hyder sits down with Emily Heitman, Country President of Schneider Electric Canada, to unpack one of Canada’s biggest challenges: energy capacity.

“We know we have a shortage of power in the country, yet we're wasting 50 per cent of the power we produce,” she says, pointing to the increasing nee...

Kevin Strain never planned on a career in insurance. But an early job as an auditor led to his introduction to the insurance industry, culminating in his current position as president and CEO of Sun Life Financial. 

In this episode of Speaking of Business, Kevin shares how Sun Life grew from a Canadian insurer into a global financial services and asset management giant, and why Asia has become such a key part of that story. 

He also ...

Richard Abboud's entrepreneurial journey started early. As a kid, he took a gamble on silver. A win-then-loss that taught him to embrace risk, learn from failure, and invest in ideas that might not make sense at first glance. Those lessons have shaped not only his career but his vision for the country’s future: one where Canada takes bigger swings, speaks honestly about its challenges, and builds for the next generation.

“If we can ...

In the latest episode of Speaking of Business, Wendy Andrushko, President of DuPont Canada, takes host Goldy Hyder on an insider’s tour of the Kingston Technology Centre, a facility that’s quietly shaping the future of electronics, sustainability, and advanced materials. 

From semiconductor research to green chemistry breakthroughs, the Kingston, Ontario site is more than a lab, it’s a launchpad for commercialization. World class re...

Mark Collett remembers a time when many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians left the province in search of work, including himself. But today, as the CEO of St.John’s-based Crosbie Group, he sees a different story unfolding. 

“Certainly for the first 30 years of my life, I think we were probably hanging our head a little bit low,” he tells Goldy Hyder on the Speaking of Business podcast. “But I think we started to pump our chest out wh...

Laurent Ferreira is blunt when he assesses the state of Canada’s economic trouble.

“The status of our economy is red,” he said in a June 9 conversation with Goldy Hyder at the Conférence de Montréal.

The president and CEO of National Bank of Canada stressed the urgency for Canada to strengthen its economy in light of geopolitical uncertainty. But he’s optimistic the country will take action, saying now is the time to “get projects bu...

Roy Gori started his first job – a paper route – at age eight. At ten, he was delivering medications to seniors for a local pharmacy. He got a job with Citibank straight out of high school at 17 and has been working full time ever since. So it’s perhaps not surprising that, at age 56, he’s decided to try something new.

In early May, he retired as President and CEO of Manulife after eight years leading the international financial ser...

Scott Balfour has some simple career advice for his three sons: stay humble, work hard and be kind. It’s what he learned from his mother and grandmother and he maintains those “fundamental skills” have been the most important throughout his career. 

Born and raised in Oakville, Ontario, Balfour spent a year working on the assembly line at the local Ford plant before returning to Laurier University to complete his degree. He went on ...

When Dean Setoguchi thinks about Canada’s energy industry, he sees a bright future, and it’s partly due to tariff threats from the United States. “I’m an optimist,” he tells Goldy Hyder on the Speaking of Business podcast. “I feel like there’s a recognition by Canadians that our national resources are our treasure, and I don’t think that recognition has been there for the past at least decade.”

The president and CEO of Keyera hopes ...

What can we expect from a second Trump presidency and how should countries like Canada respond?

Those are some of the themes Goldy Hyder explores with bestselling author, columnist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria in a conversation recorded on January 13th – one week before the presidential inauguration.

Zakaria discusses his latest book Age of Revolutions and reflects on changes to the geopolitical landscape, including the potential impa...

Éric Martel understands the transformative power of innovation. The President and CEO of Bombardier says it “has always been in the DNA” of the company – from the invention of the snowmobile 80 years ago, to the development of cutting-edge aerospace technology today.

In an interview with Goldy Hyder on the Speaking of Business podcast, Martel discusses why fostering innovation and growing Canadian champions requires a strong partner...

Deb Pimentel often tells her colleagues to be “loud and proud.” The President and GM Technology for IBM Canada believes Canadians need to be more passionate and vocal about their accomplishments. 

“It's incredible how many fantastic things we do that we don't talk about,” she tells Goldy Hyder on the Speaking of Business podcast.

Speaking at IBM Canada’s Software Lab in Markham, Ontario, Pimentel expresses great pride in the innovati...

The man who oversees the $650-billion pension portfolio of millions of Canadians started out his career in the relative safety of a chemistry lab. 

Back then, John Graham was a research scientist with a PhD in physical chemistry. He spent nine years working in a lab before he jumped from the world of science to the world of finance, joining CPP Investments.

Now, as president and CEO of one of the world’s largest pension funds, he rec...

After 100 Speaking of Business interviews with Canada’s leading CEOs, we decided to mark the milestone by putting a few of them together in a room. We brought together a former CEO from one of Canada’s most established companies, an executive from a Canadian success story that started small and became big, and a company founder from a brand-new sector. They had more in common than you’d think. 

Host Goldy Hyder wanted to know: how d...

As the fourth generation leader of a family business, Galen Weston recognizes the responsibility he shoulders – to his employees, his country, and his great-grandfather’s legacy. Weston’s Real Home-made Bread began in Toronto in 1882. Today, George Weston Limited is one of Canada’s largest private sector companies, with more than 200,000 employees.

“It makes you think in decades, not in quarters,” he says. “You think about what is ...

When Elio Luongo started working for KPMG in Canada in the 1980s, artificial intelligence was the stuff of science fiction movies. Remember when The Terminator hit the big screen? Now, as Luongo prepares to retire as CEO, AI is no longer the purview of sci-fi imagination. It’s increasingly the day-to-day reality in a modern workplace.

Luongo is encouraging all KPMG employees to experiment with and learn from AI.

“Businesses need to h...

Carolyn Wilkins is fully aware how “geeky” it is to talk about economic growth. 

But the former senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada has made a career out of it, and she is inviting everyone else to get in on the conversation – because it’s the very lifeblood of our quality of life. 

“The economy is the foundation of peoples' financial and social well-being,” she says. “The kind of jobs people have, how much money they have a...

John Kousinioris describes 2015 as a wakeup call. 

Back then, his company, TransAlta, relied heavily on coal plants to generate electricity for Albertans. The Alberta government had other plans. It announced a phase-out of coal-fired electricity plants and gave TransAlta until 2030 to comply.

Rather than challenging the government’s decision, Kousinioris says TransAlta decided to embrace the change. Over the next six years the compan...