Past Issues

There is an undeniably hopeful quality to the holiday season. The imminent New Year provides a fresh start for us individually, and a new quarter for most businesses. It’s an opportunity to restart the clocks and set new goals for the months ahead. We here at The Canadian Business Journal share in this sentiment and are diligently preparing for the entrepreneurs, companies and stories that we will proudly feature in the New Year, and who will lead the 1.7 per cent growth predicted by TD Bank this month at a time when many countries are expecting negative growth.

For a peak into the looking glass, you’ll find HIS’s Chief Economist’s Nariman Behravesh’s Top 10 predictions for the New Year in these pages, addressing global slowed growth.

Laura Stavro-Beauchamp is our guest columnist this month, providing us with a feature story on the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, relating “that Canadian pension plans are further along the learning curve, treating infrastructure as a separate asset class, hedged in line with inflation affected assets, rather than a subset of real estate investment,” but must recognize changing demographics and backlogs in development.

As always, we have profiled the best of Canadian business in industries such as construction, finance and health care, and are proud to champion those who make Canada the best country in the world to do business.

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Our December cover story features an interview with one of Canada’s most successful portfolio managers, CEOs and investors. Sprott Asset Management’s heavy investment in silver and gold bring a silver lining, if you will pardon the pun, to the precarious global economic outlook forecast at every turn. “Silver is the investment of this decade,” says Sprott, and he puts his money where his mouth is, recently purchasing an additional $1.5 billion of silver bullion for anticipated demand for his company’s exchange traded fund. Prescient investors are looking more and more at commodities to protect their assets in this environment of continued devalued currencies, and Sprott explains the data behind his confidence in the metal. As Alex Carrick cautions in his monthly column, it will not pay to take a passive stance.

Despite challenges from abroad, Canada has fared exceptionally well, as the pages of this issue attest to: never have we had more outstanding companies to profile. We decided it was past time to laud the praises of Mississauga, Canada’s sixth largest city, and home to over 60 Fortune 500 companies. And filling these companies are many graduates from the University of Toronto, Mississauga campus, with a new educational paradigm created in tandem with the city of Mississauga to facilitate its evolution as a knowledge-based centre.

We also bring you commentary on the ill-begat Occupy Wall Street movement (which disintegrated into a protest over the right to sit in a park here in Toronto) from Roy Green, along with contributions in the fields of clean energy, retail, healthcare and resources.

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The Canadian Business Journal is published every month with a singular goal: to showcase the best of Canadian business nationally and around the world.

For the November issue, we advocate on behalf of one of our most globally influential companies, Research in Motion Inc. The recent problems the company has faced do not merit the wolf pack that has set upon it, and we predict that 2012 will be a banner year for the company if it can learn from its missteps, react quickly to speculation and concentrate on fewer, more popular products.

Despite a less-than-optimistic report from the Bank of Canada which reported the Canadian economy has weakened since June, Canadian business continues to lead the charge toward a robust domestic economy, with “business fixed investment still expected to grow solidly in response to very stimulative financial conditions and heightened competitive pressures, although it will be dampened by the weaker and more uncertain global economic environment.”

Now more than ever, it’s important to celebrate our best and brightest, such as Fundy Tidal, a company in Nova Scotia that is using the most current science to harness the power of the Bay of Fundy, and Aboriginal Pipeline Group, a partner with the groundbreaking Mackenzie Valley gas project in the Northwest Territories, as well as many others proudly featured in our pages.

Continued support of Canadian business and entrepreneurs will help shield us from the turbulent economies of other countries. As Rick Costanzo said to us regarding the future at RIM, “There are tremendous opportunities in front of us. The question is how do we best approach them?”

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Yes, The Canadian Business Journal was in St. John’s, N.L. this month for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s AGM, and we picked up some of the local dialogue. As the official media partner of the event, CBJ was on hand to meet representatives from the municipalities whose achievements we have shared in the past three years, and discuss which exciting developments we will be spotlighting next.

The AGM was a wonderful opportunity to see the diversity that Canadian business encompasses. The Canadian Business Journal’s mandate is to provide the best coverage of Canadian business and when a study on the economic impact of Aboriginal business came out, we realized that this is an underrepresented group in business media, despite projections that aboriginal business will contribute more money than the GDP of Newfoundland and Labrador and P.E.I. combined by 2036.

Once we started to look for them, good news stories of successful and innovative aboriginal businesses came flooding and will be featured in this and coming issues of CBJ. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin was eager to speak to us about the achievements of the Aboriginal community and what the private sector has done to support it, a conversation you will find in this issue. Martin’s political commitment to helping First Nations groups has crossed over to his private life, and he was recognized by the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business for his continued work towards improving education, social programs and employment for those groups.

We’re happy to bring you these stories and more, including an interview with John Carruthers, President of Northern Gateways Pipelines on the mega-project that will be opening Canadian markets to the east.

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Welcome to the September issue of The Canadian Business Journal. Yes, September already. This summer has come and gone in the blink of an eye, hasn’t it? As if to shake us out of our collective summer solstice, portentous and strange meteorological events of the past week— Hurricane Irene, an earthquake—have ushered out August in a hurry.

Tremors were also felt in political realm with the untimely death of NDP leader Jack Layton. The measure of public response to his passing was surprising. Even those who did not share his politics could not help but respect his lively campaign which broke through rhetoric and sound bites and into the affections of many Canadians. That Layton, after 10 years of climbing a mountain to bring the NDP into the official opposition (and decimate the Bloc Quebecois), is unable to stand and enjoy the view is a cruelty that resonated with Canadians from coast to coast.

Few judged the public’s reaction to Layton’s death worse than Christie Blatchford, who described in the National Post his death as a “spectacle”, and the letter to be read after his demise as “vainglorious”. Who denies a person, particularly one dedicated to public service, the chance to say good-bye, to punctuate his life’s work, to rev the NDP’s engine one last time? Given Blatchford’s prodigious opining, it seems hypocritical to begrudge a man this last opportunity.

Changing of the guards is an inevitability, but can also occur under the happiest of circumstances, as it has in our own offices. Our dear Editor-in-Chief, Sara Kopamees, who had guided this ship since it first launched, is moving on to pursue other endeavours. We will miss seeing her regularly, but will enjoy celebrating her future successes as she has championed those around her.

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As you may have noticed, the team at CBJ has been very busy this month. From interviewing Tennis Canada in a special report (we’re getting ever so close to the Rogers Cup), to profiling some of the most enticing food and drink businesses in Canada like Pizzaiolo and Pacific Brewing—it’s been an exciting month.

But that’s not the only focus we’ve had for August. This month we bring you the latest in our Sustainability Series. We focus on company strengths in sustainability such as the ones exhibited by Direct Energy, and speak about human resource development at some of the country’s largest mining companies in our piece with MiHR. We were lucky enough to get an invite to see the opening of the GTA’s largest solar panel installation (a little nerve-wracking for those not fond of heights), and also feature an interview with Luiz Mello from Vale’s Technology Institute who talks about greening the industry.

If you’ve been wondering about the dipping markets lately, and if they will take a toll on Canadian business, you need only to flip through the pages of this month’s issue to see that Canada is continuously gaining strength in the world economy. And we’ll continue to bring you all the latest and greatest news in our national business landscape: whether it’s in food and drink, manufacturing, or sports (we’ve got a big one coming up in September—so stay tuned!)

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Although I wasn’t raised in Alberta, I was born in the beautiful province, and feel a great sense of pride when considering the gifts Alberta has given our country.

This month, CBJ pays tribute to Alberta with a focus on the economic and social contributions it has made to Canada.

We spoke with a variety of industry heads, including Energy Minister Ron Liepert and Minister of Infrastructure Ray Danyluk. Our interview with Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers encapsulates the excitement surrounding industry and technological development in Alberta. We take a look at the Stampede and its contributions to the economic side of things, and oh yes, we explore how there’s so much more than oil in the energy province.

This month we profile a variety of companies doing great things across the country, and take a closer look at Govan Brown, our 2010 CBJ Company of the Year Award winner.

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Let’s take this opportunity to officially congratulate Govan Brown on receiving the 2010 CBJ Company of the Year Award.

While there was some stiff competition, Govan Brown was the clear leader in all four areas of review: innovation, operational growth, sustainability,
and corporate culture.

Govan Brown’s story will be featured next month in CBJ, so stay tuned!

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In our role as promoters of Canadian business, we are reminded daily that the executive landscape is diverse, and, specifically, that women are contributing mmeasurable value to private and public companies. Canada’s economy benefits from the expertise, career advancement and successes of female business leaders, but are they starting out on equal footing as their male counterparts? Is the struggle for equality completely over? It’s an interesting topic that we feel is worth an extra take, and have created our Women in Business Series to examine the issues. Flip through our first run of the Series, as we reflect on the women who have been featured in the magazine, and look at some great organizations contributing to the success of women in corporate roles.

On another introductory note; with the Japanese earthquake and tsunami being the focus of our last editorial note, we did not have the opportunity to introduce two new columnists to The Canadian Business Journal. We are very excited to have Roy Green on our masthead. Green is also currently a columnist for the National Post and hosts a national weekly radio show interviewing Canada’s political leaders. Alex Carrick is the Chief Economist with Reed Construction Data which provides solutions that give you direct access to the most up-todate and concise market intelligence. Carrick’s monthly column will forecast all there is to know in the Canadian construction industry, providing invaluable information for that sector.

Another great development this month: we are pleased to announce that Govan Brown Construction Managers have been recognized as the 2010 CBJ Company of the Year, and will be given the Award this month. Congratulations to all the companies who were named as finalists, and we will share with you more about Govan Brown’s award as well as take a look at the strengths of the other companies who entered, throughout the summer issues of CBJ.

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This issue of CBJ celebrates Canada’s strong economy in our feature section “Canada on the World Stage”. Our focus for February is the critical relationship between Canada and the United States.

Canada relies on our trade with the U.S. to keep our economy robust, so learning how to keep our trade open and dialogue with regulators smooth is imperative to a working relationship.

With that said: there are thousands of reasons for companies to invest and do business in Canada, but there are no better people to illustrate those benefits than experts and advocates who are seeing the results day after day. In our special annual section, you will find illuminating interviews with Jane Moffat from the Canadian American Business Council, Professor Alexander Moens from the world-renowned Fraser Institute, and Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz. Their viewpoints echo what we at CBJ have heard from the hundreds of companies we interview: our relationship with the U.S. is a potential model for other bilateral affiliations around the world and is vital to our national success.

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