Can surveillance pricing be stopped?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Can surveillance pricing be stopped?"

Front Burner – CBC
Host: Jayme Poisson
Guest: Jim Balsillie (former co-CEO, Research in Motion/BlackBerry; founder, Canadian Shield Institute)
Date: April 28, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the rise and implications of "surveillance pricing"—the practice of using consumers' personal data to set individualized prices for goods and services. Host Jayme Poisson and guest Jim Balsillie discuss how this trend concentrates wealth and exacerbates inequalities, current legislative attempts to address it (notably in Manitoba), Canada's vulnerabilities in the digital economy, and the broader question of national data sovereignty, especially as new trade negotiations approach.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Surveillance Pricing

• Distinction between algorithmic and surveillance pricing
  Algorithmic pricing sets prices using algorithms, sometimes leading to anti-competitive coordination (e.g., rental or concert ticket prices).
  Surveillance pricing leverages detailed personal data to set prices individuals are most likely (or forced) to pay, rather than offering a universal market price.
  • [04:00] Jim Balsillie: “Surveillance pricing charges everybody different on what they think they can get. You would shudder to know how much information is captured about you every minute of the day and brokered throughout the world to these companies.”
• Examples include:
  • E-commerce platforms offering varied grocery or taxi prices based on user profiles.
  • Adjustments if your device battery is low, or you’re in a hurry.
  • Targeting based on factors like neighborhood, device type, or life circumstances.

2. Evidence and Harms of Surveillance Pricing

• Generally opaque in implementation; many companies disguise personalized higher pricing with discounts or coupons, making the baseline hard to determine.
  • [05:01] U.S. study found Instacart offered 75% of tested items at multiple prices, with potential $1,200 annual variance for the average U.S. family.
• Particularly harmful to the most vulnerable consumers:
  • [05:33] Jim Balsillie: “The worst part about it is it tends to target the most vulnerable... You use these surveillance mechanisms to raise prices where you can get away with it and compress vulnerable employees.”
• Surveillance pricing is also used in wage suppression for precarious workers, adjusting pay downward based on worker vulnerability or likelihood to quit.
  • [06:05] Jim Balsillie: “They know how desperate [workers] are to keep that job, how much they need that pay, how close they are to quitting... and find different mechanisms to suppress their pay.”

3. Debate: Market Efficiency vs. Regulation

• Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s perspective: Banning algorithmic pricing amounts to "socialism," arguing competition and efficiency lower costs.
  • [06:46] Doug Ford: “There’s no better way of letting people get lower costs... than competition. That is what we believe in. That’s a capitalist society, a market.”
• Balsillie’s rebuttal:
  • [07:33] Jim Balsillie: “Premier Ford is wrong. When you have an imbalance of power, when you have an imbalance of information, that’s called an asymmetry. That breaks markets. So this is not a free market. It’s the opposite—a new form of tyranny.”

4. Limits of Existing Laws

• Current laws (prohibitions on price collusion, human rights codes) don’t adequately address data-driven discrimination based on non-protected attributes (e.g., desperation, injury status).
  • [08:40] Jim Balsillie: “Is it wrong to discriminate because you’re a single mother with a desperate child? That’s not race... [These] digital medium are threatening pretty much most of [our norms].”

5. Manitoba’s Bill and Enforceability

• Manitoba is pursuing a bill to ban surveillance pricing, but enforcement against workaround tactics (like offering universal high prices and selective discounts) is challenging.
  • [09:46] Jim Balsillie: “Try to shrink the problem... Can you get rid of 80% of the abuses? But don’t let perfection be the enemy of moving the ball down the field.”

6. Corporate Data Accumulation and Privacy Concerns

• Subject shifts to the massive data troves held by Canadian companies (e.g., Loblaw’s 18 million active loyalty members).
• Concern that extensive data brokerage is ongoing within and across companies for various purposes—far beyond loyalty programs, including location and biometrics.
  • [12:10] Jim Balsillie: “Don’t think it’s just limited to a loyalty card. It’s all agglomerated, massive troves with great minutiae—biometric, your emotions, your mood, and your circumstances can be fused into it.”
• Government’s reluctance to frame privacy in terms of fundamental human rights (as the EU does), preferring a “consumer vs corporate interests” model.

7. Canada's Data Sovereignty & AI Governance Gaps

• Canada’s historic lack of regulation or capacity-building in digital/data governance has left the country’s economy and sovereignty vulnerable.
  • [14:24] Jim Balsillie: “We didn’t govern these things and we didn’t build expertise... Control and prosperity bleed out of the country, particularly south of the border.”
• Government confusion between "hosting data in Canadian data centers" and genuine data sovereignty, with most large-scale projects still controlled by U.S. cloud firms.

8. Trade Agreements and the "Vassal State" Caution

• USMCA (CUSMA) seen as a regulatory tool for U.S. interests—minimal tariff changes, but heavy influence over Canada's regulatory and economic policy.
  • [16:42] Jim Balsillie: “They’re instruments of regulatory remote control... Our democratic House of Commons isn’t what it was capable of before this agreement.”
• Balsillie asserts Canada has become a “vassal state, digital and more” due to lost control over macroeconomic, environmental, healthcare, IP, and data policy.
  • [18:09] Jim Balsillie: “We’ve given up so much of our sovereignty to the United States and we’ve become very much a vassal state, digital and more.”

9. Counterarguments and Competitiveness

• Some industry voices (e.g., IBM Canada CTO) claim true sovereignty would limit competitiveness due to high resource costs.
  • [20:07] Jim Balsillie: “That’s just straw man arguments… Of course you want to be connected with the world, of course you want to have capability, but not at any price in any way.”

10. Strategic Failure: Missing the Intangible Shift

• Canada “missed the shift” from a production (materials, goods) economy to one driven by data and intellectual property.
  • [20:56] Jim Balsillie: “The second sin was really... we characterized data as something that gets traded and it’s not. It gets exfiltrated or bleeds out.”
• No national data/IP strategies; statecraft is now dominated by those who control intangible assets.

11. The U.S. Political Context & Wake-Up Call

• Trump-era trade politics and aggressive economic statecraft present both a challenge and potential wake-up call for Canadians regarding sovereignty.
  • [24:31] Jim Balsillie: “It’s a blessing... if we take that wake-up call and seize it.”

12. Discourse, Civil Society, and Policy Change

• Why is Balsillie an outlier?
  • [26:16] Jim Balsillie: “Canada doesn’t do discourse. It does bullying... The US, for all its faults, does discourse. Gaslighting is a form of bullying... These policies keep saying we’re the envy of the world, and then people in their lived experience feel, ‘must be me’—and it’s not them.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [04:00] Jim Balsillie: "Surveillance pricing charges everybody different on what they think they can get."
• [05:33] Jim Balsillie: "The worst part about it is, it tends to target the most vulnerable."
• [07:33] Jim Balsillie: "Premier Ford is wrong...this is not a free market. It’s the opposite—a new form of tyranny."
• [12:10] Jim Balsillie: "Don’t think it’s just limited to a loyalty card... It’s all agglomerated, massive troves with great minutiae."
• [16:42] Jim Balsillie: "They’re instruments of regulatory remote control... our prosperity plummeted."
• [18:09] Jim Balsillie: "We've given up so much of our sovereignty to the United States and we've become very much a vassal state, digital and more."
• [26:16] Jim Balsillie: "Canada doesn’t do discourse. It does bullying... But if you love something, it’s worth fighting for."

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Key Timestamps

• 00:25 – Introduction and overview of Jim Balsillie’s advocacy
• 03:00–05:30 – Explanation and real-life examples of surveillance pricing
• 05:30–07:30 – Discussion on harm to vulnerable consumers and workers
• 07:30–09:30 – The inadequacy of current laws and market “tyranny”
• 11:25–12:45 – Data brokerage and privacy breaches by Canadian corporations
• 14:15–16:00 – Canada's lack of AI/data governance and consequences for sovereignty
• 16:35–18:30 – CUSMA and Canada's erosion of digital and policy sovereignty
• 20:56–22:30 – Strategic failure to adapt to a data-driven economy
• 24:22 – U.S. politics (Trump) as a turning point for Canadian awareness
• 26:16 – On why Balsillie is an outlier and Canadian policy discourse

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Conclusion

Jim Balsillie argues forcefully that surveillance pricing is another symptom of Canada’s deeper failure to adapt to the realities of a data-driven, intangible economy—leaving the country at risk of deepening inequality and loss of sovereignty. The episode closes on a call for more engaged, informed discourse and stronger expertise in data and digital governance, as Canada faces upcoming trade renegotiations and the urgent need to reclaim its autonomy and future prosperity.

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Transcript

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[CBC Announcer]

This is a CBC podcast

[Jamie Poisson]

hey everyone, it's Jamie. Jim Balsali, the former co CEO of Research in Motion and BlackBerry, is my guest today. For years, Jim has been one of the loudest voices in the country to

[Podcast Host]

speak out about how data is being

[Jamie Poisson]

used to concentrate wealth and power and to manipulate the way that you and I behave. That's included helping the Province of Manitoba take aim at things like algorithmic or surveillance pricing, where businesses offer different prices

[Podcast Host]

based on consumers personal data.

[Jamie Poisson]

Jim is also the founder of the Canadian Shield Institute, a nonpartisan organization that aims to build economic resilience and sovereignty in Canada, and we'll talk to him about that as well, including how he thinks Canada is poised to give up our digital sovereignty and more in the upcoming CUSMA talks.

[Podcast Host]

Mr. Balsali, thank you so much for coming onto Front Burner.

[Jim Balsillie]

Such a pleasure to be with you.

[Podcast Host]

It's so great to have you. So let's start with the practice of algorithmic surveillance pricing, something that the federal NDP leader Avi Lewis has been talking a lot about in recent weeks. He's calling on the federal government to ban the practice.

[CBC Announcer]

It's a crystal clear example of why we desperately need government guardrails to protect us from the triple threat of big tech AI and corporate monopolies that dominate every sector of our economy.

[Podcast Host]

And a motion to do that was put forward in the House, but failed. The Ontario NDP just put out a pretty slick new ad advocating for a ban.

[Ontario NDP Ad Voice]

It's watching everything you do, what you search for, what you browse online, what you buy, when you buy it. It builds a profile and then it calculates what's the most this person will pay. It's called surveillance pricing Corporations.

[Podcast Host]

It's also something that the Province of Manitoba is targeting through legislation. I know you've been involved in that somewhat, and just first, can you talk a bit more about how algorithmic pricing works? Like what is it that we're talking about here?

[Jim Balsillie]

Sure. And I'll draw a nuanced distinction between algorithmic pricing and surveillance pricing, which also uses algorithms. Algorithmic pricing is when you use algorithms to set prices and they've been used in coordinated fashion that are considered anti competitive, like setting rents between various renting properties using algorithms of coordination, or how they use it for concert tickets and things like that surveillance pricing is when they actually surveil you and they know a lot about you. And if you knew it, would shudder to know how much information is captured about you every minute of the day and brokered throughout the world to these companies. And then they say, okay, I know you've broken your leg and you need to get to work, so I'm going to charge twice as much for that taxi. And they've had experiences where they offer different kinds of grocery prices online, different kind of taxi prices, where if your battery's low or you're in a hurry or you've got a no other alternative and it's used for all kinds of E commerce and they charge different according to do you have an expensive laptop? Are you in a prosperous neighborhood for subscriptions or education services? So it's really efficient markets create a benefit of everybody seeing the same price and getting the same price. And that's how the free market creates benefit. But surveillance pricing charges everybody different on what they think they can get.

[Podcast Host]

And is this something that we are actually seeing play out in Canada right now? Like, is there proof that it's happening, especially at scale?

[Jim Balsillie]

Well, a lot of it's opaque, so they back into it with coupons from a high price. And a lot of these systems aren't that transparent. But there's been a lot of documented cases of this happening in the US and the Competition Bureau in Canada has done some research on it. But you have to do market studies and they've got the power to do these market studies in the US They've recently given that power to our Competition Bureau. So if it's happening south of the border, you can be assured it's happening here. And now that we've got the powers to research it, you can be very confident that it's happening here too.

[Podcast Host]

Just for people listening, this consumer report from two progressive advocacy groups in the U.S. groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union found that Instacart as an example, offered nearly three out of every four grocery items to shoppers at multiple prices in an experiment. And they, they did this experiment involving 437 shoppers in live tests across the city. And it actually found that the, the pricing would mean price swings of around $1,200 on groceries for the average American family.

[Jim Balsillie]

And the worst part about of it is it tends to target the most vulnerable. And that's the shame of it all. So when you, when we have a cost of living crisis and we have a paycheck erosion issue, you use these surveillance mechanisms to Raise prices where you can get away with it and compress vulnerable employees. And so it worsens the circumstance by breaking the free market and using digital surveillance and algorithms to do that.

[Podcast Host]

Just tell me more about what that means. Like, you mean that they would pay people less money?

[Jim Balsillie]

Yes. Well, they use, and this has been documented in research, that it's not only used to raise price on people, particularly the vulnerable, but not always the vulnerable, but are precarious vulnerable, but also for workers. They know how desperate they are to keep that job, how much they need that pay, how close they are to quitting or not, and they use all that and find different mechanisms to suppress their pay. And that's been researched and surfaced with very, very big companies doing it.

[Podcast Host]

Premier Doug Ford came out against banning algorithmic pricing recently. He said essentially that banning the practice would be socialism.

[Premier Doug Ford]

There's no better way of letting people get lower costs on the matter if it's cars or homes or groceries, than competition. That is what we believe in. That's a capitalist society, a market. The other one is socialism.

[Podcast Host]

And he made that argument that in a free market competition naturally lowers prices, that algorithms help a market act more efficiently and efficient markets lead to lower average prices. You have just kind of made the argument for why you don't think that is the case. But I just wonder if you could elaborate on that argument a little bit more. I think you're saying that a free market would mean that everybody has access to the same information, but when we're dealing with surveillance pricing, that is not the case. So it's not free.

[Jim Balsillie]

Premier Ford is wrong. And I've told him personally, when you have an imbalance of power, when you have an imbalance of knowledge, information, that's called an asymmetry that breaks markets. And so this is not a free market. It's an opposite of a free market. It's a new form of tyranny. And I don't understand how he justifiably goes and regulates the work environment for workplace abuses. Why not just let the free market handle those abuses? And why would you let abuses happen in the consumer market or in this other kind of surveillance wages market? So it's absolutely 24 of the 50 states are doing this in the U.S. it's going to become the norm very soon. These abuses are very substantial and pernicious and consequential.

[Podcast Host]

I don't want to make you repeat yourself too much, but just how you would respond to the argument that we don't need these bans on surveillance pricing because we have laws on the books already. It is illegal to collude on pricing. For example, human rights codes already prohibit pricing discrimination based on, say, race, for example.

[Jim Balsillie]

Yeah, but is it wrong to discriminate you because you're a single mother with a desperate child? That's not race. Is that a human rights issue? Is it wrong to double your taxi rate because you have a broken leg and can't walk otherwise? So the fact of the matter, yes, we have a lot of laws on the books, but these forms of technology are pushing the edge of these or running ahead of them. And we have norms and values we share in this country, but this medium, these digital medium, are threatening pretty much most of them. And if we don't regulate this for the public good, then we all are paying the price.

[Podcast Host]

I just want to ask you specifically about the Manitoba bill and how it would work. So as I understand it, it bans companies from using algorithms to charge higher prices. Right. But could companies then work around that and just set all of their prices high and then deliver coupons to people like, is it easy to get around? I think is my question.

[Jim Balsillie]

Well, it's a function of the details. I suspect the way they word it will catch it and I suspect a lot of the kinds of wording and strategies won't be dramatically disappoint, similar to what some of the subnational jurisdictions are doing in the US but it's a very, very good question and how to make it effective. I think when you go at these things, you just try to shrink the problem. Can you get rid of 80% of the abuses? But don't let perfection be the enemy of moving the ball down the field.

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[Podcast Host]

This issue of algorithmic surveillance pricing is one example of what you argue is problematic about an economy that is increasingly driven by data. Right. Let me ask you about some of the other things here that you talk about a lot. Some of Canada's biggest companies are also, in a way, big tech firms. I think of a company like Lablas, for example. According to its 2025 annual report, it's got more than 18 million active PC Optimum members and they redeemed over a billion dollars worth of points. That's a lot of user data about our shopping habits. And really it's for nearly half the Canadian population. And just what concerns you about that data and where it goes.

[Jim Balsillie]

But of course that there's an extensive data brokerage business and the purpose of what you're allowed to collect and the purpose for it is a critical part of what the Europeans have done in their data governance, privacy. And our first two attempts were severely captured by corporate and big tech issues in the prior Trudeau government. And it's coming along imminent again. But yeah. And that doesn't stop a grocer, whoever it is, from brokering. Also in all your location data, which is very precise over the past year on your phones, all your financial data, all your other browsing data. So when you take one aspect and then places like Walgreens have been found doing biometrics in the store, and they and Walmart are putting digital price tags on everything in the store. So these are comprehensive systems. Don't think it's just limited to a loyalty card. It's all agglomerated, massive troves with great minutiae. Much things like biometric and your emotions and your mood and your circumstances can be fused into it. And then it says, okay, I think I can capture some more here. I can maybe even change your mood. And does that violate human rights of autonomy and transparency and reality and fair information? These are novel ways to hijack human rights. The government would not put human rights into the privacy legislation like other jurisdictions such as Europe have done. That it's a fundamental human right. They took it as a balancing between consumer and corporate interests. They see it as a consumer issue because you can balance consumer issues. But violating human rights is a bit of a legal absolute. And so that's been a major issue that Will the new privacy legislation finally acknowledge this as a human right?

[Podcast Host]

These concerns you have about Canadian privacy and safety and the need to protect our data. How is it complicated by the exponential development that we're seeing with AI right now?

[Jim Balsillie]

Canada had a view that you don't really need to build a lot of capacity for these things. You just get out of the way. And so what's happened is we're in a hole of inattention. We didn't govern these things and we didn't build expertise to govern these things. We let them just bleed. Control and prosperity bleed out of the country, particularly south of the border. So it's a hole, it's getting deeper and yet we've not reoriented nor built capacity to it. So it can be fixed. But it begins with an orientation of governing for the benefit of Canadians in Canada and building the expertise to do it and then navigating the world as it's unfolding.

[Podcast Host]

And I guess on that point the federal government and several provincial governments too have really been pushing this idea of data sovereignty. Right, while talking about building data centers in Canada. And what do you make of that focus and what does actual data sovereignty look like?

[Jim Balsillie]

They conflate dating centers with sovereign sovereignty. And that's a big mistake because it's a thin line between strip mining in AI and data and participating in a new factor of product economically and non economically. So the government gave a big $240 million grant under sovereign compute to a US cloud company that's governed under the Cloud act, whose owners and prosperity accrues the us. So just because it's here doesn't mean we benefit. So yes, we need access to sovereign compute. There are many things we can do to start to say, okay, we have to bring back this sovereignty, we have to bring back this prosperity, this inattention and laissez fairness. Canada's paid a severe price and certainly the terms of the USMCA were very dire for Canada six and a half years ago. And so now we have to say that was a mistake. We have to start to build back our country, our sovereignty, our prosperity, our security, our well being. But it starts with a reorientation of the nation. It starts with bringing in the technical expertise that understands how this is done.

[Podcast Host]

I wonder if you could just elaborate for me a little bit more on what we have given up and what you think the consequences are of that.

[Jim Balsillie]

Well, a shorter list would be what we haven't given up. We call this a trade agreement, usmca. And there were no tariffs taken down in USMCA yet. The US put everything on the line and threatened the whole relationship if we don't sign this thing, so what is it? And fundamentally, they're instruments of regulatory remote control that govern just about everything in Canada. Canada. Our macroeconomic strategies, our global trade agreements, our environmental programs, our health care programs, our intellectual property and data governance, our procurement, it's extensive. And so these are realms that used to be within the democratic realm of a country, but instead they got hijacked into a treaty, ostensibly as a trade agreement, but they really weren't. And then when that happened, our prosperity plummeted. In the past five years since that agreement, Canada's has had the worst economic growth of the 50 developed countries in the world. And we've had all these sovereignty vulnerabilities and all these social elements that have come forward. And that's because the trade realm, which used to be about tariffs, migrated into the democratic realm and we've lost so much of our democracy.

[Podcast Host]

I just want to try and kind of get to the crux of your argument here. Like, is what you're essentially arguing that we've given up so much of our digital sovereignty to the United States that we've really just become like a digital vassal state of the United States.

[Jim Balsillie]

We've given up so much of our sovereignty to the United States and we've become very much a vassal state, digital and more. Remember, we can't do a free trade agreement without them being okay. It says our macroeconomic policies must be okay by the US under usmca. How we govern the environment, environmental policies, our healthcare policies, our standards, our intellectual property, our data governance, our procurement. It goes on and on. If you actually read the agreement, you would find that our democratic House of Commons isn't what it was capable of before this agreement. And yet we trumpet it as some kind of envy and success, understanding that the EU fought very aggressively hard lines in the sand against the US on these provisions and said no way are we going to allow you to hijack our EU sovereignty on these realms. And we happily or willingly let it slide.

[Podcast Host]

Well, I mean, certainly if you listen to the Prime Minister, Mark Carney and the people around him, they do say that we have the current agreement that we have is currently kind of the envy of the world. Lower tariffs than a lot of other countries.

[Jim Balsillie]

Says who?

[Podcast Host]

Well, certainly says the Prime Minister.

[Jim Balsillie]

Right, yeah, but that's not the world. That's one person saying it to Canadians. And have they read the agreement? Have they read these provisions? Do they agree with them? Are they going to push back on them?

[Podcast Host]

I want to put to you something that the chief technology officer of IBM, Canada said he makes the argument that sovereignty would mean giving up lots of advantages. The more separated you are from the global cloud computing system, the more resources you have to pour into it and ultimately it'll make your business model less competitive.

[Jim Balsillie]

Yeah, but that's just, that's just straw man arguments. I mean, he has to do that as his corporate job. But those are straw man arguments. They say either become subordinate and it's. In fact, it's a much more technical and nuanced argument. All the countries, smart countries in Southeast Asia and Europe are navigating these things. It's not a black and white thing. Of course you want to be connected with the world, of course you want to have capability, but not at any price in any way.

[Podcast Host]

I've heard you talk about how Canada missed the shift from an economy based on producing tangible goods, wood and oil, to an economy driven by intangible assets, IP data, and that we're now seeing Canada's standard of living steadily in decline. And I just wonder if you could flesh that out for me.

[Jim Balsillie]

100%. Yeah, of course. Well, I think the original sin for Canada was in 1994 there was an orange book for an innovation economy. What was very important is they used tangible production economy words like efficiency and cost. We've never broke from the original 1970s production economy, efficiency, cost incentives model to something that's about legal frameworks to become the landlord and others be the tenant. So that was the original sin then. The second sin was really the data economy really began in earnest in about 2010, 15 years ago. And at that time we characterized data as something that gets traded and it's not. It's something that gets exfiltrated or bleeds out. And we never had strategies to manage that and capture that. And so it's the inattention to the knowledge of IP and the intangible of data, where the money and the power is never. There's no data strategies, there's no sovereign compute that goes with the data. There's no intellectual property strategies. And so the rest of the world, and especially us, but they're doing this economic statecraft in Canada and we've not attended to it.

[Podcast Host]

What would it take to make that kind of shift? Is it different?

[Jim Balsillie]

The first thing is expertise. There is no expertise or it's orientation and expertise and it's 92% of value of the S&P 500. It's where the tens of trillions of dollars is. You go near it and the US puts anything on the line, whether It's a digital services tax or sovereign compute or anything else like that.

[Podcast Host]

Let's say the Canadian government renews CUSMA generally, as is this summer. They don't move on these kind of shifts that you're advocating for. What is the consequence of that ultimately, do you think?

[Jim Balsillie]

Well, first of all, the erosion will continue and the price we pay will be ever more severe. And we know that people have a cost of living issue. We know that paycheck's under pressure. We know costs are going up. We know that there's social harms of polarization and mental health and kids and all that. So these costs will just keep going. However, maybe in many respects, because of where we are, Canada is a rule taker, not a rule maker. So then we have to start to say, okay, what are our red lines in this for where we really want to be? Day two, that we're not going to manage erosion, but we're going to actually think about the future. And how do we start to navigate more shrewdly within the constraints that exist. But that assessment and navigation expertise was never done in usmca, has not been done yet. And I've been very much on the inside in these things. I'm not seeing any evidence of it whatsoever. So I appreciate there are constraints we're under and we have to. We can't completely abandon where we are. And again, I'm all for getting our resources to market our commodities. I'm all for it. And yet we have to start to orient towards where the real money and the real future is. And that I just want to see that invoked with orientation and expertise. But it's not to the absolute exclusion of these other things.

[Podcast Host]

And where does Trump and this administration fit into the conversation that we're having? Do they make that harder and more complicated to do?

[Jim Balsillie]

They sure do because they're brazen out of norms. And what he does is he surrounds himself with very shrewd and very smart, very powerful business people who say, I want this, this, this, this and this to hijack the value chains. And so that's a very dangerous reality because it leads to a greater divergence of circumstance between us and the U.S. however, I have characterized that. I think President Trump has overplayed the hand because it's woken Canadians up. And so if we needed that hard hit on the head, well, I guess it's the blessing that we needed because it woke us up. But it's only a blessing if we take that wake up call and seize it. So if this wakes us up and say now we have to move beyond commodities to these value add. Now we have to do more forms of sovereignty in this. It's not some shared destiny, rules based global order of traded goods which is not the world we've lived in for decades. That's a blessing. But again, it's only a blessing if we wake up and seize it.

[Podcast Host]

Jim, just that final question for you. It strikes me you created one of the most profitable and successful companies in this country. You are part of kind of a minority view on this. And just why is it that it seems like you're kind of swimming upstream with these positions that you're taking? Why are they so divergent from the position that the Prime Minister and kind of other thought leaders in this country seem to be taking?

[Jim Balsillie]

Well, there's a lot of people that share my concerns, a large number of them that are out there. But you have to understand, Canada doesn't do discourse. It does bullying. And so what happens is you either submit to the narrative of the incumbents or they bully. Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the US they do discourse. And gaslighting is a form of bullying. So, yeah, they haven't been able to capture me. They won't. I'm an electrician son who wouldn't have a home if we didn't have a union job and wouldn't have gone to university if we didn't have osap. So I'm not gonna sell out those that I felt people planted trees that I got to sit under in those metaphorical respects. And so I'm not gonna stop. I think there's a lot of good people and Canada has to learn how to do discourse on these issues and actually surface expertise. But if you see it, it's actually a strategy to not do engagement, to not do expertise, to not do discourse is to do gaslighting. And we as civil society have to push back on that or the erosion is going to continue. Because those strategies aren't working for Canadians. But then they keep saying we're the envy of the world and we're number one in the G7. And then people in their lived experience feel must be me and it's not them. There's good people out there. There's lots of them. They're pushing this hard. And I'm not alone. And it's very meaningful to me. It's a beautiful country. We all love it. And if you love something, it's worth fighting for.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, Mr. Bossily, thank you.

[Jim Balsillie]

Pleasure's all min.

[Jamie Poisson]

All right, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson, thanks so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

[CBC Announcer]

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