D I P L O M AT I C A| QUESTIONS A SKED Goldy Hyder, CEO, Business Council of Canada
Before joining the Business Council of Canada in 2018, Goldy Hyder was president and CEO of Hill + Knowlton Strategies Canada, a communications firm. Prior to that, he was director of policy for former prime minister Joe Clark. A regular commentator in the Canadian media, he hosts the Speaking of Business podcast, which invites innovators, entrepreneurs and business leaders to share their views. The council, founded in 1976, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization representing the chief executives and heads of 150 leading Canadian businesses that employ 1.7 million Canadians. Its membership spans every major industry across the country. Hyder sat down with Diplomat’s editor, Jennifer Campbell, in September. Diplomat magazine: What are the
top three issues facing Canada’s economy and can you offer a solution for each?
Goldy Hyder: I think the very first thing that’s critical for not just the Canadian economy, but for the global economy, is this next period of what I call co-existing with COVID. This is the new normal until it isn’t. The health priorities really trump all else because the best stimulus for your economy is a healthy population and a population that’s mobile and feels safe to go out, to travel, to shop, to spend money. That’s only going to come about if we take care of the health issue, first and foremost. Second, there’s the reality of a couple of things related to the economy. One is that the virus definitely has a socio-economic discriminatory feature about it. It is hurting those who are at the lower end. That’s why we supported our government’s response to effectively put a floor for the collapse of the individual so you don’t have people in the streets or people wondering where the
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next meal is coming from. We support that and we congratulated the government for moving pretty quickly to get that done. That’s helped the individual, without a doubt. But we also are now seeing the consequences of those businesses that have been distressed as a result of not just the virus, but more important, following the rules of the land created as a result of the virus — quarantines, border closures, restrictions on mobility and transport and travel, right from airlines to public transport. There are a number of distressed industries and sectors that are still going to need support. It’s great we did what we could for the individual, but we also need to do it for those businesses. You’ve got airlines, retail sector, hospitality and tourism. In many ways, a lot of this stems from [the] strategy to come out of the virus. How do you come out of it in a way in which you’re able to leverage the resources — human and otherwise — that you had before? You ask yourself, ‘How important is it that we have a national airline or two? How important is it that we have a tourism industry, when you consider that 90 per cent of Canada lives within two hours of the U.S. border, where most of your tourists come from?’ We’ve got very strong relationships with Asia, where a lot of our tourists come from. One of my members is Rocky Mountaineer. I’d encourage any diplomat to take advantage of that when it’s open again. It’s a luxury train from Calgary to Vancouver with a stop in Jasper and allows you to experience the majesty of the Rocky Mountains. We need [businesspeople like] them to make it. If you’re complying with the rules that say you can’t generate revenue for your business as a result of the policies, something’s got to give. I think it’s got to give on the fairness question. Is it fair that companies that are following all the rules are now at a point where their very existence is at stake? So I think government has to deal with it. For the third one, I would just look a little forward because I think that there will be positives and negatives coming out FALL 2020 | OCT-NOV-DEC
JAMES PARK
Immigration, trade, investment: The ingredients for growth
