Rod McQueen's Blog, page 6

Bring on the empty rhetoric

Not since soldiers marched on the parade square have I seen anything quite so regimented as the annual meeting. I’ve been to many such corporate gatherings and it matters not a whit whether it’s held in Calgary or Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver – everything is interchangeable from one city to another, one company to another.
Shareholders assemble outside a downtown hotel meeting room for free coffee and cookies then take their seats as close as possible to the rear of the hall for a quick departure. The top corporate executives sit at a long table with their names emblazoned on placards in front of them, as if they were delegates from emerging countries attending the United Nations.
Directors occupy the front two rows. They wear identification badges so shareholders can corner them later and ask penetrating questions about the intricacies of corporate governance. However, the directors always seem to disappear as soon as they can without facing even the most modest scrutiny.
Near the podium sit the investment bankers who count on the company for their livelihood earned from stock issues and other offerings. They’re the ones who laugh heartily at the chief executive’s jokes. Once all participants are assembled, the chairman taps the microphone then blows into it to make sure it’s working and summons the meeting to order. 
The first agenda item is to introduce all those people who already have placards or name tags, as if no one among the assembled can read. Then begins a sad charade of corporate democracy as pre-arranged individuals pop up to propose or second motions that will be little noted nor long remembered. Votes on those various items have already been counted in advance by scrutineers. Autocrats, take note for new techniques.
Next, the chairman praises the chief executive officer who bashfully thanks him and then delivers a twenty-minute message as minds wander off all around the room. Just as name tags exist for those who wouldn’t otherwise be identifiable, some of the CEO’s finest phrases are flashed on a huge screen, apparently for the benefit of those who cannot hear.
At last comes the part of the meeting that causes some CEOs sleepless nights: the question and answer session. Once, in my brief corporate life as a PR man, I prepared a briefing book for a CEO. What’s the point? Rarely are there any tough questions from the floor.
Given all that buffoonery, I hereby propose all annual meetings be cancelled forthwith. Most companies already have quarterly conference calls with analysts, why not open up those sessions to include media and shareholders who want to attend via Zoom? Oh, and how about posting the boss’s briefing book online, the one that contains the answers to any and all possible questions? The contents would certainly be more interesting than any speech.

 

 

Paperback writer

Once, when I was a much younger and more callow man, I was sitting with friends over dinner at one of those restaurants that has brown wrapping paper covering the table as well as crayons for decorative activities. Someone said, “Let’s write down what we want in life.” Various declarations were made: marriage, money, good health. I wrote “Fame.” Looking back, it was a foolish and immature ambition.
The closest I ever got to fame was the 1998 publication of The Eatons: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Royal Family. Canada’s most famous department store had gone bankrupt and I wrote the authoritative book, beginning with founder Timothy Eaton and going all the way to the young fifth-generation family members who were working in the stores at the end. “You own that story,” said the late arts and culture authority Peter Herrndorf at the time when he was chairman and CEO of TVOntario.
While mine was never the fame of Margaret Atwood, who has become unavoidable, it was as close as I got. And you know what? There isn’t much chance of fame for most authors, including me. Books have a shelf life somewhere between milk and yogurt.
Where do book ideas come from? When Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, was asked how she chose one idea over another among the many possibilities presented at any given story meeting, she replied, “My nipples get hard.”
My physical reaction was usually a little lower down; a good idea literally hits me in the gut. For example, while holidaying in rural France in August 1994, by sheer chance I happened to stop at a newsstand where a page one headline in the Financial Times leapt out: the Canadian government had seized Confederation Life. Without reading further, I knew immediately that was my next book. Who Killed Confederation Life? won the National Business Book Award.
As it turned out, my failure to find fame didn’t matter a hoot because I discovered something I hadn’t realized was possible during that earlier time in the restaurant. I found the pure, unadulterated joy in the very act of writing itself: word by word, sentence by sentence, page by page, rewrite by rewrite. And, as time rolls on, you discover that you need not retire from writing. Writing never abandons you. Fame may be fleeting but writing is forever.

A woman’s place

HBO’s “Succession” is all about which one of his offspring would succeed the feisty founder Logan Roy. In fact, the autocrat’s belligerent handling of the topic gave the four-season television series its vigour. CEOs of the big five Canadian banks cannot conduct any such shenanigans. In those institutions, succession must be as smooth as a kitten’s wrist.
That’s why eyebrows popped in 2022 when the board of Scotiabank chose a director, Scott Thomson, to become president, then president and CEO in 2023. To be sure, the board makes the final decision to appoint the CEO, but I cannot recall any other occasion in modern banking history when the directors picked one of their own.
More typical Scotiabank behavior occurred when Ced Ritchie retired as CEO in 1993 and long-time designated heir Peter Godsoe took over. Scott McDonald had also been in the running for a while, but must have realized it wasn’t going to be him because he left the bank in 1987 well before the transition occurred.
Today, bank shareholders are pressing to be part of the process. No CEO should stay too long, they say. At TD Bank, Bharat Masrani has been CEO for ten years, so attendees at the TD annual meeting earlier this month were expecting an announcement on succession. None was forthcoming. The closest Masrani came was to say that there were “very detailed and robust succession plans across the bank.” My bet is that there will be an announcement at or before the next annual meeting.
At CIBC, Victor Dodig is facing a similar anniversary as Masrani, ten years at the top. At CIBC’s annual meeting last week, Dodig went so far as to offer the names of three bank executives as possible successors. “This is a team sport,” he told the Globe and Mail. “This is about the baton. Sometimes you hold it on your own for a while, but you hand it over.”
My substantial problem with CEO succession at all of the big five banks is that there is a scarcity of women in the running. Like Masrani and Dodig, at Royal Bank David McKay has been CEO for ten years. Jacynthe Côté has been board chair for only a year, but was previously CEO at Rio Tinto Alcan, so she has experience in the CEO role. Maybe the Royal board of directors could pull a Scotiabank and not only designate one of their own as CEO, but pick a woman as well. Wouldn’t that be leadership, both for Côté and the bank.

 

Brian Mulroney 1939-2024

After Robert Stanfield announced in the summer of 1975 that he was stepping down, potential candidates for his job as leader of the Progressive Conservative Party bestirred themselves. Brian Mulroney, one of the party’s very few high-profile stalwarts in Quebec, began calling me at home every Sunday afternoon. The reason was not to seek my support but to read me his draft of a possible speech, opinion piece, or policy proposal and ask for comment.
Mulroney ran for leader in 1976 but lost to Joe Clark. That must have hurt, but Mulroney kept his curses close. While Mulroney served as president of Iron Ore Co. of Canada, he’d hold meetings in a private dining room at Montreal’s Mount Royal Club, plotting his revenge. After Clark lost the government in 1980 and battled grimly to keep his post, Mulroney worked so hard behind the scenes to oust Clark that he almost befouled his own future.
As former party president Dalton Camp told me, Camp said to Mulroney in 1982: “You’re being measured for a shroud.” Only then did Mulroney declare public peace, but let his loyalists engineer Clark’s downfall, leading to the 1983 leadership convention won by Mulroney.
A few days after Mulroney’s 211-seat electoral victory in 1984, I received a call from Sam Wakim, a lawyer and best friend of Mulroney since their university days at St. Francis Xavier. Wakim asked if I’d like to be Mulroney’s press secretary. I turned him down, saying I’d been press secretary to Stanfield and didn’t want to go back to Ottawa.
I much preferred my role as a journalist and was among the first to conduct a sit-down interview with Mulroney as prime minister, in my case early in 1985 on assignment for Fortune. Of Canada, asked Mulroney in the article that ran in a March issue, “Who wants to buy it? What is there so compellingly attractive about Canada that causes us to think that anybody is going to rush in simply because somebody says, ‘I’d like to do business with you.’”
On a personal basis, Mulroney honestly cared about the sufferings of others. I can’t count the number of people who told me over the years that they heard from Mulroney after some personal illness or a death in their family. But those winning skills came with a weakness. While he would back a friend in a manner that was almost tribal, he never forgave an enemy. Most caucus members who failed to support him for the leadership fared poorly at his hand during his years in office.
But Mulroney healed a political party that had feuded for twenty years. His electoral victories in 1984 and 1988 yielded the first back-to-back majorities by any Tory leader in the twentieth century.
Moreover, he reinvented Canada. He tackled abuse of social programs, privatized government agencies, and launched the goods and services tax to reduce the deficit. He also pushed business to be less reliant on government largesse and instead break into new markets through the Canada-U.S free trade agreement. As with all politicians, he wanted to be liked, but he was willing to do the unpopular.
There’s just that one thing. After leaving office Mulroney accepted a total of $225,000 in cash from German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber during clandestine meetings in hotel rooms. Despite that failing, if Mulroney could, I’d be happy to take his call and hear from him one more time.

The dying of the light

The Globe and Mail has recently added a new feature, a half-page wanna-be-there story about some sunbaked resort, festive cruise, or guided tour so grand that it will turn you into one of those sought-after influencers. At the end of each massaged piece there’s always a reverent sentence, displayed in an italic font, that says something like: “The writer was a guest of Fantasy Farm but the Farm did not read or approve the story before publication.”
Last Saturday there were two such articles in my morning paper, both on skiing in Japan, written by two different authors about two different resorts in that one far-off country. Such abundance! The war in Ukraine could not keep up.
While the generous hosts may not approve these stories, they might as as well have. The articles are usually fawning flapdoodle efforts except for some minor complaint as a lawn chair that would not open easily. Rarely does anyone find surprises like hair clogging the bathroom sink or having to suffer a surly waiter. 
To be sure, other writers have enjoyed an equally special status. During the 1970s, members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery could order a drink delivered swiftly by a gallery staffer to their seat while they typed. Back at home office, however, editors pored over everything from the accuracy of their submission all the way to proper punctuation.
But today when newsroom layoffs are occurring two before tea, outlets across the country are closing down, and thoughtful television documentary programs such as W5 are being killed, I worry about what will remain for us to read and watch in the not-too-distant future. Already there are two- and four-page spreads in my morning newspaper with stories and topics that have been penned by advertisers or interest groups. Fortunately, so far they are marked at the top with the word “Content” much like the mediaeval leper at the castle gates who uttered “Unclean” to anyone who strayed too close. 
As a result of all these failings and firings, the future of journalistic institutions that used to set the agenda for debate across the country is becoming clearer. Here’s my prediction: newspapers will soon be written using Artificial Intelligence paid for by advertisers thereby making them little better than those flyers you throw away as soon as they slither through your mailbox. Not even George Orwell, author of the novel 1984, could have imagined a totalitarian regime so bleak.

Letter of the law

I took a guided tour of of the Ontario Legislature this week. I’d previously sat in the visitors gallery and once attended a reception on a lower floor, so decided it was time to see the full panoply. 
Opened in 1893, the main floor, legislative chamber, and vast hallways are magnificent in oak. There are skylights, green and gold trim everywhere, and carvings above the doorways. The Mace, symbol of the Speaker, is displayed in a glass case for all to see up close because the legislature is not sitting. Crafted in 1867 it was regilded recently with two diamonds from northern Ontario added at the top under the crown. Beside it is the original wooden Mace from 1792. Stolen during the War of 1812 it was kept by the U.S. until President Franklin Delano Roosevelt returned it in 1934.
But for all the rich resonance of Ontario oak inside and Credit Valley granite outside, the west wing – reconstructed after a fire in 1909 – is curiously out of sync. The interior columns and walls are made with marble from Italy and the mosaic floor done with thousands of tiny tiles from Buffalo. 
All past premiers have portraits hanging done by artists of their choice. David Peterson’s stands out after a staid lineup of stuffed shirts and seated suits. His right arm is leaning on a fireplace mantel, his left hand is thrust into his pants pocket. He’s wearing no jacket, his tie and the top button of his shirt are undone, and his sleeves are rolled up.
Apparently Peterson told artist Linda Kooluris Dobbs that because he loved horses he wanted horses in the painting. As a result, reflected in the mirror above the mantel is a window with the head of a horse visible through the glass looking in. In case that wasn’t enough, his tie has several dozen small horses. Bob Rae is equally relaxed, wearing no jacket, seated at his desk. I could see no animals in his presence but there is an oddly empty chair dominating the left foreground. 
Strangest sight of all is the bronze bust just unveiled last month of Lincoln Alexander. He was Canada’s first Black Member of Parliament, the first Black cabinet minister, and the first Black Lieutenant-Governor. I knew Linc, worked with him in Ottawa, and I know he would have been proud to be so honoured. But there’s something off about the bust. At best, it’s taupe in colour. At worst, it’s got a green hue. How bronze couldn’t have been darker I cannot say. 

Chapter and verse

Fall and Christmas are the seasons for new books. As an author myself, I admire and appreciate the effort that goes into researching and writing a book. Here are brief reviews of three recent books that I enjoyed.
The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of the Modern Canada. The thing that bothers me most about John Ibbitson’s book is that Pearson and Diefenbaker – warts and all – are far more interested in the welfare of Canadians than today’s leaders. Dief’s populism overshadows Pierre Poilievre’s poor attempts to align himself with voters. Pearson’s fertile brain makes Justin Trudeau look like a schoolboy. “The House was different then,” Ibbitson quotes Jean Chrétien as saying many years later.
Ibbitson’s writing style is fluid and his thesis is fascinating. Rather than just be foes when they took turns running the country in the 1950s and 1960s, Ibbitson sees Pearson and Diefenbaker building on each other’s work. Pearson gave the country the Canada Pension Plan, begun by earlier regimes, but then made more generous by Diefenbaker. In Ibbitson’s mind, The Duel could almost be The Duo.
George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle. Author Philip Norman must surely be the authority on the Beatles. He has written Shout about the group as well as biographies of Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Sex acts feature widely in this book. Harrison took up with Maureen, wife of Ringo. Meanwhile, Pattie, George’s wife, was with Eric Clapton who wrote “Layla” for her. Said George, “I’d rather she was with him than some dope.”
Harrison wrote twenty-two Beatles songs including “My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Something in the Way She Moves,” and the most-played Beatles song of all, “Here Comes the Sun.” George calls himself “the quiet Beatle” and Norman describes him as “elusive” but the author never really proves his thesis as set out in the title: “Reluctant.”
Elon Musk. Walter Isaacson, following his triumphant book about Steve Jobs and Apple, has written a terrific book about Elon Musk, the most prolific inventor of the age. He’s also the most demanding and least lovable. Musk has Asperger syndrome so has no empathy. During one visit by his mother, he disappeared for hours to play a video game on his phone. His ideas and driven ways have replaced NASA with SpaceX, led electric car sales with Tesla, and brought about Neuralink, which has done a brain implant. Isaacson had total access to Musk for two years. If a meeting collapsed amid shouting or a rocket blew up, Musk never once said, “Don’t put that in the book.” For all his success, the proof of Musk’s capability may come with his purchase of Twitter, now called X. While his co-workers had to accept his many foibles, the world may well take umbrage with the heavy-handed way he is running the popular social media site.

Dance of the dialectic

After finishing second in the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis decided he would depart the Republican presidential race, saying he was “suspending” his campaign. At first, I thought the verb he used was a weasel word that would allow him to reactivate his run. Then I realized that he was just going with the flow in public pronouncements by using a euphemism. 
A similar subterfuge has infected the business world. When a chief executive officer leaves abruptly, he’s said to be “stepping aside.” Is he still on the executive floor and attending important meetings? I think not. But it’s better to do a lateral arabesque than suffer with a more accurate description of what the board of directors did.
This kind of sashay rhetoric is not new. During the Second World War Prime Minister Mackenzie King managed to walk both sides of the debate about conscription by saying, “Conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription.” 
I’ve had my own foray into wordplay. In the run-up to the 1972 election, when I was working for Opposition Leader Robert Stanfield, the federal and provincial governments announced a second international airport would be built east of Toronto in Pickering. I wrote a report on the issue that said while there was some support, most people in the Toronto area were against the plan. 
In the midst of the election, Stanfield declared he would hold a news conference on the topic the following morning. That evening, as I travelled on the press bus toward our overnight hotel, I was pestered by several journalists about what Stanfield planned to say. It was easy for me to remain silent. Stanfield had not yet decided his position. Several of us were meeting that very night to come up with something he could safely say. 
The meeting began around 10 p.m. and included Stanfield staffer Bill Grogan, campaign chair Finlay Macdonald, guru Dalton Camp, Research Director Geoff Molyneux, and me. Debate was protracted and went on until dawn. Finally, I think it was Dalton who came up with a phrase: “The case for a second airport has not yet been made.” Perfect! Stanfield was neither for nor against and he’d thrown the ball right back to the proponents. As Mark Twain has said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is like the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning.”

Cry, the beloved country

I read in my morning newspaper that both Bell and Rogers are thinking about increasing monthly charges for wireless and Internet customers. Funnily enough, both companies were considering hikes of a similar amount. I’m not suggesting collusion –  Heaven forbid – but it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to conclude we have too few big media companies in Canada competing for customers.
By contrast, in the U.S., Verizon is giving away iPhones with any trade-in in any condition. Rog/Bell will never make such an offer. Why? Because Canadians are complacent and compliant, not demanding or desiring. At this time of year, all we care about is surviving winter.
We’re also lazy. Productivity per capita has been falling for at least twenty years while that same measurement continues to rise in the U.S. One problem is that too many Canadian businesspeople are content to chug along at a certain level of effort making $250,000 a year by operating a small business with six employees. They have no interest in expanding so don’t invest capital in the firm. And far too many founders feel their just reward is to be swallowed up by a U.S. firm so they can retire to Florida.
I keep reading American success stories like the one about the guy in New England who started Staples in 1985 because he couldn’t find a typewriter ribbon on a weekend. Today, there are more than 1,200 Staples stores in the U.S. and Canada, plus some in Europe and South America. We need more such founders like Frank Stronach (Magna) and Frank Hasenfratz (Linamar) who emigrated to Canada in the 1950s, penniless, but with tool and die training learned in their respective home country. Too many of today’s immigrants arrive with no skills at all.
Worse, Canadians don’t celebrate success. For example, we don’t embrace or admire our singers and actors until they make it in Hollywood or New York. What kind of country waits for the applause of another nation before feeling proud of their own? About the only star I can think of who stayed home and gained any level of reverence and respect in Canada was Gordon Lightfoot. Three hundred musicians did covers of his songs but he lived in Toronto and played Massey Hall 170 times and we loved him.
I weep for my country. We could be so much more. If only we believed in ourselves.

Fearless forecast

Here are my top ten predictions for 2024. 
1. Justin Trudeau will remain leader of the Liberal Party. Pierre Poilievre’s 10-point lead will evaporate. No election will be caused or called.
2. A recession as defined by two quarters of slow or no growth will occur. Previously compassionate Canadians will turn mean and blame immigrants for both the housing crisis and hard times.
3. The S&P/TSX Composite Index will fall 18 percent.
4. Donald Trump will win the U.S. presidential election. All hell will break loose.
5. Israel will reject international pleas for peace and continue to pursue Hamas even as the number of dead Palestinians rises to 50,000.
6. Forest fires will repeat last summer’s sultry proliferation thereby bringing cries of outrage and threats of reprisals by the United States toward Canada.
7. Russia will offer peace to Ukraine in return for keeping all the territory it has won. Ukraine will refuse. Fighting will carry on as the world loses interest and aid to Ukraine dries up. 
8. Toronto and other cities will rename more streets and remove more statues in a futile attempt to forget a past that will always haunt us.
9. We’ll wish Artificial Intelligence had never been invented.
10. In spite of everything, may all your hopes and dreams come true.