Some People Really Need It, Others Don’t The trustees of the US federal Social Security fund recently released a report that concluded that if the US government doesn’t act soon, the Social Security program will be unable to pay the full amount of existing entitled pension benefits to retirees, as early as 2032…six years from now. If the matter is not dealt with by the current government, this issue will be front and centre for the next US Administration. This news was repo

Apparently There Is A Market For A.I. Music Rip-offs Music streaming service Spotify and Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s largest music publishing and recording company, announced on May 21, 2026 that they had entered into a licensing agreement that will allow fans to use a feature on Spotify, to create A.I.- generated covers, remixes, and reinterpretations of songs from participating artists signed with UMG. Artists whose recording or publishing rights are controll

It’s Still Worth Pursuing, But It’s The Soft Skills You Gain That Really Matter These days, there seems to be a lot of shade being thrown at post-secondary education. Why is that? There are warnings from “industry experts” that A.I. will eliminate all the entry-level jobs; this train of thought then leads to the thinking, “why should someone spend between $100-200K, and invest four years of their life, for something that’ll turn out to be a waste of time and money?!”. Man

Musk Lost His Recent Head-To-Head Battle With Sam Altman, But He’s Just Getting Started You may have heard the recent news that Elon Musk lost his lawsuit against OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman, over the evolving corporate structure of OpenAI. Elon didn't spend much time licking his wounds, as he fired his next salvo in the A.I. war… trying to bring A.I. to outer space. Space X, started by Musk in 2002 with $100M of his own money to launch rockets, spaceships and sat

Tomorrow’s Leaders Need To Come From Somewhere. It’s common to hear about the fear people have about job losses, due to A.I. A November MIT study found an estimated 12% of jobs could already be automated using A.I., and surveys have shown employers are already eliminating entry-level jobs because of the technology. Globally, the share of people who say A.I. products that make them nervous increased to 52% in 2025. Source - TechCrunch, Stanford But, A.I. will not elimina

What Is Non-Negotiable For You? I recently read a book by former NHL player Chris Pronger, entitled “Earned”. Pronger had an accomplished career, having played 1,167 regular season games and 173 playoff games over 18 seasons in the NHL. He won a Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Ducks in 2007; he was a four-time Olympian, having twice won a Gold Medal with Canada’s Men’s Hockey Team, in 2002 (Salt Lake City) and 2010 (Vancouver). In terms of individual honours, in the 2000 seaso

Do You Go With What The Numbers Are Telling You, Or Do You Rely On Your Gut Instinct One morning this week I was having a coffee in my living room, trying to decide what my weekly article was going to be about. I glanced over at some books sitting on our table. One of those books was “Moneyball”, written by one of my favourite authors, Michael Lewis. I’m a big fan of this book, and an idea for an article popped into my head - the use of "Moneyball” vs. the reliance on “gut

Will It Really Work, And For Whom? From time-to-time I come across discussions on a movement to have employers adopt a four-day work week for their employees. Typically, I don’t pay much attention to this topic because the concept seems counter-intuitive. But, the topic keeps resurfacing, so I thought I would research it and articulate some thoughts. As part of my research for this article I conducted an informal survey of ten business leaders and I’ll share the results of

I Know They Are Man’s Best Friend, But… I don't mind dogs. Many of my friends have dogs, or were dog-owners in the past. Some members of my extended family are dog-owners. However, I’ll never be a dog-owner myself, as I am allergic to dog hair. I’ve been around dogs many times when visiting friends, and I’ve enjoyed those visits, including interacting with their dogs. So, it’s with this opening premise that I ask the question, when did it become OK for people to bring the

A.I. - It May Cause People To End Up On Welfare, Or It May Help People Find A Pot Of Gold At The End Of The Rainbow. Universal Basic Income, or “UBI”, is a policy where governments give regular cash payments to every adult with no conditions attached. UBI is brought up in A.I. discussions where people see A.I. as not just as a productivity tool but as a fundamental disruption to labour markets; in this context UBI comes up as a frequently proposed policy response to the an

A Bourbon Startup Goes Bust This week’s article is a case study of how bad decisions and poor timing can turn the entrepreneurial pursuit of a $10B market into a $250M hole in the ground. Thanks to a friend, I’ve recently become a fan of bourbon, and have spent some time becoming educated about this sector. Because of this newfound interest, I became intrigued when reading about the demise of a well-funded “start-up” in the bourbon industry. Garrard County Distilling Compa

Or Should Canadians Pay More In Taxes To Improve Healthcare? A common complaint Canadians have is that the wait-times for non life-threatening healthcare services and treatments can be quite long, often too long. Three-plus hour wait-times in the emergency room; six months wait-times for an MRI; or, waiting several months for a heart procedure that’s been deemed “non life-threatening” by a doctor. These situations give the affected patients and their families much stress and

It’s A Multi-Combatant Cage Match - Amodei v Altman v Musk v Google v China Most people will have used A.I. for searches, in lieu of “Googling” something; they have used A.I. for research, or as a work tool. What we are using today are “A.I. applications”, an early form of A.I. Common examples include Claude by Anthropic, Chat GPT by Open AI and Gemini by Google. These applications are an early step in the ultimate goal of developers of A.I technology, which is to create

“HENRY’s” - they call them I recently read about a term being applied to people in the late Gen Z or Millennial age cohorts (late 20s to mid 40s), who are earning a substantial income but have yet to accumulate significant wealth. That term being “HENRYs”, or “high earners, not rich yet”. In this context, a substantial income is between $100,000 and $500,000 per year. An annual salary/income in this range may seem like a lot, and it is, when we consider that the average sala

Should It Be A Meritocracy Or A Form Of Socialism ? There’s a similarity between successful rock bands and successful tech companies. Apart from the common goal of creating and offering something that people get excited about, and want to spend money on, both successful rock bands and successful tech companies will generate huge financial rewards for those people that make things happen within those organizations. I make this connection because in my work career I was part

Paying A Living Wage For those of you who read my article from last week, (which can be found here ) you’ll recall that I’ve been fortunate to be spending two weeks in Italy, in Rome and Milan. We have been thoroughly enjoying our Italian experience, which of course has included dining out at restaurants and enjoying the local cuisine. During this time, I have been reminded that there is no tipping per se, in Italy and most of Western Europe, the way we are used to tippin

It Really Does Bring The World Together This week I was fortunate to have my first Olympic experience. We attended the Canada vs. USA women’s hockey game on February 10th at Milano Santa Giulia Ice Hockey Arena, in Milan, Italy. I have seen many Winter and Summer Olympic games events on TV, but never in-person, until now. One more item crossed off my bucket list. Even though Canada lost 5-0, and was outplayed by the US team for the entire game, I thoroughly enjoyed the e

It’s Important In Business & Your Personal Life Early in my career a Board member gave me some advice that I didn’t quite understand at the time. He said, “life is about the stories you can tell - the better your stories are, the more people will listen to you; you have to have good stories!”. My initial reaction was, “Stories?!...Who cares about stories?! Who has time for stories?! Just articulate the value proposition and people will have to say yes!” Boy, was I wrong . An

The Story Leaders Must Convey To Get Their Teams To Believe I recently read an article that described the importance of a leader’s narrative - the story they share about themselves, the story they tell their team about the mission they are on collectively, and how they communicate and conduct themselves. A leader’s narrative is made up of all these things, and more, and these things form the leader’s identity. It is the team’s belief in this narrative and identity, or their

Out of Many, Comes One I recently binge-watched the show “Pluribus”, produced by Apple TV+ studios, and created by Vince Gilligan, who also created the hit shows, “Breaking Bad”, and “Better Call Saul”. As binge-watching would suggest, I was quite enamoured by Pluribus, because of the premise of the show, the storyline, and the excellent portrayal of the lead character, Carol Sturka, by actress Rhea Seehorn. The cinematography in Pluribus is beautiful and consistent with wh