On February 12, 2025, BHER brought together over 150 business + higher education leaders from across Canada at The Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto to talk about productivity.
As Canada’s leading cross-sector convenor and driver of change, we felt a sense of urgency and responsibility to convene a public conversation – not only because of the ongoing productivity crisis in this country but also in light of the economic aggression from the U.S. that’s likely to exacerbate it.
We know that solving Canada’s productivity problem requires changing how we do things. We need new ideas, fewer silos, meaningful collaboration, the right skills, and leadership.
It’s why we challenged the leaders in the room to talk across sectors and to move from talking about renovating a baseball stadium, to training the next generation of climate leaders, to fixing our immigration and international student programs, to adult upskilling or assessing human skills with artificial intelligence. It’s why we ended the day with a conversation with Presidents and CEOs from no less than ten of BHER’s member organizations.
Canada’s businesses and post-secondary institutions are getting hard things done and our Summit was about identifying practical examples and talking less about the end result and more about the hard part in between. BHER’s members are leading the charge.
Thank you to all our speakers and attendees who joined us and a special thanks to our event partners for their generous support.
Watch this space for key takeaways from the event and more info about future BHER events.
Photo Gallery:
Supported by generous contributions from:
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Speakers:
David Agnew
President, Seneca Polytechnic
John Baker
CEO, D2L
Frédérique Brais-Chaput
Étudiante à la maîtrise en action climatique, Université Laval
Genevieve Fortier
CEO, Promutuel Assurance
Manav Gupta
Chief Technology Officer,
IBM Canada
Zabeen Hirji
Executive Advisor, Future of Work, Deloitte and Purposeful Third Act
Stephen Lucas
CEO, Mitacs
Matthew McKean
Chief R&D Officer, Business + Higher Education Roundtable
John Schmalz
Construction Manager, PCL Construction
John Stackhouse
Senior Vice-President, Office of the CEO, RBC
Ann Marie Vaughan
President and CEO, Humber Polytechnic
Farah Alexis
Chief Ethics Officer,
Hydro One
Martin Basiri
Founder and CEO, Passage
Sophie D’Amours
Rectrice, Université Laval
Vivek Goel
President and Vice-Chancellor, University of Waterloo
Jenny Haag
Founder and President, RISE Design Build Integration
Nicole Johnson
Risepoint Consultant, Risepoint
Robert Luke
CEO, eCampusOntario
Jacqueline Ottmann
President, First Nations University of Canada
Sean Shabaga
Project Director, PCL Construction
Sasha Thackaberry
President, SkillsWave
Val Walker
CEO, Business + Higher Education Roundtable
Jahanzaib Ansari
Co-Founder and CEO, Knockri
Meti Basiri
Co-Founder and CEO, ApplyBoard
Neil Fassina
President, Okanagan College
Laura Jo Gunter
President and CEO, NAIT
Scott Harris
Associate Deputy Minister, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada
Melissa Lantsman
Member of Parliament for Thornhill, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada
Robert McIntosh
Division Manager Learning and Performance, Bruce Power
Sanj Perera P.Eng MBA
Senior Director, CAA ICON
Luc Sirois
Chief Innovation Officer, Quebec
Kristina Tsiriotakis
Senior Director of Learning & Organizational Development, D2L
Jeff Zabudsky
President, British Columbia Institute of Technology
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