Tony Chapman - How Canada can survive and thrive.

I am breaking format to share my conversation with Ben Mulroney this morning on his national radio show on the Corus network.  I offer six transformative ideas for  Canada on how we can thrive in the next decade.

Forget the partisan debates and dive deep into bold ideas that transcend politics and policy.

Here's a sneak peek at what you'll hear:

1)Unlocking Canada's Tourism Potential: From a place to visit to the place to be. 

2)Old and New": Powering the Future with Resources and Innovation: Can Canada responsibly harness its natural resources while simultaneously building a cutting-edge, intellectual economy? Here is how.

3)The Untapped Power of Canadian Content: Let's export it to the world. There is even an idea that CBC should be less dependent on the government in power to survive and thrive.

4)The Long Game on Health: AI as the Future of Care: Imagine a healthcare system revolutionized by AI!  

5)Reimagining Education for a Competitive Future: Ideas not ideology. It's time to focus on the most essential skills: collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.

6)Rewarding the Dreamers and Doers: My idea for making Canada the Entrepreneurial Epicenter of the world.  

This isn't just talk; it's chatter that matters.  An aggressively optimistic roadmap for a brighter Canadian future, one where our destiny is a matter of choice, not chance.

Share your thoughts, and if you have time rate and review my podcast.

Tony

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Okay. This next segment, I want this to be a positive conversation.
There are a lot of people, they may be supporting the Liberals right now, who
who also acknowledge that the last ten years have been a disaster, and yet they
feel that sticking with this horse will change that, that's fine. We're gonna
stick a pin in that debate. Instead, what I wanna do is I wanna look
forward, and I wanna talk about what can we do as a

(00:22):
nation to improve? What are some of the big picture ideas that
maybe defy policy, maybe they defy politics.
Let's talk about the things that we as a nation can do so that the
next ten years look nothing like the last ten years. And,
someone I love talking to about these sorts of things, Tony Chapman, host of the
award winning podcast, Chatter That Matters, as well as the founder of Chatter

(00:44):
AI. Tony, welcome back to The Ben Mulroney Show, and happy Monday. Happy
Monday. I love talking to you as well. So I that's what I want to
do. I don't want this to be a rag on the last ten years. Let's
acknowledge that there have been massive failures that have put us in a
hole, and let's let's look to the big ideas that
could spur investment, get us get us moving as a

(01:04):
country, and let's let's so I throw it to you, my
friend. Well, the first one I would look at is tourism. It's it
represents 10% of the world's global economy. It is the last
bastion for hiring workers that sort of are immune from AI.
And Canada has some of the most beautiful places in the world. But just instead
of just relying on geography, if we focus on the place

(01:27):
to be, the experiences, and I give you cite two examples,
upcoming podcast, Fogo Island, where they
took a finger in, out of, Newfoundland and created the
Fogo Island Inn that's now world renowned. Everything that goes
into that inn is owned by the local people, the rugs, the
furniture, the food. It's created this circular economy, and it's kept young

(01:49):
people there. I would argue the same thing with Cabot. If you're a golfer and
you like Oh, I've been there. It's a special place. It's a special
place, and people from all over the world come. And when they do, they they
share it on their social media. And this is what Canada first and foremost,
to to Tofino, BC? Tofino, BC is a great one for
surfing. And there's so many of them that we could be looking at beyond the

(02:10):
fact that we have a high tower in Toronto and we have Niagara Falls. What
are the and they're great places, but what are the places to be human
again? Longevity, rediscovering yourself, nature,
everything that Canada offers, present that to the world, build it,
and they will come. Yeah. No. I love that idea. Also, making it easier to
get to those places and maybe having look. Fogo Island is great if you can

(02:31):
afford it, but what they've proven there is that experiential
model could work perhaps on a more budget conscious,
scale. So if you could have, you know, some sort of smaller,
cheaper analog to Fogo Island somewhere in that area where people
could experience and enjoy, that that that

(02:52):
what we have naturally in Canada, but on a on a smaller
budget, I think those are the types of things that could actually help as well.
Absolutely. And, again, you can't be all things to all people. There's certainly
places in Canada that are very much sort of that the the, you
know, the youth economy that really wants to see Canada for
$25 a day. My point is, it's gotta be about the

(03:14):
experience. Yeah. It's gotta be memories that last a lifetime. That would be my first
one. The second one I would call is old and
new. So we've got these old resources sitting in Canada. Let's
harvest them. Let's provide them to our allies. But as we extract them from
the ground, let's also take some of the royalties that we earn and fund
a new economy, intellectual resources. So we're combining both to create

(03:35):
this new wealth for Canada. What I mean by intellectual resources is
entrepreneurs there's hundred thousand less entrepreneurs today than there was ten years
ago. That is one of the most horrific statistics
because entrepreneurship is gonna power the new economy. I want these
ideas staying in Canada. I wanna capitalize in Canada. I want
entrepreneurs around the world to say to get first mover advantage, I'm gonna come

(03:58):
to Canada. Yeah. And if we have that capital pool available, people are gonna
go, where else would I wanna build my dreams than a country
that is as beautiful as Canada? So that would be my second thing. Yeah. And
I gotta say focus on. I gotta I I wish that the conversation
around natural resource extraction wasn't do we do it or not. I
wish it was how do we do it? How do we do it in the

(04:19):
most environmentally sustainable way? How do we do it to have the most impact
on Canadians? How do we do it so that we are, selling
it in in a way that, helps spread Canadian values
around the world? How do we do it so that we can then take take
the earnings and, you know, fund our our social
safety net, but as you just said, also with an eye towards the future and

(04:40):
building the next economy? I think, like, that to me is how I wish that
conversation was going. And it doesn't because it's either one way or the
other. It's and think about the peace of mind to an ally that says,
I my house is being aided by Canadian liquid natural
gas versus a a state that wants to destroy me. How
about Canadian food? And I don't wanna just sell commodities. We've got the largest

(05:02):
reserves of uranium. Why aren't we leading in the new micronuclear
reactors? So we combine the two and say, listen. Let's go upstream with these
commodities. Canadian food around the world, where are you where are you gonna wanna have,
your food? From the efficacy of Canadian soil, our water,
our fresh air, or or in a farm that's being manufactured in
in a country that has zero interest in terms of what you're eating and

(05:25):
all just focus on the profit they can make from it. So this is this
is what Canada can stand for and really revitalize.
One last one, Ben. Look at your look at your show. You've become one of
the top podcasts already in in Canada. You're heading that way in North America.
We're very good at content. You got one of the top commanders in George.
Why aren't we creating content exporting around the world? Instead of subsidizing

(05:47):
CBC, say CBC, look at BBC with Downton Abbey,
with Top Gear, some of the shows that they've produced around the world that they're
making a fortune on. Why don't we use Canadian content creators
and export our content to the world versus just subsidized for for
a local news that might have lost its its its value and reference
relevancy. That's what CBC should be doing. K. What do you mean by take the

(06:09):
long game on health? Well, here's the other thing. Like, family doctors,
we're we have three choices. Beg them to not to retire,
find a way to bring more in or build more medical schools. That's one solution.
How about the other solution is the long game is AI. In the
future, 99% of what a family practitioner does

(06:29):
can be done by AI. As long as you've done diagnostic testing, as long as
you have genome mapping in your body, as long as they know precisely who you
are, they get that AI can prescribe 95% of the
reasons you'd go to a family doctor, and more importantly, it can point
you in the direction to a specialist. And the family doctor can be
revitalized and reinvented again, go upstream and

(06:51):
solve big medical problems because they got access to AI as well. So
instead of just being this sort of facilitator and curator that moves people
painfully through a system that still lies us on fax machines,
for god's sakes, let's let's use AI and say we're gonna lead the world. There's
a company called Bioerota Calgary that knows it's possible because guess
what? Canadian technology has been sold to Singapore and Saudi Arabia as we

(07:13):
speak versus Canada Yeah. Which we should be leading at it. Yeah. Alright.
Reimagining education. Talk to me about this. And we we only have about a minute
and a half left for both of these. We spent so much time on ideology
and and and horsehair blankets and all the things we've done wrong in the
past, and not enough getting our our youth to be
focused on what is it gonna take to compete in the future where jobs are

(07:34):
in the cloud, AI is in every corner of the marketplace, Collaboration,
creative, critical thinking. That's the ideas that we need to
foster, and I wanna draft these kids in high school based on their interests
like we draft them in high school based on their sports and athletic ability,
move them through a system where they graduate without any education expenses
Wow. And hit the ground running. That's the future of education. So there's

(07:57):
betting on the winners that also sort of seems to dovetail into this last one
of reward the builders. Yeah. Reward the entrepreneurs.
I want $10,000,000 of your capital gains is tax free in
The United States. Reward people for building a business in Canada.
You keep it here for ten years. You hire people. We're gonna provide you
capital, and we're gonna let you to take your rewards tax free because because you

(08:19):
took the risk. And you've spread that risk in terms of building our economy, and
for that, we thank you. We wanna be the home, the epicenter for
entrepreneurship around the world. Tony, I want to have an optimistic conversation
that steered away from the partisan politics that we have to deal with because there's
an election, and I think you hit the nail on the head, man. That was
an aggressively optimistic view on how we can build the

(08:40):
next ten years. I wanna thank you very much. I I think you've set a
great tone for this week for me here at the Ben Mulroney Show, and I'll
talk to you soon. Alright. Pleasure, my friend.