Conversations That Matter

Ep 464 - Addressing Renewable Energy’s Weak Link Guest: Matt Harper By Stuart McNish   Will vanadium redox flow batteries address an issue that has been the Achilles’ heel of renewable energy production – how to store the power generated by wind and solar power generation? The sector has challenges, such as the inability of renewable energy sources to produce consistent on-demand power needed to supply an ever-fluctuating need.    Matt Harper of Vancouver-based Invinity Energy Systems, a leader in battery storage systems says, “Yes. And in doing so, we will be filling a significant need in jurisdictions where there is a huge increase in the amount of renewable power being generated – power that needs a home until it is required for use: places like California, Australia and Alberta.”   We invited Matt Harper to join us for a Conversation That Matters about harnessing, storing, discharging and recharging renewable energy to meet the electricity needs of the future.   Learn More about our guests career at caree

Ep 463 - Working Towards Ending Genocide Guest: Dr James Smith By Stuart McNish “More than 60% of the population of Rwanda was born after the genocide in 1994. They feel its effects, but have little knowledge of what caused it to happen,” says Dr. James Smith of Aegis Trust.  The ravages of genocide tear familes, communities and societies apart. Smith adds, “It takes decades of reconciliation, peace-building and support to repair the damage done, and constant vigilance to ensure it does not happen again.” Central to ensuring it doesn’t happen again is the need to help people who have no concept of peace or how to plan to start to envision a future. Dr. Smith says, “The victims of genocide spent years focused on the minutes ahead of them, relying on their wits to stay alive. Tomorrow, next week, next month never existed, so there was no need to plan or work toward a better future.” Since 2008, Aegis’ peace-building education program has reached  thousands of young Rwandans – a “Peace Education” program that

Ep 461 - Life in Canada after fleeing Syria Guest: Nour Suliman By Stuart McNish   It’s been eight years since 25,000 Syrian refugees were resettled in Canada. Our country, in keeping with our commitment to the United Nations Commission for Refugees, is “obliged to protect refugees and treat them according to international standards.” Nour Suliman and her family fled to Canada after dodging bullets, landmines and barrel bombs in Syria.    Nour and her family were some of the 13 million Syrians forced from their homes. Some moved within their country; others fled fearing for their lives. In an earlier Conversations That Matter interview, Nour said, “17 of us would pack into my father’s car at a moment's notice. My grandparents, parents, aunt and uncle and my cousins all squeezed into the car to escape numerous deadly threats.”   It has now been  7 years since Nour and her family arrived in Canada. We invited Nour Suliman to join us for a Conversation That Matters to share how life in her new home is unfolding.

Ep 462 - How to reduce adverse drug reactions Guest: Amani Saini By Stuart McNish According to the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, “there are more than 2.2 million serious adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients, causing over 106,000 deaths annually.” The British Pharmacological Society in a “Fatal Adverse Drug Reaction” global study says, “Adverse drug reactions are the most common cause of hospital admission and one of the top seven causes of death.”   In Canada, Amani Saini’s sister had a critical adverse drug reaction to an over-the-counter medicine. Her sister’s near-deadly ordeal led Amani to investigate the causes and rate of hospitalization and death in Canada. The numbers were disturbing. Amani says, “There are an estimated 200,000 adverse drug reactions in Canada. More than 10,000 people a year are dying and the cost to the healthcare system exceeds more than $13 billion.”   We invited Amani Saini to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the work and mission of

Ep 466 - Ozempic and Weight Loss Guest: Dr Devyn Parsons By Stuart McNish   It has been called a wonder drug for its unintended benefits to anyone wrestling with obesity. Ozempic does for obese people what their bodies can no longer do – shedding weight. Dr. Devyn Parsons, an obesity specialist, says, “Your body locks onto what it believes is your ideal weight – that, being the highest weight of your life. And it doesn’t want to let go.”   According to a study published by the American Journal of Public Health, “the odds of returning to normal weight for a man with obesity is one in 210 and, for women, one in 124. The odds worsen as weight increases.” Dr Parsons adds, “For those who do lose weight, keeping it off is an even more difficult battle. That’s because your body reprograms itself to believe that your highest weight will ward off starvation.”   We invited obesity specialist Dr. Devyn Parsons to join us for a Conversation That Matters about obesity and Ozempic.   Learn More about our guests career at c

Ep 465 - Seeing Street Kids’ Potential Guest: Krista Thompson By Stuart McNish   “The reasons why children end up on the streets are complex. Often, their arrival represents an active decision on their part in response to serious rights violations at home,” says Moses Ogutu in “Under The Bridge: The Invisible Lives of Street Children.” Ogutu was a child of the street for five years. Today, he is an international business and trade lecturer at the African Leadership University and a 2017 Mandela Rhodes Scholar.   Ogutu’s life journey is proof that children who end up on the streets can and do rise above the challenges they face. Ogutu points out that homelessness among youth is a global problem and in each jurisdiction, the reason a child arrives on the street is individual and globally similar.   Krista Thompson, the past CEO of Vancouver’s Covenant House, agrees. “There are many successful intervention strategies that work to help young people who clearly have smarts and grit and problem-solving abilities to

Ep 460 - Creating Sustainable Pet Food Guest: Christine Mallier By Stuart McNish   Cats and dogs are everywhere in Canada and they outnumber children under 14 by a big margin. According to the Canadian Animal Health Institute, there are 16.5 million cats and dogs in Canada. Statistics Canada, for 2021, puts the child population at 15.6% or 6.2 million. In other words, we love our pets.   There are myriad reasons why people love pets. One is they never grow up and move away. According to Mindpath Health, “Pets need you now, next week and years from now; they don’t ask for much and you’ll never have to pay for their college tuition.”   That love of pets led two friends in Chilliwack to create Petcurean, a company committed to producing premium food for pets. The idea took off and sales are soaring, not only because the food is nutritious and delicious, but also because the company is committed to sustainable agricultural practices.   We invited Christine Mallier, the sustainability manager at Petcurean, to join

Ep 459- British Columbia’s economy is a question mark Guest: Jock Finlayson By Stuart McNish   British Columbia is but a speck on the global GDP map. “We are 0.3% – in other words, not very significant,” says economist Jock Finlayson. He goes on to point out that our place in the world isn’t about to change. In fact, it’s going to slip. “We are entering a lost decade of real per-capita GDP growth, which means growing real salaries will be challenging.”   It’s not all doom and gloom, however. BC does have some strengths. Finlayson says, “Steady in-migration is creating a positive consumer faced economic setting. We have an educated workforce. There are positive signs in the life sciences and tech sectors. BC has a strong and exceptionally diverse natural resource economy and, importantly, we are the gateway to Asia.”   That’s the good news on the other side of the balance sheet. Finlayson points out, “We are a long way from the economic, political and financial power centres of Canada. The cost of housing is s

Ep 458 - Vaccinating against rejection Guest: Dr Eli Joseph By Stuart McNish   It is common to be intimidated by rejection. The thought of failing or getting turned down for an opportunity that we have always wanted can influence the way we make genuine decisions toward our goals. Moreover, the overall experience of getting rejected can negatively affect our self-esteem.  Dr Eli Joseph says, “You can get over this fear of rejection! In fact, you can become immune to it.” Based on his own experience of thousands upon thousands of rejections, he says, “I emerged from the ordeal of rejection stronger than I was before.” In a sense, he was following Mithridates’ example of dosing poison to become immune to poison.   Dr Joseph points out that “the total of human accomplishment is rooted in the fact that everything that has been developed and learned was through trial and error.” According to him, “Failure and rejection are on a continuum; either can stop you in your tracks or they can motivate you to go further,

Ep 457 - Can Fish be Farmed on Land? Guest: Tony Pantages By Stuart McNish   In February 2023, federal Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray announced that licenses for 15 open-net Atlantic salmon farms around British Columbia's Discovery Island will not be renewed – a planned cancellation that has now been delayed in large part due to concerns raised by indigenous leaders, who point to problems associated with moving fish farms on shore.   Norway has generated a depth of knowledge and experience in the field of land-based salmon farming in state-of-the-art recirculating aquaculture systems and is leading the way, including identifying challenges. According to Norwegian SciTech News, “ land-based fish farming is not free of challenges. The sector suffers from mass mortalities and fish meat tainted with an earthy flavour because the biological conditions in land-based facilities are difficult to control and very young fish are sensitive to poor water quality. In the worst cases, many thousands of smolt can die relat

Ep 456 - A Lost Decade Ahead for Canada Guest: David Williams By Stuart McNish   “The Canadian economy is on track to be the worst performing economy out of 38 advanced countries over the next 40 years, with the lowest growth in real GDP per capita,” says David Williams, the Vice-President of Policy at the Business Council of British Columbia. He goes on to say, “Young Canadians entering the workforce today are facing 40 years of stagnant average real incomes, according to OECD projections.”   That is a dire warning to policymakers in Canada: one that demands a need to address the underlying causes.  “If they don’t,” Williams says, “there will be a decline in real incomes relative to all other advanced OECD countries.”   We invited David Williams to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the bleak forecast of stagnation young Canadians will face over the course of their careers.   Learn More about our guests career at careersthatmatter.ca   Join me June 20 for Conversations Live - A Vancouver Sun Town

Ep 455 - Women on Corporate Boards  Guest: Jennifer Reynolds By Stuart McNish   Here, it is 2023 and according to Forbes Magazine, only ten percent of Fortune 500 companies are led by women. The magazine, however,  sees that ten percent as “a new milestone. While these numbers may not seem like a cause for celebration, they are when one considers the history of women achieving top leadership roles in business.”   The history of women at the top of Fortune 500 companies has included just two CEOs for decades. Forbes points out that “as recently as 2000, only four women led Fortune 500 companies.” Fast-forward to today and 53 women are in the top spot at those same companies.   Where to go from here? Is it a straight line to gender parity? In a Harvard Business Review study from 2006, “when there is one woman on a board, progress is difficult, but when three or more women are on a board, dynamics shift.” The question, according to the foundation Women Corporate Directors is, “How are these leaders effecting cha

Ep 454 - The Power of Giving Guest: John Bromley By Stuart McNish   In the book “Why Good Things Happen to Good People,” Stephen Post writes that “giving to others” has been shown to increase health benefits. A separate study by Michael Norton from Harvard Business School revealed that “people are happier when they spend money on others versus themselves.”    These are all wonderful reasons to give. As Martin McNish stated in “Give a Damn” (a Conversations That Matter episode), “giving proves that you can make a difference in the lives of others and to not give is to give up on the belief that you can make a difference.” Give a Damn is a small crowdfunding not-for-profit that raises money for micro-charities that do not have the resources to fundraise.   Here’s the challenge, says McNish. “We too are small and only have limited resources, all of which are dedicated to raising awareness and money for other charities.” Enter Charitable Impact, a Vancouver-based foundation that was created to help donors and cha

Ep 453 - Top Sixty Over 60 Guest: Helen Hirsh Spence By Stuart McNish   “‘Sorry, you’re too old. Sorry, you’re too experienced. Sorry. Sorry, but we’re looking for someone younger who will stay with us longer.’ These are just some of the reasons employers use to overlook talented over 60 applicants,” says Helen Hirsh Spence of Top Sixty Over Sixty. The mission, according to the organization’s website, is to “provide tools and training to address ageism and promote age diversity in the workplace.”   Organizations that turn their back on workers over 60 are doing themselves a disservice. According to a Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health study, “Older workers are skilled and experienced, they stay with jobs longer and take fewer days off, they have a strong work ethic and they demonstrate [that] age-diverse workplaces make for the best teams.”   The study goes on to point out that “older workers attract more business.” Remarkably, tourism companies that employ older workers appeal to older touri

Ep 452 - Wrestling with Democracy Guest: Dennis Pilon By Stuart McNish   Justin Trudeau had promised that the 2015 federal election would be the last time a government would be chosen in Canada using the first-past-the-post voting system. That promise promptly evaporated and morphed into support for a proportional representation voting system. In the following months, the Prime Minister directed the Minister of Democratic Institutions to drop the idea.   In 2021, the Liberals set a record for the lowest vote share of a party that would go on to form government, winning 32.6 percent of the popular vote, while losing the popular vote. According to the federal Elections Canada, voter turnout numbers were just less than half of the population of the country. Only 17 million of Canada’s 35 million people voted. The Liberals only received 5.6 million votes, yet went on to form a minority government in a coalition with the NDP, which received only 2.3 percent of the popular vote.   Despite those numbers, the Liberal

Ep 451 - Cathedral Thinking Guest: Rick Antonson By Stuart McNish   Groucho Marx once quipped, “Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?” According to Rick Antonson, “You have a responsibility to your children’s great grandchildren.” In fact, Antonson says, “You need to wrench yourself from your phone and become a cathedral thinker about the big issues of our times.”    The concept crosses many cultures. Chief Oren Lyons, of the Onondaga Nation, a member of the Iroquois Confederacy, says, “Looking ahead is one of the first mandates given us as chiefs, to make sure every decision that we make relates to the welfare and well-being of the seventh generation to come.”   Antonson rhetorically asks, “Is cathedral thinking a relic of the past or does it still apply?” He says, “Yes. More, now than ever, we need to apply it to social policy issues, racial injustice, technological risks such as AI, public health and space to name but a few.”   We invited Rick Antonson to join us for

May 5, 2023 Ep 450 - Fighting Cancer with CAR-T Cells Guest: Sarah Roth By Stuart McNish   Cancer – there are more than 200 different types. The odds are high that you or someone you know will get cancer. It is an insidious disease; it can start almost anywhere in your body and spread. Stopping its spread is the work of cancer researchers all over the world and experts in British Columbia are developing breakthroughs.   Recently a multi-site Phase-I clinical trial, launched by BC Cancer and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, of made-in-Canada chimeric antigen receptor T-cells demonstrated positive results. CAR-T cells are powerful new tools for treating cancer that are created by genetically modifying a person’s existing T-cells. These T-cells are being used to target CD19, a protein marker found on all B-cells in patients with leukemia and lymphoma. Phase-II will allow BC Cancer to produce the CAR-T cell product and run the trial for 20 patients in BC over the next two years. Dr. Brad Nelson, director o

Ep 449 - Eight Deaths a Day Guest: Troy Clifford By Stuart McNish   Eight people in British Columbia will die today from a drug overdose – eight people yesterday, eight the day before, eight the day before that, and so on. On March 22nd, BC’s Emergency Health Service responded to 205 overdose poisoning patients – “a new provincial record” says Troy Clifford, the Provincial President of the Ambulance Paramedics & Emergency Dispatchers of BC. He continues to say, “On April 2nd, BCEHS experienced the nineteenth consecutive day in a row where we attended to more than 100 overdose calls. It’s taking a toll on the system and putting paramedics at risk.”   “Every single one of those calls for assistance brings with it tremendous risks to paramedics,” he says. “We’re first responders who encounter and adapt to a wide range of on-scene hazards at every overdose call. Paramedics, in addition to being medical professionals, need to be highly attuned to apparent and hidden threats [and] employ exceptional interperson

Ep 448 - Space – The Final Food Frontier Guest: Prof. Mike Dixon By Stuart McNish   Captain James T. Kirk starts “Star Trek” by saying, “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore new worlds; to seek out new life and civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before!” Five years is a long time and packing five years of food would be impossible.   While the writers of the series dealt with the production of food in a variety of ways – everything from coloured cubes to a protein resequencer that could replicate certain foods and an onboard hydroponic greenhouse to grow fruits and vegetables. The reality of producing food in space is extremely complex. And if we are planning three and more years in space missions, we need to learn how to grow it on the way and on whichever plant we land.     At the University of Guelph, Professor Mike Dixon and a team of researchers have been tackling this challenge for 20 plus years, and Dixon says, “We

Ep 447 - One Girl Can Guest: Natasha Questel By Stuart McNish   “Every girl should have the opportunity to rise to her full potential,” says Natasha Questel, the CEO of One Girl Can, a British Columbia-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to providing assistance to some of the world’s most vulnerable girls. Questel adds, “Girls with high-potential deserve a chance to rise above extreme poverty and gender inequality.”   As citizens of the world, we have a responsibility to aid others in reaching their full potential. Questel says, “One Girl Can is dedicated to educating, training and mentoring girls – to empower them to achieve their goals, earn a meaningful living and build better lives for themselves, their families and their communities.”    One Girl Can is an organization that is built on three foundational pillars: “education, training and mentoring.” Questel notes, “I am a living example of what one girl can do given a chance. I came from humble beginnings in Trinidad – I went on to graduate from