Behind the Brand®

[00:00:00] Jeff Adamson: Welcome to Behind the Brand presented by Neo. We take an inside look at the leaders behind today's most influential brands. I'm your host, Jeff Adamson. As co-founder of Neo Financial and SkipTheDishes, I'm fascinated by what it takes to build great companies. On this podcast, we'll learn from leaders that are reimagining, transforming, and innovating in the financial and retail industries across Canada. Let's get going!

I'm excited to introduce Senator Colin Deacon, a distinguished individual whose expertise and dedication have left a significant mark on Canadian public service. Bridging technology, entrepreneurship, and policy, Senator Deacon brings a wealth of expertise to this role. As a forward-thinking advocate for innovation and economic growth, he has championed policies aimed at fostering a more competitive and dynamic business environment.

His deep commitment to addressing pressing societal challenges through thoughtful legislation has earned him respect and recognition both within and beyond the political arena. Having served in various advisory and leadership capacities, Senator Deacon’s work has been guided by an unwavering belief in the power of technology to bring about positive change. His contributions to financial technology and regulatory innovation have not only garnered recognition within Canada, but have also positioned him as an influential voice on the global stage.

It's really great to to meet you, Senator Deacon. Thanks for coming on the show.

[00:02:15] Senator Colin Deacon: Jeff, really glad to be in conversation with you and it's the first time actually we will be in conversation directly versus on social media, so that's great.

[00:02:25] Jeff: Yeah, and we've been chatting over social media, but you know, you had just mentioned prior to hitting record that, you know, we had almost met in person or virtually, I guess, right at the beginning of COVID.

As you mentioned that, I actually remember, that seems like a lifetime ago. You know, pre-COVID, I just, it seems like so much has changed, so much has passed since then.

[00:02:45] Senator Deacon: It's incredible. The world shut down on the 15th of March and not a few days later, on the Monday, I was to fly to Calgary and had a weeks worth of really exciting meetings lined up, including meeting you guys. The one thing that hasn't changed since then, Canada still hasn't implemented open banking.

[00:03:04] Jeff: And we're going to get [to] touch on that, but before we do, I do want our listeners to know a little bit more about you and I know that your career has really spanned roles and industries, including venture capital, healthcare, energy, but what was your catalyst behind your decision to get into politics after you've had such a successful career across multiple different industries?

[00:03:26] Senator Deacon: Well, you're kind to say that, I question some of my success and I always do. I was really inspired when this Prime Minister changed the appointments process. That instead of it being a reward for partisan loyalty, for fundraising for, you know, work in a party, he changed the appointments process to be merit based and to try and build out the skill set in the Senate to include people with very direct experience in a diversity of sectors and from a diversity of backgrounds. And I thought that was pretty, pretty cool.

And so the nonpartisan, independent nonpartisan appointments process is criticized by some. I don't think it's embraced by all parties. Well, I know it's not embraced by all parties. But it's something that has really changed the nature of the Senate. It's caused a lot more bills to be amended. It's caused us to reflect on what our role is. You know, we're not elected so, you know, I get thousands of emails to vote against certain legislation, but unless it meets very specific criteria for me, that for me to have the arrogance to challenge the elected houses decisions, it would be highly inappropriate. So I say to those same folks, well, if you were in favor of the bill and I voted against it, what would you think? [Laughing] So it didn't pass for the house.

So you know, it's, but I was really inspired by that change. I'm really inspired to work in an institution now and I didn't think I'd get appointed. I, you know, I really felt that the voice of startup entrepreneur[s] needed to be heard in parliament, somebody who had experience in taking ideas and turning those ideas into opportunities, jobs, and prosperity, hopefully. That's a, you know, that's core to the innovation potential of our economy.

And so that's why I applied. I didn't think I would get accepted because the Senate at that point already had enough old white guys in it. That's very different now. We’re more than 50%, 54 percent women. 80 percent independent. We've got a really good BIPOC representation, about a third of the Senate are either indigenous or people of color or from diverse backgrounds or equity-seeking backgrounds. So it's a, it is an organization that is much more reflective of the country than potentially the House of Commons has become.

It's still moving. We’re still getting more women into politics and more representation, but it's, to me, it's crucial to making good decisions. You've got to have a diverse decision making team to make robust decisions.

[00:06:00] Jeff: How do you think about the quality and the talent of the people who are getting into into politics? A lot of people will look at roles in governance as kind of a bit of a hassle, a pain, like you don't have to deal with the politics. A lot of people will say that, it's a kind of a common refrain. I don't want to have to deal with politics, I just want to kind of do X, Y, and Z, you know, do the thing. Whether it's take care of people, build, defend people, and they want to avoid the politics.

Have you, are you seeing that change now? Are you seeing that, you know, and even just someone is, with your background, your caliber, getting into the Senate, to me is a really good sign that it's changing. But is it, is this a thing or is this just in my head?

[00:06:38] Senator Deacon: I would never have got into elected politics. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do what an MP has to do. I couldn't be whipped. I couldn't be told what I had to say and how I had to vote or support legislation that you know, I can't speak against. I may have to vote for it, but I want to be able to speak against it and say why… Counterarguments are crucial. You know, as a CEO, as a senior executive, as founder, counterarguments are crucial to making a good decision. And, you know, that's just not the way we do it in partisan politics. And opposition is there to oppose, not to propose something better. To me, we don't do that in the Senate.

Like, that's the independent senators, which are 80%, we're constantly finding out, how do we amend this to make it better? Our job is not to defeat the decisions of the House of Commons. Our job is to improve and try and find another path forward.

Now that's, see that's really tough when you get to things like the Online News Act and other bills where the concerns are exceedingly deep about the way they're going, the government has chosen to go ahead with that legislation, but that the objective is very strong, very important.

So it gets complicated. I can assure you it's the toughest job I've ever had. It's the hardest job, most demanding job I've ever had in my life. And you know what it's like to be a founder, a founding CEO of a startup. That's 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You're always worrying about making the next payroll. You're worried about the next, you know, launch of the next version of your software and not having too many bugs. Being able to iterate. But this is the toughest job I've ever had.

[00:08:16] Jeff: Yeah and I think it's, it's certainly commendable that after having done a lot in your career already to, to basically go and say, “Hey, I want to like triple down and do more work”. Tell me a bit about, like explain the knuckle dragging version of the Senate. You know, so is it… What power does the Senate wield? Can you guys veto bills that come across Parliament or what's the process?

[00:08:38] Senator Deacon: I don't think it would be appropriate for us to ever completely kill legislation from an elected…

[00:08:48] Jeff: Do you have that ability?

[00:08:50] Senator Deacon: Yes, absolutely. We can, we can reject decisions from the House of Commons till the cows come home.

[00:08:55] Jeff: Has it ever happened?

[00:08:56] Senator Deacon: I should know and be able to point to when it's happened. I'm certain it's happened at some point in the country's history, but very uncommon and certainly not something that the unelected Senate, at this point in our country's history, would do with any ease at all. Pushing back is really our role.

So legislation that involves spending can only originate in the House of Commons and so we respond to it. But we can introduce our own bills and the government can introduce bills in the Senate as long as there's no spending attached to it. So that's happened before. The Regulatory Modernization Act was introduced a year ago in the Senate.

We pushed on that and said, we need to do something quite different in how we modernize regulations because we're not doing it fast enough in this country. I mean, open banking is an example, you and I have conversed online about that. But there's so many examples of so many sectors, agriculture, fisheries, you name it, AI, privacy, competition law… Where we, we're not keeping up in regulations and policies right across government.

And so we've got to become a lot faster. A number of colleagues and I have proposed approaches, new approaches to addressing how we modernize regulations that actually we're launching the Senate in September, you'll hear more about that. We're pretty excited about bringing more agility to that process.

So that's, you know, we have the ability to engage and to, and I view my role as a marketing role. Marketing role of important problems that are not being understood and a marketing role of actionable solutions that need to be given attention.

[00:10:34] Jeff: When you think about the issues that you are presented with, one of the ones that comes to mind is competition in Canada. Why do Canadians love their monopolies? What is the, is there a historic reason why we really root for Goliath and not David?

[00:10:49] Senator Deacon: I don't know that Canadians love their monopolies. I think that culturally we've felt that they were important because we're a smaller country spread thinly across a large geography.

Technology has fundamentally changed that. You don't have to have a whole lot of bricks and mortar to deliver highly disruptive solutions that are much better than the legacy offerings. I think there may have been a point in time where that made sense economically for Canada, but that time has well passed.

[00:11:20] Jeff: And so then what is the role, the government's role in really keeping these companies accountable? And just for some of the listeners, we have some of the most concentrated industries in Canada.

If you look at, you know, banking, I think the top five, top six have about 90 plus percent market share. You look at telecom, you've got the big three that own 90 plus percent market share. Even grocery, which this one shocks a lot of people, but if you think about, take the top three grocers…

[00:11:59] Senator Deacon: 85 percent, I think.

[00:12:00] Jeff: That's about 85. So like that, and that one's kind of crazy because if you think about 8.5 out of 10 of the meals that you're eating are all controlled by three companies. I don't know, there's something about it being food that just scares me even more.

[00:12:11] Senator Deacon: We could last for a lot longer without food than we can without water. But we need to have, I mean, if COVID proved anything, we need to have a more robust food supply chain that Canadians control.

And with technology in terms of, you know, California running out of water. So climate, in the climate crisis, California is running out of water. We get most of our fruit and vegetables in the wintertime from California. We've got to start investing far more aggressively in high-density agricultural climate-resistant options, like indoor agricultural.

[00:12:53] Jeff: Domestically?

[00:12:54] Senator Deacon: Domestically. It's crucial in my mind. And if you're trucking all of that food and losing a third of it before it gets digested, you know, a third of the food that is shipped is, it goes bad or is wasted by the consumer. You think about the carbon footprint of that and how that could be reinvested in locally grown agriculture.

So to me, there's a big change that's going to happen. The other thing is we're running out of land in a lot of parts. Ontario's building and losing 350 acres a day of prime farmland to houses and shopping malls and roads. So we've got to, we've got to really worry about the fact that we're planting the last crop when we plant a house on land. And we've got to really start to think about how we do that and think about the regulatory changes needed to make that happen.

So that's, for me, it's about, it's about the fact that we've got a culture of enjoying or thinking that that was necessary to have concentration, but that's not serving us in a world that needs more innovation in order to be competitive.

[00:14:03] Jeff: How are we doing globally? How is Canada looked at by other countries when it comes to competition and the regulatory frameworks we have? Are we holding our own there or do other countries kind of look and say like, “Oh, maybe someday Canada will catch up”?

[00:14:13] Senator Deacon: I think the latter for sure. And when you look at any area where regulation is a burden, big companies love regulatory modes, right? The more regulation, the better because they can afford to manage it. They've got the scale to manage that cost and it prevents new entrants from having the ability to get in and disrupt.

We've got the highest regulatory burden in the OECD and the largest amount of command and control regulations, which by definition get rid of the ability to innovate. “You must do it this way versus you must achieve this result.”

[00:14:50] Jeff: So they're more prescriptive in our regulatory.

[00:14:52] Senator Deacon: Very prescriptive!

And so we've got to, if we want to be able to be competitive, we've got to change. And if you look at the innovations that are coming in so many different sectors, they are not coming from the incumbents. The innovations are coming from new entrants that are highly disruptive, they've got a different ability to move, but regulations are preventing them from taking full advantage of that disruptive value. And incumbents, you know, our banks, for example, are 25 years older than Canada. They understand lobbying. They've been doing it for a while. It's a real barrier to be fighting against.

[00:15:26] Jeff: And how is this affecting Canadians? The larger companies will point to just how well Canadians are doing and how prices are getting lower. And they'll, they'll have all these great points about how a monopoly isn't a bad thing. Like, look how great things are for everyone. But what's the truth behind that? How are... How is this affecting Canadians?

[00:15:47] Senator Deacon: Look at telecom. I mean, I'll give you one example. My Senate phone, which is under the Government of Canada plan, I have all the data, all the text, all the voice time that I want, and it's about $25 a month.

[00:16:08] Jeff: Can I get on that plan?

[00:16:09] Senator Deacon: Every Canadian should be able to get on that plan. If that supplier can provide the government of Canada with phones at that cost, they're making money. So, what do we got going on here?

And then you get a new entrant like Wind Mobile that gets drummed out. And Wind Mobile is why we had $5 a day, why the big companies went and gave us $5 a day use of our phones in the United States rather than exorbitant costs prior to that. And now it's $16 a day because they don't have the competition. You know, that wholesale data and voice rates in the United States have dropped in that period of time. So they've tripled their costs or sorry, their fees, while their costs have dropped, that's what happens when you don't have competition.

[00:16:48] Jeff: And the Shaw-Rogers merger, I was just so disappointed to see that happen. To me, it seemed like Shaw was just about to kind of break into mobile, provide Western Canadians with better service. I think they were expanding out East too. They were doing some interesting things with, with bundling different services. And then, that's snapped up by Rogers. And then I think they sold, they sold Freedom to a Quebec telecom.

[00:17:23] Senator Deacon: I just look at it, simply, I had the pleasure in the spring of going down and meeting with Jonathan Kanter, who is the Assistant Attorney General in charge of antitrust issues and we talked to, spoke mainly about the changes in the digital, in the big tech sector. Also with the group at the, the federal trade commission. And they rolled out the red carpet because they're saying, we want to figure out how to help Canadians benefit from the changes they're making. Like can we start to follow in the wake?

President Biden made a very important statement. He said, capitalism without competition isn't capitalism. It's exploitation. Capitalism requires competition to deliver benefits to customers. The best way to keep industries customer-centric is to have competitors who are doing a better job doing that.

[00:18:12] Jeff: So what's the solution then Colin? If we kind of fast forward over the next 5 to 10 years, where do you think we're heading from a regulatory perspective? Like how do we reign in some of these large oligopolies that we have in Canada?

[00:20:45] Senator Deacon: So, I'm actually getting more optimistic because of the work that is being done in the United States. Because of big tech really flexing its muscles. You know, when the first Broadcast Act rewrite came to Parliament, and it was the last Parliament Bill C 10, it became C 11. I said, how do you do this without updated competition laws and privacy laws for the digital era? That is what's driving the way our economies are going to be functioning, so let's get the rules of the road, right and then we'll figure out what legislative tweaks are needed in specific sectors.

I'm quite optimistic about competition because people were so upset about Rogers-Shaw. The minister came up with a 21 point plan about, you know, a deal about how he's going to hold them to account. Well, why isn't he just empowering the competition commissioner to do that? You know, it's not up to a minister to hold a particular company to account.

[00:21:42] Jeff: I think I saw there's a line that “we're going to be watching them like a hawk.”

[00:21:46] Senator Deacon: Yeah, and it's like, I don't want the minister doing that. I want the minister dealing with the entire economy and not trying to hold a bad actor to account. So that's, you know, for me, and you want the, the rules of the game, the way that the economy functions to be such that it, it happens automatically.

But the competition commissioner has been, become somebody that the Canadians are, are getting familiar with. Matt Boswell's been in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, you name it. He's been on podcasts. He's all of a sudden, we've got a competition commissioner that Canadians, many Canadians can say the name of. So I think, I think things are changing. I tend to be an optimist, but it's a long road that we have to go down. There's no question.

[00:22:36] Jeff: Do you think it's going to take, you know, a step too far? Like I remember back, I think it was in the late 90s, when, I think it was, was it RBC that was looking to acquire BMO?

[00:22:38] Senator Deacon: The four biggest banks were, had lined up and Paul Martin had to fight back. And he did.

[00:22:52] Jeff: And do you think that was something that was driven by the average voter? Or was that driven by the government in thinking that's what the voters wanted? Like, how did that actually get started?

[00:23:02] Senator Deacon: You know, I, I think there's other people that have to be asked about that, that were in the room because I, I don't know what drove the decision making. But what I did think it was funny at the time is that the need to merge was driven because of the fact that without mergers, they were going to have to close branches and lay off employees.

And when he, when he pushed back and said, “you can't merge”, they closed branches and laid off employees. But, and the other argument they had is, in order to compete with the Americans, we need to close branches and lay off employees.

[00:23:28] Jeff: And then also like, and they didn't merge. And then how many American banks have really like given the Canadian banks a run for their money here in Canada?

[00:23:36] Senator Deacon: You know, we've, we've got great banks. We have great banks. They're very well regulated. You know, people point to Silicon Valley Bank's failure as being the reason why banks are great and having big banks are great now is because we've got good banking regulations, but those good banking regulations make it very hard for a new entrant to get in and for the smaller companies like Laurentian bank to really compete.

So we do have to look at bringing more agility in some way, shape or form to our banking regulations, but not putting that doesn't mean introducing more risk as Silicon Valley bank was allowed to do. And not marking the market on, on a big loss that they had in their, in their asset column, that, that they, you know, that, that all of a sudden became a surprise and they had a 24 hour run on the bank, fastest run in history.

So I, I look at it and say, it's, It, we need to have robust banking regulations. I look at it and say, the open banking world is one that doesn't change much for our big banks and the British have shown that they're the leaders for sure in this space. What it does do is it helps those who the banks are not thrilled about working with.

Small business and marginalized Canadians are not their top customers. That's not where they make money. So those are the folks that really get helped by. Financial technology companies that are [00:25:00] serving their very precise needs. And I'd looked at last year at the Elevate Festival in Toronto. I got to host a panel or moderate a panel that had.

Bo while talking about the Rent Advantage program. I think you guys have just done something together. We had Manzil Bank, which is dealing with Halal compliant banking. Mm-hmm. and Koho talking about using your telco bill to improve your credit score. All of these things are focused on those who don't have strong credit scores, who are not being served by the current banking system.

It's a way to. to use non bank products to improve your credit score. You know, why is the most expensive product the first way for somebody to improve their credit score, a line of credit or a credit card that there should be cheaper ways and using your telco bill and your rent payment as a way to demonstrate your credit risk.

Or lack thereof, it's, you know, this comes from, this doesn't come with the banks. They could have done this years ago, but these innovations didn't come from the [00:26:00] banks. They have come from outside. And that's, that's all I'm looking for is to bring competition that serves those who are currently not being served.

I'm grateful that we have robust banks in this country. Without them, you know, a hundred years ago, we didn't. We had bank, many, many bank failures a hundred years ago. We have, we're benefited for benefiting from great strong banks, but I want them to, to not have the ability to just control the entire banking system themselves.

[00:26:32] Jeff: And I agree with you. I think that there is lots to be grateful for that. We have a stable banking sector, but how do we keep How do we maintain strong regulatory frameworks without stifling innovation? Like, you look at, you look at the UK, like, you can point to that as an example that, hey, it is possible.

What's stopping us from having that in Canada? Like, why hasn't open banking come to Canada yet if it's already been proven elsewhere? Somebody

[00:27:01] Senator Deacon: needs to press go. It's as simple as that. And it's, it's our finance minister, our deputy prime minister, she just needs to press go. The, there's a great plan in place that the financial technology companies and, and banks have worked out led to by finance Canada.

And we've, you know, Abraham Tashjan has been the, the, the lead person on it. And he's, it's been a transparent process, more transparent than just about any government consultation I've ever seen. Yeah, it's true. We've got payments modernization. Ron Morrow has read that, led that at the Bank of Canada.

You know, there's another area where the bank control over interchange fees costs, it's estimated cost has cost Canadian economy about 2 percent per year of GDP. In Europe, you're paying 0. 3 percent interchange fees, you know, so we're paying six or seven times what the Europeans are paying because our regulations have not adjusted to technology.

And we've also, you know, we don't have real-time payments in this country and Lord knows when we're going to get based on the, the continual delays in the real time rail that exists in other countries. Why are we not expecting that? It's a regulatory problem. It's a governance problem that we haven't push this. Now, no party has been, you know, both parties have embraced it in the last election, but no party has really pushed it. And this is where I think, if I, if I remember correctly, there's about 10 trillion dollars worth of payments in the Canadian economy every year, 20 billion transactions. And we're paying six or seven times to the banks what we should be paying if it was a more competitive environment. And we're not getting same day payment as retail consumers.

[00:28:40] Jeff: Even just the speed, like, all friends say like, Hey, I need to move money from this place to that place. And they're like, why does it take so long? And we had Hannah Zady from WellSimple on the pod. And she was, she was saying, well, it's because it, like she, she walked through the process and it was, it sounded so manual.

It sounded like literally there was like someone that had to take a floppy disk out of a drive, you know, move it over to another computer, create an Excel spreadsheet, upload it to another server. And then it gets processed kind of overnight and then it gets sent. I just could not believe how 1980s the whole thing sounded. And she's like, Oh no, it's actually 1960s, Jeff.

[00:29:18] Senator Deacon: It's, it's, well, you know that COBOL is, is the language at the core of the banking system in this country. 1955. And it's older than I am, Jeff. That language is older than I am. There's nobody getting trained in that language. Coming out right now. I think the technology risk in our banks and, and our government services in this country is significant because we're not keeping up with, with the pace of technology, technological change. And we've got to start considering that as a, as a risk factor to be managed.

[00:29:52] Jeff: You know, we've talked about open banking, Senator Deacon, but I want to, I want you to put your marketing hat on here for a second. And because I think part of the problem is a lot of people don't know what open banking is. There's also, I think, consumer driven finance is another term for it as well. We can't even agree on what to call it a lot of the time. So what's the simplest way for Canadians to understand open banking and And what the benefit is for them.

[00:30:17] Senator Deacon: So what it is, is that you get to use your financial data for your purposes. You can decide how to use your financial data. Right now you have no control over your financial data. The bank controls it all. So it's to shift that control from the bank to you. That's number one. Now, what does that deliver? Well, what the Philadelphia Fed identified was that financial technology lenders over an eight year period.

They started off where their, who they lent to was virtually the same as, as the credit score of the, that the banks would lend to. But over eight years, that, that, those lines completely separated and what were previously thought to be uncreditworthy individuals were identified by the Philadelphia Fed and by FinTech lenders.

And the term that Philadelphia Fed used was invisible prime borrowers. They're invisible to the, to the legacy banking system. And we're seeing that in Canada as well. where there is a, there's a big divergence between what the traditional credit system identifies as being a credit risk and what it doesn't.

And I'll give you a personal example. I decided to change credit cards, the cards about eight months ago, and my credit score dropped 50 points. I had no more debt. I had not missed any payments, but just the process of closing a credit card and opening a new credit card caused my Credit score to drop out of nowhere by 50 points.

I was moved into another bracket. A lower bracket. So if I was just about to sign a mortgage at that time and I didn't have the, the, the high credit score that I do, I would be paying a premium over the next five years because of something that, that I had no idea was a credit risk, credit score risk.

That's the stuff that is really, it really makes me angry. You know, we've got to address that issue and we can do it through regulations. We can do it through all these really cumbersome approaches, or we can enable innovation and competition to drive fairer, more customer centric systems. So that's, that's a real example of, of what open banking can bring when, when you can control your, when you can choose who controls your data.

[00:32:37] Jeff: Okay. I'm going to try to paraphrase that and put it into, into kind of Jeff speak here. So essentially the, by bringing in an open banking framework, it's kind of new rules that the government's going to bring in that's going to give the customer the ability to take their data with them to control their data.

In another way of looking at it is saying they're going to open up competition more and make it easier for, well, basically they're going to make it easier for customers to do what they want with their data, which means that they could switch or they could, it could bring in new products, it could bring in new, new companies could be created out of it.

Which will essentially drive more competition into the banking sector, which will then ultimately drive prices down, introduce new technology that will benefit Canadians.

[00:33:24] Senator Deacon: New products. I mean, you know, the, the example of being able to use your credits, sorry, improve your credit score by using your regular payment of rent and your regular payment of your telecom bill.

To improve your credit score currently. Or cash flow. Cash flow. Currently, those are not available to you because the, the, the system that we've had to evaluate your credit worthiness has not considered non-bank instruments.

[00:33:50] Jeff: But those could be, those could be reported to the credit bureaus.

[00:33:52] Senator Deacon: They are, and Equifax has made real progress on this. And so that's, they've done deals with different companies in this regard. So that's, you know, it, it's coming. But let's accelerate the pace dramatically. Let's make sure that when consumer is sharing their banking information, they're sharing it with an accredited organization that's met certain standards is being shared in a very specific way to make sure that there is no privacy and, and, and cybersecurity risk that the liability, if there is a breach.

Is we know how it's going to happen. So it's not, the consumer's not sitting there wondering who's going to solve this problem for me. These are all rules that the finance candidate over the last year and a bit. Has solved, they've got a plan in place and we can iterate on that. So that's the plan that I'm really hoping the minister of finance pushes the go button on.

[00:34:42] Jeff: I think maybe part of the challenge is that it's going to enable and open up new products and features and new companies and increase competition. But it's not like we're saying, Hey, it's going to be this one thing or Hey, you're going to save. 180 a year, you know, the articulation of the benefit to Canadians is very much forward looking because you don't know what, what it actually might be or how it's going to present itself in Canadians.

How are entrepreneurs going to respond to. This new framework, what kind of bothers me, I remember hearing this survey that I think it was the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, FCAC, was they surveyed Canadians and I think only 9 percent of Canadians had heard of open banking and after an explanation, 52 percent said they wouldn't use it.

And 29 percent were still uncertain after getting explained to them. So, I just don't know anyone who says, Hey, if you want to pay less, if you want to have more freedom, and you want to have a better experience, who is against that? That just blows my mind.

[00:35:43] Senator Deacon: So, I'll just offer something specific. When you go and buy a car, if the salesperson is sitting there telling you all about how the engine functions, does that have any influence over Your decision to buy a new car, you know, not really.

No, exactly. It's so why talk we, we just for consumers, they should never even know that open banking exists. What they should know is that there's an accredited organization that offers services that they need that are offered safely and, and are in our government approved, you know, or follow government rule, government approved rules.

We don't need consumers don't need to know about open banking. What they need to do is be able to benefit from open banking. And when they benefit about open banking, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be something they need to explain to their neighbor. They just need to say, Hey, guess what? I now am seeing my credit score improve as a new Canadian.

And in a year I've now got a credit score that I can go and get a loan to buy a car. I can go and, you know, X, Y, Z. That's all they need to know.

[00:36:43] Jeff Adamson: Put my kids through college. Whatever. I want to touch on entrepreneurship Senator Deacon, because you've made this transition to, to politics. How has entrepreneurship affected your life?

What have you taken away from your experience being an entrepreneur? And then how do you, [00:37:00] how do you use these skills or these experiences in your, in your day to day life as a

[00:37:04] Senator Colin Deacon: Senator? Entrepreneurship is about finding a problem and creating an opportunity out of it. That's my view. It's as simple as that.

And that's the process of innovation. Problems are great things, once they're identified, and if there's a willingness to address them. Because they've, they alert you to a way to get better. And so that's been my whole life. I worry that we have a Department of Innovation. I don't believe we can have an innovative economy without an innovative government, whole of government, right across every department, every area, from a municipal to a provincial and federal level.

And Canada has not got innovative governments. We have, we don't have a history of it. We don't, we've got analog governments for the most part. They're not digital governments. At a time when Ukraine has been fighting a war, they've implemented a, a digital government service. Yeah, Daya. All on their, their mobile app.

[00:37:57] Jeff Adamson: The super app

[00:37:58] Senator Colin Deacon: for the government. It's, [00:38:00] it's, you know, they are, they have become the dream that they laid out, which was to be the most convenient government in the world. And they are, no matter where Ukrainians are in the world, they can deal with their government.

[00:38:11] Jeff Adamson: Yeah. 50 government services all on their smartphone. And it's

[00:38:14] Senator Colin Deacon: 85 percent of adult Ukrainians that have access to this now because it's so good. They don't need to know the workings of it, doesn't need to be called digital government. They just know that now they can get the service. Without having to pay a bribe or whatever else that they, that they want, it's been a huge for that country.

So for me, innovation is a, is about an attitude. Entrepreneurship is about an attitude. You don't need to be starting a startup company to be entrepreneurial. You need to be creative in, in, in how you're describing a problem and creating an opportunity from it that delivers benefit in a reliable way. So that's, for me, it's essential that, that Canada, and I'm not just pointing at the federal government.

I live in a [00:39:00] province where I recently had to mail in a check, which I had to wait for checks to arrive because I didn't have any anymore. I had to mail in a check in a physical handwritten form, answers on a, handwritten answers on a form by Canada Post. I had to go buy stamps in order to get something done.

We have got to stop that. We cannot afford analog government anymore. So it's a, you know, what is, what's entrepreneurship? What's it's, it's the core of being an innovation, innovative country and community, whether or not you are doing it in a private company. Or in a big corporate entity or in government.

[00:39:39] Jeff Adamson: That's a great definition, Senator Deacon. And, and I, what I love about it is that it's, it's not focused on making money. And I think that's how a lot of entrepreneurs get kind of categorized. It's really about, yeah, seeing a problem and then seeing that actually as an opportunity and then actually doing something about it and putting your skin in the game.

Because you can [00:40:00] always, you can be an armchair quarterback and say, This is wrong, this is, this is, that's wrong, but the people, and you can call them whatever you want, the people who are identifying problems and saying, hey, I think the world would be a better place. If this were different, okay, great. That that's basically an armchair quarterback right there.

It's the action that they take after that and saying, Hey, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to put my life savings on the line to solve that problem. That's why I have so much. Respect for people who go out there and are in the arena and who are actually going out and tackling these problems, whether they're successful or not.

Because the people who are actually like, they've went after it, they've taken the risks. Those are the people that are moving everything forward, in my opinion. They really are moving things forward. And again, succeed or fail, I, I applaud them both equally, and I think in Canada, we need to have a lot [00:41:00] more compassion or empathy or respect for the ones that don't succeed, because we need those people to try again.

Absolutely. And I feel like in Canada, we, I don't know what it is, but we love to highlight People's failures here and you just look at the headlines, we're, we still got outlets reporting layoffs in tech companies as like the most talked about headline of the last two years is really just about which company let someone go, not actually all the incredible things that this company is, is solving for.

[00:41:33] Senator Colin Deacon: You know, I think we're, we're making real progress as a country and as well, we're seeing that innovation. As a skill set can move across sectors, and that's what gives me a lot of hope. I, in the nineties, I was working in the venture capital business. I was a stockbroker initially in my career and moved into venture capital for a period of time in the nineties.

And what, what amazed me was working in Alberta, all the innovation [00:42:00] was occurring in the oil and gas field. It was not transferring to two of the best medical research institutions in the world that, you know, and, and we weren't thinking about, okay, how do we build a really big biotech business in, in Calgary using our, our two phenomenal medical schools.

And that was a space that I was spending time in. You know, but look at what's happened in your innovation community over the last five years. It's exploded, right? It's exploded well outside of oil and gas. And so, you know, those are things that I look at as life's about iterating, right? It's about iterating.

You know that you didn't build, skip the dishes and in a week and version one, I had a director that said, if you weren't embarrassed by version one, you waited too long to release it. Yeah. To ship it.

[00:42:45] Jeff Adamson: You got to iterate, right? Yeah, it's so true. As much as I do talk about the things that are, that maybe aren't working, at the same time, like, we have so much potential in Canada.

It's actually, and I think that you just look at [00:43:00] whenever Canadians are called to something, whether it be a crisis, A war, whenever we have to, that's when you see just how incredible Canadians really are, and I, I hope that we can answer the call when it comes to, you know, banking and telecom and, and quality of life and productivity, because I just think that we have so much great here, so many good things here in this country.

That we take for granted and, and I, and I think that the world would be a better place with Canada Continuing to rise on the world scale. Without

[00:43:33] Senator Colin Deacon: question We are taking way too much of it for granted and we are not fighting for our lives For our prosperity, the prosperity of our grandchildren, the state of the world for our grandchildren the way we need to So we have to get, as you say, we've got to really start to learn how to be scrappy again and work with what we've got to deliver something

[00:43:54] Jeff Adamson: better. Well, Senator Deacon, I am incredibly grateful to you for taking the [00:44:00] time to be here and for the work that you continue to do and advocate for. We're, we're a big fan of you out west here. Wow, you're very kind. How should people follow you? How should they, to listen to what you have to say? Where's the best place for them to pay attention?

[00:44:14] Senator Colin Deacon: I'm most active on LinkedIn. My website's got everything at colindeacon.ca. It's got everything that we're working on, the projects we're working on. And I'm honored if there's, if people engage because it means that, and they don't need to engage positively. If they're not agreeing with what I'm talking about, I'd rather, I'd rather hear about the arguments and make sure that they are considered.

Then have somebody saying, Hey, that's, you know, that's great. Or, or being quiet because they think it was being polite. Yeah. Social media isn't polite, but, but you know what I mean? So Jeff, thank you. No, thank you for all you do. We're back and forth a lot. It's nice to meet you virtually on the, on the podcast.

And, and I look
[00:44:55] Jeff Adamson: forward to meeting in person someday. Awesome. Thank you very much. Take care.[00:45:00]

Thank you for tuning into behind the brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave. A review on your preferred podcast platform. If you're interested in learning more about Neo Financianal, visit Senator Colin Deacon: us@neofinancianal.com. Behind the brand is a production of Neo Financianal and Media Lab Y Y C, hosted by Jeff Adamson, strategy Research and Production by Keegan Sharp, Atlanta Tafel, and Kyle Senator Colin Deacon: Marshall.

[00:38:20] Jeff: Thank you for tuning into Behind the Brand. If you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast platform. If you’re interested in learning more about Neo Financial, visit us at neofinancial.com.

Behind the Brand is a production of Neo Financial and MediaLab YYC. Hosted by Jeff Adamson. Strategy, research, and production by Keegan Sharp, Alana Tefledzuk, and Kyle Marshall.