Risk and Resilience – John Risley of CFFI Ventures

For decades, the names John Risley and Clearwater Seafoods were practically synonymous. The story of Clearwater’s founding is the stuff of legend in Atlantic Canada.

It’s a story of how John and his business partner Colin MacDonald started selling lobsters in a store on the Bedford highway in 1976 … and how they grew Clearwater into a global seafood giant.

As the Chairman and CEO of CFFI Ventures, Risley has been involved in many other enterprises throughout his career – including telecommunications, space technology and green hydrogen – but Clearwater is what started it all.

So it was big news when, in 2020, Clearwater was sold to a joint venture that included a coalition of Mi’kmaw First Nations. It was described as “the single largest investment in the seafood industry by any Indigenous group in Canada.”

In a candid conversation with Goldy Hyder on the Speaking of Business podcast, John Risley recounts that historic sale, reflects on the business risks he’s taken, and reveals why the world is now courting Atlantic Canada’s ocean economy.

Transcript

John Risley

People ask me about what’s happening in the region and am I optimistic, I say incredibly so, and I’m incredibly so because the start up community here is on fire. Incubators in the region are jam packed full. We’ve got new businesses. We’ve got this ocean cluster thing. We’ve got a CDL stream here. The rest of the world is looking at Atlantic Canada as a place to come and start a business in the ocean economy. And that’s great. That we’ve never had that before.”

Goldy Hyder

Welcome to Speaking of Business, conversations with Canadian innovators, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. I’m Goldy Hyder, President and CEO of the Business Council of Canada. For decades, the names John Risley and Clearwater Seafoods were practically synonymous. The story of Clearwater’s founding is the stuff of legend in Atlantic Canada. It’s a story of how John and his business partner, Colin McDonald, started selling lobsters in a store on the Bedford Highway in 1976. And how they grew Clearwater into a global seafood giant. As the chairman and CEO of CFFI Ventures, John has been involved in lots of other enterprises during his storied career. They include telecommunications, space technology, and more recently, green hydrogen. But Clearwater is what started it all. So it was big news when in 2020, Clearwater was sold to a joint venture that included a coalition of Mi’kmaq First Nations. It was described as the single largest investment in the seafood industry by any Indigenous group in Canada. What led to this historic deal? And how has Canada’s business landscape changed since John started out in the 1970’s? John was a guest on this podcast 4 years ago in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I’m delighted that he’s back for a return visit. Welcome back to the podcast, John.

John Risley

Hey. Good to see you again, Goldy.

Goldy Hyder

Alright. Well, let’s jump into what I said in the introduction here. Right? In 2020. You were the CEO of Clearwater in a company that you and your partner built from the ground up, over 4 decades, and we’ll dig into that shortly. But, you know, it was the largest seafood company in the country, and then you sold it. Why’d you do that?

John Risley

It’s a great question. Perhaps a bit of a curious answer. I think we were very concerned about the business’s future, and what hands it might end up, in the absence of Colin and I being the largest shareholders and being stewards, if you like, of the company. A bit of a unique business. Most companies that employ a couple thousand people have headquarters in urban areas. Most of our jobs were in rural areas. In all those rural areas, we would have been the largest employer. So a very important asset, if you like, in the communities in which we did business, not like you got a bunch of people in Toronto, and you move the office around and, you know, you either add or drop a hundred people. You do that in Grand Bank, Newfoundland, or you do that in Saint Anthony, Newfoundland, or you do that in Lockport, Nova Scotia – that’s a big deal, right? You can’t do that. So we felt a real commitment to the communities that had supported us in which we’d become the largest employer and an important investor in the future of those communities. So that’s a long way around of saying we really needed an owner who understood that sort of commitment, and we were comfortable we were going to maintain the legacy, if you like, that was important to us.

Goldy Hyder

You said what hands they were going to end up in. I’m wondering what you meant by that and how difficult it was to let go in any event.

John Risley

Difficult because it was our first business, and you learn so much in your first business. And, there are so many times during the course of that business where it sort of teetered on the balance. Were we going to make it or were we not? And,

Goldy Hyder

You laugh about it now. You probably weren’t laughing back then.

John Risley

No. We weren’t. And so you do build a bit of an emotional attachment to the business that I wouldn’t have, I don’t think, in others of our financial assets. So, yes, it is difficult to let go. We would have had, you can imagine, a host of other buyers, other seafood companies who would say, oh, yeah well, we’ll work our way into this, and then it’ll be a consolidation. And the consolidation is just a fancy word for

Goldy Hyder

Pay forward.

John Risley

Redundancies. Yeah. And then financial players, absolutely. And we didn’t like the prospect of financial players who come in and work their magic for five years and then look for somebody else to take them out. That really wasn’t going to work for us. We had had the benefit of a long history with Indigenous communities and understood the perspective that they brought to their investing activity. And they think in forever terms. Right? Not five years, not 10 years.

Goldy Hyder

Long term.

John Risley

Yeah. That that really suited us.

Goldy Hyder

Now the sale made history because 50 per cent of the business is now owned by a coalition of First Nations. And you mentioned what attracted you to this arrangement. How’s it going?

John Risley

Extremely well. We didn’t plan this, I promise. But I can tell you with a great degree of satisfaction that the year after we sold the business, the company had the best year in its history. The expectations that we had laid out for the buyer and their financial partners varied considerably, which never happens, right? Usually people overpromise and underdeliver

Goldy Hyder

Yes. Yes.

John Risley

Because you’re a seller. So we didn’t plan on overdelivering, but,

Goldy Hyder

It’s a win win. Right? Everybody’s happy?

John Risley

Yeah. And now look. They’re delighted. We’re happy. We have no regrets whatsoever.

Goldy Hyder

Well, look, Clearwater is not the only thing that you’ve been involved with. I mean, you’ve done a lot of different enterprises from obviously seafood but nutrition, telecommunications, and space tech. That’s quite the diversity in terms of the buffet of businesses you’re involved in. And now most recently, you’re also in the clean energy sector, and we’ll come to that more deeply, later on. But I wanted to just begin by, how did that happen? How does somebody in seafood end up in space and now also in clean energy? Like, what is it that attracts you to a new project? What do you look for?

John Risley

I would say initially, it was serendipitous. If you think about our nutrition business, that really grew out of trying to figure out how to add value to our association with the ocean economy, if you like. And our focus was on omega-3s, and we grew that into the largest omega-3 business in the world. So that was, I say, just serendipity, but I think we now have a much more, and this is what happens when you’re a bit slow, as we often are in the Maritimes, takes a long time to think about how you how you go about things. And I think it took it did take us a long time. And I think we decided that we wanted to if we were going to go into an industry, we weren’t going to be a me too player. We were going to do something new and that the sort of compelling attributes of the opportunity had to be technology-based, and we had to be at the leading edge. And if we couldn’t satisfy that criteria, we weren’t interested.

Goldy Hyder

You said it, so I’m going to pick up on that on the message of sort of, you know, maritime. I’m an Albertan. And, you know, when I read your story, I thought to myself, I would have believed this whole story if it was an Alberta story. But it’s a maritime story. It’s a Halifax story. It’s a story of two young lads who kinda go, what the heck? Why not us? Is that something that we can look to now in the Maritimes that success like yours is creating more of a culture of entrepreneurialism and innovation and risk taking?

John Risley

So that’s a fabulous question, and I’m delighted you asked it. Because when people ask me if I’m optimistic about the future of the region, and, you know, we wear this reputation here of being sort of second class and, you know, we’re the hand-out people, and we lag the economy, national economy, and all the sorts of negative impressions that people might have of Atlantic Canada. So my answer when people ask me about what’s happening in the region and am I optimistic, I say incredibly so, and I’m incredibly so because the start up community here is on fire. Incubators in the region are jam packed full. We’ve got new businesses. We’ve got this ocean cluster thing in which I’m involved. We’ve got a CDL stream here. We get more applications for people wanting to come here from outside the country, Goldy, to set up shop in the ocean economy than any other of the CDL sites across the country. So more people are wanting to come here from outside the country to this region to set up businesses in the ocean economy than we get applications from domestic companies. So the rest of the world is looking at Atlantic Canada as a place to come and start a business in the ocean economy. And that’s great. We’ve never had that before.

Goldy Hyder

You mentioned startups, things are on fire and everything. And, of course, there’s a legacy here. It’s your own legacy. And you’ve had a lot of successes, but you’ve also had failures. And I’m wondering if you can talk about what you learned from those because that’s a theme that really comes out in these podcasts with our leaders that it’s not been a straight line up.

John Risley

No. And it’s the will to get up when you’re down that I think differentiates, people. And, you get knocked down and you keep getting back up again, that builds resilience, it builds determination, it builds grit, all of which are hugely important if you like to working your way through the problems. I see so many situations where ideas are good and people give up too early. And I think that it helps when you start with little or nothing because then you your risk appetite is enormous because you’ve got nothing to risk. So we started with a big risk appetite and built that sort of determination and grit over time, but mistakes are painful. And the more painful they are, the more you tend to learn from them. And we’ve had more than our share. I often say to people, listen. If I took off my shirt, you wouldn’t believe the number of scars on my back.

Goldy Hyder

But that’s a good lesson for that startup community, isn’t it?

John Risley

Yeah. It’s not all straight up. It’s about figuring out the up days are great. The down days are tough.

Goldy Hyder

Well, speaking of up days and down days, you don’t know what lies ahead for the next big thing you’re working on right now, which is the WorldEnergyGH2. And it’s a very ambitious project. I’ve had the privilege of hearing you speak about it. Wondering if you could just tell us, what are you hoping to do, and what might stand in the way of you doing it?

John Risley

There’s two parts to that question. Let me, if I can, take the first part. The first part is, why is this important? Because Canada has an opportunity to be a leader in a number of fields, and we don’t often see ourselves as natural leaders. We tend to be followers. So the greatest business transition in our generation’s history, Goldy, is the energy transition. That is enormous. It’s trillions of dollars. And there are a number of segments to that, one of which is hydrogen.

Hydrogen is hugely important to a whole bunch of activity. You can’t refine oil. You can’t make steel. You can’t make fertilizer. I could go on and on. Hydrogen is an important component across the sort of industrial economy. And the opportunity to produce clean hydrogen, which releases no carbon, burns absolutely cleanly, has a position or a role, if you like, in which Atlantic Canada has an obvious role to play because it’s got an enormous wind resource, world class wind resource. And 65 per cent of the cost of producing hydrogen is resident in the clean electricity you need to produce the hydrogen. Right? So it’s all about how good is your solar, how good is your wind. Solar is not as good as wind because wind blows more regularly than solar. You know you’re going to be offline in solar for whatever it is …

Goldy Hyder

At least …

John Risley

For sure. Yeah. And so we need to use that resource. Are we good at leading in Atlantic Canada? Are we good at being the first at anything on a world scale basis? No. We’re not. And so this is an opportunity for we think our project is one of the world’s if you were to pick the top 10 leading projects in the world, we think ours would be one of them. It’s enormous because it’s billions of dollars, and people have a huge skepticism around projects of that size anywhere, but especially in Atlantic Canada. So we’re fighting this idea that Atlantic Canada has a rightful home. We’re fighting this idea that Atlantic Canada can’t be first in anything. We’re fighting the prospect of standing up a new industry and having to attract billions of dollars of capital. So there’s lots of roadblocks. We’re fighting the creation of new public policy because this is an industry that doesn’t exist, so it needs policy around it.

Goldy Hyder

And tell me more about that. What’s getting in the way?

John Risley

Yeah. So as you know, the United States came out with the, Inflation Reduction Act. That provided huge stimulus for green energy projects, in particular hydrogen. And I remember meeting with the Deputy Minister of Finance in September of 2022. And he was wondering aloud, how are we ever going to be able to respond because we don’t have the horsepower, the financial horsepower …

Goldy Hyder

We don’t have the U.S. dollar.

John Risley

… and the size of the pocketbook. So, the refundable investment tax credit scheme grew out of that, but that only produces a credit equal to about 40 per cent of what the IRA does. Right? So it’s not going to make us competitive. Some of that we can make up with a better natural resource, but it still leaves us deficient. And you’ll be aware that the government has talked about using contracts for difference and the Canada Growth Fund to support contracts for difference. But you’ve been around government all your life, and you know how difficult it is to actually take political statements and turn them into policy, which industry can access and make that all work. So we have, I think, made a nuisance of ourselves in Ottawa, or I have particularly over the course of the last year, trying to move that ball forward and trying to make the country and help the government sell this. Look. We all want good policy. Right? And what is good policy? Good policy is policy that stands up in industry that has the capacity to be globally competitive, which leads to the creation of huge numbers of jobs and billions of dollars in investment.

Goldy Hyder

Enabling tool. Right? It shouldn’t be obstruction. It should be enabling.

John Risley

Exactly. And these jobs, by the way, like our seafood business, are in rural areas. You’re not going to build a huge hydrogen plant and an accompanying wind farm in downtown Saint John’s.

Goldy Hyder

Exactly. Now, look, I can spend the whole podcast talking about the hydrogen project. But suffice to say, you know, we’re watching, and maybe we’ll have you back and complete the hat trick on this podcast one day and talk more about where you’re at. I want to pivot to the, MDA story. Tell us about, you know, why it is that you suddenly said, you know what? I want to help make sure that that company comes back to Canada and becomes a leader in space technology. Why was that important to you?

John Risley

I had been, I think, as most, business people been aware that a number of years ago, the Harper government had declined a request to sell the business to an American owner. And, the consequence of that was that the business did a reverse takeover in which it became owned by American shareholders by essentially combining itself with a business that was American owned and doing it with shares. And so that was sort of a way around, if you like, the government policy at the time. And the headquarters of the business moved out of Canada to Denver. And I’m not sure that the sort of cost of that was well understood by Canadians. And the fact that  this was an iconic company. This was one of the world’s great space companies, been around for 50 years. An amazing history, legacy in the business started by a guy by the name of John McDonald, who only wanted to do things in which the company could be the best in the world. And that legacy had stuck around.

And I met the CEO one day, just by chance, and he told me that the American owners were getting tired of the they had an over leveraged balance sheet. They’d put the asset up for sale, and, he had been around and given, you know, sort of 40 roadshows, that sort of thing, and he was getting very tired of it. This guy really impressed me. And I didn’t know the story about MDA in any sort of detail. He told me the story. Timing is everything.

Goldy Hyder

Yes.

John Risley

And, the timing for this transaction was just right because space was just sort of, it’s on fire now.

Goldy Hyder

Yeah.

John Risley

And so we sort of were at cusp of, you know, everybody sort of recognizing that the future of communications, the future of warfare, the future of exploration is all in space. And, so we are thrilled with that purchase, and we’ve just to give you a sense of what’s going on with the business, last year, we hired over a thousand people, and of those, over a 140 were PhDs. And how many Canadian companies hired a 140 PhDs last year? Probably not that many. Right? What a great story.

Goldy Hyder

And I suspect some of those people were immigrants too.

John Risley

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Goldy Hyder

So that’s the other edge that I think we have in Canada over the United States. So, you know, for us,

John Risley

we can bring good people into the country. Absolutely.

Goldy Hyder

Exactly.  And our education system’s pretty top notch too. Alright. So that’s the MDA story. I was in the room, I guess it was a year ago, when you were honored with the award at the Public Policy Forum, the testimonial dinner amongst four other honorees. And I must say your speech, and I’ve been to many of these Public Policy Forum testimonial dinners, but it came across as one of the most honest, sincere, genuine, raw appeals to the audience and to everybody outside of that audience to say, hey, there’s something going on here in Canada, and we’ve got to fight for it. And you appealed to people. You literally, I think, held this audience and shook them and said, we’ve got to wake up and you have got to get more involved in public policy. What drove that emotion that night? And tell us the feeling behind that, the sentiment behind that.

John Risley

Yeah. So I’m so worried because policy now has become so politicized, and we see this not just in Canada, but we see it south of the border.

Goldy Hyder

Democracies, really.

John Risley

Yeah. And we see it everywhere. Right? And people tend to especially Canadians, and this is a criticism of Canada. And as a Canadian, I’m allowed to criticize my country, that policy is somebody else’s responsibility. Policy is not somebody else’s responsibility. It’s our responsibility, and we do need to get involved. And I’m not sure people understand, Goldy. You would, of course. But if you think about the impact of good public policy, there was a point in time, and I can’t tell you exactly, but it was like 1960 or something, maybe even later than that, in which the GDP of Jamaica was equal to the GDP of Singapore. And I don’t have to tell you how that story turned out. And what was the difference? The difference was good policy.

Goldy Hyder

Well, the other example we always use is Argentina and Canada. I think in the 1930’s, same GDP per capita. Fast forward, look at the difference. But that doesn’t mean 100 years from now, you might not be where you are today.

John Risley

Exactly. That’s a great point. If you’d asked Argentinians when they were on an equivalent basis with Canada, you know, what did the next 50 years, look like? I bet you they would have said great. Absolutely great.

Goldy Hyder

Exactly. Well, you mentioned the 60’s and 70’s, but something very significant happened in the eighties that you were a part of as well. And that was the support that you and the business community, business leaders gave for free trade when Brian Mulroney, rest his soul, was prime minister. And I remember reading a quote. And you said to the prime minister, you give us free trade, and we will give you a great country. Have we done that?

John Risley

If you look back over the last 35 years, I think it’s been the most important policy. And it was tied in, as you know, with a number of other pieces of policy. We got rid of the federal sales tax, which nobody seems to remember.

Goldy Hyder

Yes.

John Risley

Right? Which was a tax on our ability to be competitive, and it was a crazy tax. Right? And we replaced it with the GST. And so do I think it was hugely valuable? Yeah. I’m not sure Canadians understand how important it has been to us. We are a trading nation. We depend hugely on exports. But unfortunately those exports are primarily focused on the United States, as you know, and that’s a function of that free trade agreement. Totally.

Goldy Hyder

But diversification is certainly underway, wouldn’t you say? I mean, even your own business.

John Risley

We’re still hugely dependent on the United States, but we are much more internationally focused today than we were 30 years ago.

Goldy Hyder

You mentioned you were worried about things. And I again, in your Public Policy Forum speech, you said you are a worrier. What are you worried about now?

John Risley

Well, there’s an awful lot to worry about, unfortunately. I’m really worried about the lack of leadership in the world, good leadership today, and that goes for both democratic countries and those that are not democratic, like China and Russia, where you’ve swung to, very autocratic dictatorships. If you think about the Chinese system, it’s only with the current president that we’ve seen this sort of switch to “no I’m not interested in being elected anymore. I’m interested in serving out the rest of my life as the president.” That’s a huge worry. Look at the politicalization of the agenda in the United States here in this country, look in Europe. I mean, Great Britain or the UK leaving the EU was a tragedy for the UK, a cost that they’ll bear for a very, very long time. And there are still folks out there who don’t think it was a bad thing. I mean, it’s crazy, really. And I don’t see any immediate relief for that leadership vacuum. That’s a problem. I mean, look at the election that we’ve got coming up in November in the United States. That’s hugely worrying for the world. And geopolitical tensions around the world, whether it be the Middle East, whether it be North Korea, whether it be Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia. I mean, I don’t think in my lifetime we’ve ever lived in such an uncertain period, and it’s very worrying.

Goldy Hyder

And it ultimately requires both solutions, but solutions come from people and leaders. And I’m wondering when you see the what seems to be open season on big business, not just in Canada, but, I mean, the President of the United States just did it in a speech as well. When there’s this sense that it’s all about the workers, and I keep asking, well, where do they work? And then secondly, it’s all about the SMEs. And I’m like, well, believe me, they want to become big businesses themselves. But we’re having an attack on free enterprise. What are we going to do about that?

John Risley

I don’t know. And it’s pervasive. Right? Because if you go into the university community and you ask a student population, which should be a reasonably informed …

Goldy Hyder

Sometimes in the MBA program, I’m telling you, when I travel the country, which is even more worrisome.

John Risley

I don’t know that it’s a majority, but a significant component of that community seems to think that socialism is a better environment to live in than capitalism. And I just shake my head because there is no example ever in the history of the world where socialism outshone capitalism. I mean, why did communism in China, thrive? Because they turned to a more capitalist model.

Goldy Hyder

Should we not though acknowledge that certainly take for example the issue of inequality is very prevalent in the world, and that has become sort of the it’s you go back to 2008 and, you know, the financial crisis. You go to Occupy and you go beyond that. What you’re seeing is you promised us that, you know, there would be shared prosperity with these globalization, with these trade agreements, and so forth. It hasn’t seemed to trickle down as Mr Reagan famously said. Some have suggested it’s been hoarded up. What is it that businesses can do without government to help address that inequality question?

John Risley

Along with climate change, it’s the biggest single problem that society faces. And as much as business has a really important role to play in leading the response to climate change, it also has, as you say, a role to play in dealing with this inequality issue. So how can we deal with it? Number 1 is the biggest gap is an education gap. It’s not just a wealth gap. It’s an education gap. If you think about the people at the top, why are they accelerating forward? Because they’re leading economic transition in a faster growing economy and a faster transitioning economy than we’ve ever had before. And education is at the forefront of that. So we need to educate. We need to celebrate the trades as valuable an education tool as an undergraduate degree.

Goldy Hyder

It’s an attitudinal shift required.

John Risley

Absolutely. And we need to understand the impact of generative AI, which is going to be huge. It is going to be enormous. Get ready for it. And to understand, how can we use generative AI to enhance productivity in such a manner as it’s good for people? Will there be job displacement? Yes. There will be job displacement. But how can we take people and make them more productive using Gen AI? It’s not about replacing people. It’s about making people more productive. You can make people more productive – you can pay them more money.

Goldy Hyder

Yeah. And that’s certainly been the case of history. All evolutions and technological revolutions have created the fear of job loss and, in fact, produced economic growth and jobs, just different jobs. And so that training and retraining can be very, very, very important. You know, in in some ways, it fits very well into the next question I had for you, which is, you know, I mentioned you were last on this podcast in the spring of 2020 when we were all in the COVID lockdown, and you were in the so-called Atlantic bubble back then. And you said something on that podcast that really stuck with me. And here’s the quote: “The human condition is incredibly resilient, and we should not despair at the ability of society to get over this.” So here we are 4 years later. How do you think we’ve done as a society?

John Risley

I think the answer to that is mixed. And I say that because, you know, have we got through it? Did the pharmaceutical community step to the table and develop important vaccines? Yes. Good on them. Absolutely fantastic. Shows you how important the role of science is in society today. But I worry, Goldy, that we haven’t learned, that we think now that the pandemic is over and it’ll be whatever it is, 25 years or 50 years before we get another sort of COVID equivalent, and it’s not going to be. We’re going to get another one. And I’m not sure that we might have learned that we can’t shut down, the economy, the world’s economy over a pandemic like this again. It’s just too expensive, and we can’t afford look what we’ve done to the balance sheets of countries as a consequence of this. That can’t happen again. But I’m not sure that we’re as nearly as well prepared as we could and should be to, respond to the inevitable. And I emphasize the word the inevitable next pandemic. I had a role to play in in the rapid screening consortium that we put together in conjunction with the Department of Health, Canada’s Department of Health, to provide testing, if you like, on a scale basis and deal with the issues that arose during the course of the pandemic. You were part of that, as you know. And we spoke to a lot of experts, and I was amazed at the unanimity of opinion that, look, we are in for another one of these and another one after it because bacteria strains are becoming more and more resilient, and we have to, I think, worry about bacteria warfare.

Goldy Hyder

As the old saying goes, if you don’t, you know, learn from your history, you’re doomed to repeat it. And, there’s a lot of people who are concerned about it. I mean, again, that’s a podcast in and of itself about I’m not even sure we’ve actually unpacked the things we didn’t learn and the things we got right. There hasn’t really been an analysis and study. And as you said, if we’re going to be preparing for the next one, we should do that. One of the things in your book, Net Worth, or I guess is written about you in the book, it’s a subject I struggle with, and it’s a subject that many, many CEOs, men and women, struggle with. So I want to just ask you about this. And that’s the struggle of finding so called work life balance. The balance between, you know, and building a business, running a business, growing your business, selling a business, starting the next one, and then still your personal life. You said in the book, it really struck me. And it struck a chord because I think many of us feel this way is: we woke up too late to the responsibility of the family. And I’m wondering, as a mentor, as someone who is speaking to people, to me and to many others, what advice are you giving from your own experience?

John Risley

Yeah. Don’t screw up like I screwed up.

Goldy Hyder

I think we could all say that.

John Risley

Yeah. It’s true in my case. Family is really important. Your legacy is not how much money you leave in your bank account. Your legacy is your family. And this idea that business comes before family. And I remember saying to my wife at one point in time, the most incredibly stupid thing that I’ve ever said in my life, which was to the effect that, look, my business is all important, and I’m going to put, you know, she was complaining about me being away or not coming home or something. And I essentially said my business was more important than my family. And, you know, she should have taken a crowbar or a knife and, you know, hit me as hard as she possibly could.

Goldy Hyder

Well, I’m glad she didn’t do that, but she should have certainly let you know that’s not true.

John Risley

Exactly. And you know, that was naivety. It was immaturity. It was a lack of sense of values. And, no, you need to grow up with an appropriate sense of values, and you need to live those values. And there can’t be anything more important than family. And look, that doesn’t mean you have to be around all the time. It just means that you have to be conscious of the responsibility you have to the family unit and the role that you play with your partner in contributing, if you like, to the growth of family. And look, we’ve got technology that we didn’t have 20 years ago. I don’t have to go to New York for a 3 hour board meeting anymore. I can do it on Zoom with people I already know. I don’t have to go you know, they know me. I know them. So there are more opportunities. I mean, I’m speaking to you from home. Was I in the office this morning? Yeah. I was in the office this morning, but I can be home, right, in the afternoon and still do business. So we’ve got more flexibility than we’ve ever had, and we need to use the flexibility wisely. And I preach to young people today. Look. Don’t miss out on your kid’s development.

Goldy Hyder

What are you learning from young people when you meet with them? Not what you’re telling them, but what are you learning from them today?

John Risley

What broad perspective they have, how well read they are, how well informed they are.

Goldy Hyder

But they’re anxious too. Right, John?

John Risley

Yeah. They’re very anxious and if you think about it with good reason, we’ve screwed the world up on them.

Goldy Hyder

Exactly.

John Risley

And we’re relying on them to fix it. And we should be ashamed of ourselves as a generation for what we’ve done. You know? We’ve left them with enormous fiscal debts, enormous obligations. And if you think about the social security system in the United States, if it doesn’t get changed, it’s going to bankrupt the country for sure.

Goldy Hyder

Climate, infrastructure, state of our democracy, the list goes on.

John Risley

Absolutely.

Goldy Hyder

Well, look, you we talked about the importance of you know, the business and the family and something that you and I and members of the Business Council spend a lot of time talking on is our love of country, our love of Canada. I want you to just share with us, as a final thought. What is your hope for this country? What is your wish for Canada as we look forward?

John Risley

That we become more ambitious. We’re so lucky to have been born here in this country with the resources that we’ve got, with the way of life we’ve got, with the value system we’ve got, the respect with which we hold each other. And I worry that we’re squandering it, that we don’t understand the world is an enormously competitive place. And to your point earlier, Goldy, about Argentina, we can’t be Argentina 50 years ago because otherwise, we’re going to end up where Argentina is today, and look where it is today. So we’ve got to be more aggressive. We’ve got to be more ambitious. We’ve got to get rid of this complacency that is sort of a hallmark of being Canadian is the fact that, oh, well, you know, we’re Canadians, and we can afford to be complacent. No we can’t. We cannot afford to be complacent. We can’t rely on the Americans. We’ve got to rely on ourselves.

Goldy Hyder

Well, if there’s a prototype and a poster child for someone who lives up to what you just said, it’s you. You’ve done that with your own leadership. Thank you for sharing it, with our listeners. It’s been, very enlightening, and there’s a lot of things that I’m going to be reflecting on. Normally, we would go to a sort of some kind of a rapid fire questions about some fun stuff. And I’m going to spare you all of that because I want just one question that I think I want to know the answer to, which I actually don’t know, which is what is your favorite seafood?

John Risley

I’m ashamed to admit it. What was started in its sort of career as a consumer product as Chilean sea bass, which is really a Patagonian toothfish, and it’s not caught off the coast of Chile anymore. It’s caught off in the Arctic. And it’s a fish very much like it’s an oily halibut. Great. I love it. And whenever it’s on the menu, that’s what I’m eating.

Goldy Hyder

And I will have one next time I see it. Thanks so much for doing this, John. Great to see you, my friend.

John Risley

My pleasure.

Goldy Hyder

John Risley is the chairman and CEO of CFFI Ventures. If you would like to hear more of our Speaking of Business conversations with innovators, leaders, and entrepreneurs, why not subscribe to our podcast? Search for Speaking of Business wherever you get your podcasts or simply go to our website at the Business Council dot ca. Yes. It’s the Business Council dot ca. Until next time. I’m Goldy Hyder. Thanks for joining us.