Why are you petitioning the federal government to move so quickly on stablecoin legislation?
We’ve got to play some catch-up. To the government's credit, the budget implementation act does include stablecoin legislation that allows us to catch up to the U.K., to the U.S., to Australia, and to other jurisdictions that are moved forward on it.
We can hopefully get to a place where transaction fees are lowered. If I'm able to do business-to-business transactions, it's a massive benefit. There’s a real possibility of more seamless transactions and much lower transaction fees.
What would you say is the biggest public misconception about your job?
I think the biggest misconception about the job is that there is a typical day in the life. There really isn’t. This job is very entrepreneurial. It is what you make of it. The other perception is that politicians treat it as a game or that politicians are in it for themselves and make decisions to secure electoral benefit at all costs. Sometimes, the way it gets treated in Parliament, we do forget that this isn't a game. This is something that we've got to take incredibly seriously on behalf of Canadians.
Clips of Question Period in Parliament can often look like a reality TV show. Can you pull back the curtain a little bit and talk about what goes on behind the scenes?
Question Period gets so much of the oxygen and attention. I actually think it's the least interesting part of the job and least interesting part of our politics. It's designed to be theatre. It’s designed to generate clips, whether it's on the attack, or in some cases, generate clips on the defensive. Unfortunately, what does that turn into? It turns into condensing every possible nuance into a single unnuanced talking point.
You were a pitcher on the Queen’s University baseball team, but also played at Oxford. What was the baseball scene like there?
It's funny, actually. I played my whole life and then played through university, but I was probably at my best in high school. When I went to Oxford, I hadn't played in a number of years. It was pretty fun because it wasn't all that serious. I played for the senior men's team, which was pretty fun because it was a collection of expats. Our shortstop was from Japan, our second baseman was from the Dominican Republic, and I was the starting pitcher from Canada. So it was really fun.
If there was one cabinet post you could step into tomorrow, what would it be?
I was the housing minister for a minute, but apart from that, I think industry minister would be interesting. I've been on the industry committee for a number of years, and I think it's especially important in this environment where you've got an overwhelming focus on economic growth.
I think [Mélanie Joly] is doing a great job right now, and if I'm thinking about making the biggest impact on my end, the question I'm starting to turn over in my head is if I should run for the Ontario Liberal Leadership.
What would you peg the odds of you running for Ontario Liberal leadership right now?
Some days I wake up, and I'm 90% sure I'm doing it. Other days, I wake up, and I'm going to a swimming class or coaching baseball, and I think it's more like 40%. But I would put it at a healthy 75% right now. Politics is worth it, for sure. I'm convinced it's the most important way that one can make a difference. At the same time, it is a real sacrifice for my family.
In your experience, what is the biggest difference in working in a Trudeau government versus a Carney government?
I haven't felt a huge difference in my own job. I still see my role as playing a constructive accountability function to make sure that when I'm disagreeing, it's around ideas, and to push the government to be the best version that it can be.
Unquestionably, there's more of a focus on the economy in the current administration. There's still a desire to maintain the social services that we've managed to put in place under the Trudeau administration.
Carney’s big step forward initially was the military. I mean, the biggest line item in the budget, apart from the tax cut and the rollback on capital gains, was a military expenditure. The Liberal Party is a big tent, and you see competing visions within that big tent. I think Carney and Trudeau represent different sides.
How do you think the moment we’re in, particularly when it comes to the U.S., has changed what Canadians are looking for from elected leaders?
There’s a desire to build up Canada with a U.S. president who is undermining our sovereignty. When he was going on about the 51st state repeatedly for a time there, there was, and there still is, a real serious desire to see us have more independence and to have self-sufficiency on defence and have self-sufficiency when it comes to our infrastructure.
People do want a steady, stable hand in response to that chaos south of us. There are challenges — housing is an interesting one. There weren't the at-scale investments necessary to really treat the housing effort as a wartime effort in the budget, if we're being honest. If we don't have enough of those dollars going to the housing file, we're going to wake up five years later, and we're still going to be struggling with the same conversation.
What is the biggest obstacle right now to building transit infrastructure more efficiently?
Historically, governments struggle with getting large projects built in an efficient way. Some governments do well, some governments do poorly. Typically, it's suboptimal, but there are some ways we can do better. The second part is pure priority. If you've got a premier who talks about building a tunnel, it's just distraction politics apart from what we actually need. It's a question of priorities.
With politics, short-term electoral prospects also hurt efficiency. On transit, that's what's happened in the city of Toronto, perpetually. There's been a ping-pong back and forth due to electoral politics, and that set us back. We need politicians to be honest with the electorate and say, we're not going to be able to fix every problem in a short window of time, but here are the things that need to be done over the medium term.
What's a book you read this year that you would recommend to our readers?
I just read Rutger Bregman's book Moral Ambition. It's really like a call to arms. It urges us to forget about that consulting job at McKinsey or forget about that corporate lawyer job that I used to have, and go find a way to make the biggest difference that you can.
There’s no single answer to this. My answer would be elected politics; someone else's answer would be working as a public interest lawyer. There are lots of different ways of making a difference, but the idea is to go out and use your time wisely.
How do you get more of the top young talent from Canadian universities to go into public service rather than the private sector?
I don’t have the perfect answer to this. There are a lot of people who come out of school with debt, including me. I think you can help solve the money equation with a type of loan forgiveness program. For example, if I got a job on Bay Street, I would have the freedom to repay my student loans quickly. One way to offset that is you have loan forgiveness for folks who are going to commit themselves to lower pay for the public good.