New book of essays from CEOs captures their journeys through the pandemic
Late last summer, as Canadians dared to hope they were emerging from COVID-19, a handful of the country’s business leaders stepped back to capture their company’s journey through the pandemic.
On March 12, I received a call from a Globe and Mail reporter who wanted to do an article on toilet paper based on hearing of the short supply. That’s odd, I thought. With all the challenges going on with COVID, why do they care about toilet paper? Nobody ever cares about toilet paper. Until, of course, you don’t have any. So I did the interview. I took an upbeat tone.
The meeting would include discussion of the Paycheck Protection Program, a loan program for small businesses backed by the U.S. federal government’s Small Business Administration, so I knew that it was important for RBI to have a voice at the table. When I located my name, I observed that I would be sitting next to Secretary Mnuchin, who was placed a socially distant six feet to my left, and as I looked to see who would be seated on my right, I couldn’t see a nameplate in front of the chair. As I looked more closely, I noticed that the unmarked chair was in the centre of the table, directly in front of the mantel and the Lincoln portrait and flanked by two flags. Dozens of cameras were set up directly opposite.
One of the things I made a point of emphasizing in my comments at the White House was the need to expand the Paycheck Protection Program past the eight-week deadline that had originally been envisioned. I have championed our “Made in Canada” commitment proudly for over two decades, and at a time like this I realized just how vital that was to helping hold our nation together. If there was one thing Canada Goose could do with our closed factories and furloughed staff, we could make the PPE that our frontline workers so desperately needed, no matter what it would cost us.
The pharmaceutical supply chain is truly global, and at this time [April 2020] we saw various countries – such as India, China, and others that typically export active pharmaceutical ingredients used for producing common pharmaceutical products – in various states of lockdown. They had halted their pharmaceutical exports over fears about how they would manage the health of their own populations. Countries became protectionist, and it had immediate implications for us in Canada.
Through my previous retail experience I was accustomed to having to occasionally communicate to customers that their favourite shampoo or food item was out of stock. However, being in a situation where we had to communicate to some of the largest retailers in Canada, or our own healthcare teams at pharmacies like Rexall, Guardian, IDA, and Uniprix that we were holding back pharmaceutical products or tempering their orders – that was a whole new world for me, and for our teams.
On the first count, we simply must make our healthcare system better, and that means investing in it. As chair of the University Health Network, a research and teaching hospital network in Toronto, I saw first-hand the impacts of the pandemic on the system. Yet the issues existed before the pandemic. Although the population density in the Greater Toronto Area has grown substantially, the number of hospital beds has fallen.
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