Opinion | He’s known as one of Canada’s most innovative CEOs. Here’s what he thinks Mark Carney, and all Canadian leaders, get wrong about prosperity

For decades, Jim Balsillie was best known as the co-CEO of Research in Motion, makers of the Blackberry, and someone who almost brought another NHL team to Canada. But in recent years, he’s turned his attention to trying to get decision-makers to embrace a new destiny for Canada, one in which we focus less on being hewers of wood and drawers of water and, rather, embrace a future of securing our intellectual property, in an increasingly digital world.

Steve Paikin: You have said we now have a moment to “reconceptualize Canada.” What does that mean?

Jim Balsillie: The world has changed in a degree of rapidity that’s unprecedented in mankind. And Canada has bought into a form of almost extreme neoliberalism, that the markets will embed the norms that we want, and take us towards them. I’ve yet to see a true, free market in the world, anywhere. Markets are created and changed by governments, literally dozens of times a day. So, we have to rethink what’s going to take us to the values that we so greatly want and seek.

Are we rethinking?

No. And that’s the problem. We have to start thinking ‘How do we capture our potential in this changed world?’ I just think our current approaches are selling Canada short. As an example, our economy structurally is much closer to Russia’s than it is to say Scandinavia’s. So we have all the potential in the world to be much more than we are. And these new technologies cross over into impacting social well-being, mental health, societal harmony, democratic integrity, individual autonomy, privacy, and, of course, security. When you look at Trump’s behaviour in the past year, he’s simply cranked up a couple notches what’s been going on for the past 30 years.

You’ve said Canada refuses to understand how prosperity is generated. What do you mean by that?

When you look at “trade deals,” they’re much more about spreading monopolies rather than spreading competition. And we accept as an article of faith that they’re good, no matter what, not understanding that they’re instruments of regulatory remote control. And you have to come at it with an agenda for what you want to advance for the benefit of your economy. A relatively smaller open economy (like) Canada’s has to be much more strategic, much more nationalist in approach.

In fact, you once wrote: “I don’t think we should consign ourselves to be a low value-added petrol state, selling a few other resources and a bit of agriculture. While Canada was busy extolling the virtues of liberalized global trade and trying to expand commodity production, the U.S. was focused on owning intellectual property, controlling data, and changing the rules to make free trade less free.” Has anything happened in the months since Mark Carney became PM to make you rethink that statement?

Well, no. Look at the last 15 years. Had Canada kept pace with the United States and changed its data AI economy, we would have over a trillion dollars more in our GDP annually. That’s $25,000 per person, every year. And so, I have yet to see a reorientation towards capturing data as a strategic asset, for having intellectual property for the things that we invent, even though we literally have industry and innovation programs in the 20s of billions every year. And now there’s well over two million patents granted for AI, so the fusion between IP and AI is almost complete. But I’ve yet to see any strategies of that in our trade agreements. The U.S. has over 700 experts by law that are advisors for trade on 26 advisory committees, for over 50 years. Canada has nothing. This requires a substantial reorientation.

But we have our first ever minister for artificial intelligence in the federal cabinet now. Doesn’t that indicate some understanding of where things are going?

Just because you know the word AI doesn’t mean you know how to manage it for the benefit of Canada. Performative stuff doesn’t mean that you understand how it works. It requires an orientation to Canadian companies because they capture the benefits for Canada. It requires deep engagement. And what I’ve seen so far is a focus on taking commodities to markets, and letting others refine them. I’m all for our resources, but I’m not seeing any strategies to own the ability to value out those.

So, if Francois Philippe Champagne’s budget were rewritten in a way that might satisfy some of the things you’re concerned about, what should we have seen?

Number one, the government spends about $7.5 billion a year in research. Every other developed country has strategies to generate intellectual property, and capture it so that you can get rents for it when you commercialize. Canada has nothing of the sort. Second, I want to see strategies where we turn our data, with sovereign compute, into a factor of productivity, not only for the non-economic benefits — say better health incomes or environmental research — but also for the economic outcomes. Third, I wanted to see the beginning of advisory councils for trade, like the U.S. has, before we go into these negotiations. We’re just doing ad hoc reactionary strategies. And then what happens you’re vulnerable to predatory behaviour, or foreign decisions, like we’re seeing with the automotive and battery companies in Canada. These are all very predictable in a world that changes to intangibles, and, yet, we’re using a playbook from the 1970s. It’s gone from a three-alarm fire to a four-alarm fire. Pretty soon, it’s going be a five-alarm fire. So, how loud do the bells have to ring before there’s a recognition of what needs to be done?

What did you think of the Trump Administration’s new national security strategy?

Well, they just raised the ante, didn’t they? The U.S. wants hemispheric dominance, and everything else is subordinate. And so, if we want to be sovereign and prosperous and not a vassal state, then we have to respond to these structural realities with much, much greater urgency and expertise. This is the reorientation that I’m calling for. Trump has thrown any veneer of diplomacy to the wayside and is very brutish about this. And he’s unequivocal that it’s U.S. standards, U.S. technologies, U.S. architecture, U.S. control, and U.S. rules. This is a very strident articulation of his worldview, and he has a lot of power. I don’t see any benevolence towards Canada or anybody else among his traditional allies. We’re particularly vulnerable to this because we hitched our wagon to a set of beliefs that it’s a rules-based, international order. But Canada is wholly dependent on the U.S. to a degree that’s much greater than any other country in the world, save maybe Mexico. And so, it’s not really reasonable to say we have the best access to the U.S., because we’re far too dependent, and it’s all uncertain anyway.

Well, here’s the reality. The U.S. is bigger, richer, and under Trump, prepared to play more vicious than us. If you’re a medium-sized power like Canada, how do you stay competitive in that kind of world?

Well, the value-added intangible is perfectly attuned to smaller economies, because they can carve tremendous value out of niches. Look at the pharmaceuticals industry in Switzerland, or the silicon semiconductor industry in Taiwan, or you look at the things like communications in Sweden, or cybersecurity in Israel. Size isn’t the issue. It’s owning something distinct and extracting a rent globally. Canada has tremendous opportunity to use its health data for health products, to value out agriculture, value-added minerals, value-added energy, and much, much more than that. And it’s really an orientation towards, how do I move beyond the commodity role to a value-added one? Those are exactly the things that have been absent from our policy orthodoxy for decades.

You know, I’ve never asked you about this, so I will here. How did you like the way Glenn Howarton portrayed you in the Blackberry movie?

Well, it’s a complete mockumentary. They were just having fun and making things up. Not 1 per cent of what happened in the movie is actually correct.

One per cent?

Not even 1 per cent.

So, in that scene, where they sort of screwed you out of buying the Pittsburgh Penguins and moving them to Hamilton, where you allegedly tell [NHL Commissioner] Gary Bettman to F-off, that didn’t happen?

No. I mean, do you think business actually happens like that?

I don’t know. Looked good on the screen. Part of me actually wishes that you did, because Canada got screwed out of having another NHL team, courtesy of you.

No, no, no, no. Completely made up. It would have been a good investment at the time, because the team was filing for bankruptcy, and it would’ve been very good. (Note: the Penguins were just sold for $1.7 billion). But that’s closed.