Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / Canadian Perspective on US Politics and Values

Transcript

Canadian Perspective on US Politics and Values · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

• 0:17
  Find yourself in.
• 0:23
  Thank you for joining me.
• 0:24
  I'm Nola Simon.
• 0:25
  I'm the host of the Hope and Possibilities podcast, and today
• 0:29
  I actually wanted to talk a little bit about what's happening and.
• 0:35
  The US and the world in general.
• 0:38
  But I wanted to share my unique perspective because some of you
• 0:43
  may not realize that I worked for a global organization in financial
• 0:48
  services for 17 and a half years.
• 0:52
  16 of those years were actually based in the American division, and my
• 0:57
  clients happened to be for eight years.
• 1:01
  Mostly in Minnesota.
• 1:04
  So everything that's been happening in the US recently has been
• 1:09
  focused on the state of Minnesota.
• 1:12
  And that's fascinating to me because a lot of what's been happening
• 1:16
  has been happening primarily where my clients were based.
• 1:21
  I've actually been to Minnesota.
• 1:25
  More than any other area of the US because of that experience.
• 1:30
  Except for Florida.
• 1:31
  I've been to Florida a lot as a Canadian, that's Disney World.
• 1:35
  That's, I think for Canadians.
• 1:38
  But Minnesota, I've been through the entire state.
• 1:42
  I once did a whole week car trip through Minnesota and so
• 1:48
  everything that's been happening.
• 1:51
  It is shocking, but quite honestly, not entirely shocking.
• 1:56
  I started leaving John Hancock when I was 2016.
• 2:02
  My father-in-law had died in 2015.
• 2:05
  We settled his estate finally in 2016, and then my mother was diagnosed
• 2:11
  with dementia and died in 2017.
• 2:14
  Took me another year and a half to actually.
• 2:17
  Leave car accident didn't help in 2018.
• 2:23
  It took a lot of time to really find that transition because
• 2:29
  it was like I had packed up and moved to the US for 16 years.
• 2:38
  I. Realized that the way that I told the story about my skills and
• 2:42
  abilities and how I talked about the work really didn't resonate in Canada.
• 2:48
  And even though I was always paid in Canada by Canadian company
• 2:55
  the work itself didn't resonate.
• 2:58
  And what I'd learned over the years too was.
• 3:02
  I have the ability to work with people who don't share
• 3:09
  values and beliefs.
• 3:12
  I had a personal role with my American clients.
• 3:15
  I didn't talk about gun control.
• 3:17
  I didn't talk about religion.
• 3:18
  I didn't talk about the medical system, and I didn't talk about,
• 3:22
  employment law for the most part.
• 3:26
  You only have to have a couple of conversations about a year long maternity
• 3:30
  leave to realize that the value system is just so significantly different and
• 3:37
  the laws that are in place to support that are so fundamentally different
• 3:42
  from Canada that it's not in anybody's best interest really to highlight.
• 3:47
  Especially when there's a mentality that the customer is always right and
• 3:55
  you really don't want to annoy them.
• 4:00
  So I did that for 16 years.
• 4:03
  And what happened in 2016?
• 4:05
  Funny you ask.
• 4:06
  Obamacare got disabled and so when Obama was in the White House and
• 4:12
  there were significant changes to the medical system in particular hardship
• 4:17
  withdrawals for medical bankruptcy really went down and those calls
• 4:22
  were always hard to really take.
• 4:24
  In 2016, when that stopped, those calls started again.
• 4:30
  And
• 4:33
  I didn't want to subject myself to that anymore.
• 4:38
  Like I could see what was happening and fundamentally what was going to happen
• 4:46
  because I studied history at university.
• 4:51
  My major was math, but I minored in history and.
• 4:55
  My father actually grew up in Nazi Germany.
• 5:00
  He was born in 1932, so when the war happened, he was seven years old.
• 5:04
  My mother was from Glasgow, so my parents, since the time I was a child,
• 5:10
  as a child, really educated me on
• 5:16
  the.
• 5:17
  Different aspects of politics and how that's woven into daily life and the
• 5:21
  choices individual people make when the world is hard, when society is presenting
• 5:32
  choices that aren't fundamentally in your
• 5:37
  best interest, nor are they things that you value, but how do you survive that?
• 5:43
  So it's been really fascinating to me.
• 5:45
  And so I identified 10 years ago that I wanted to reduce the amount of American
• 5:59
  exposure on my day-to-day life.
• 6:02
  And that was not where I wanted to really have my career centered and from
• 6:08
  a Canadian perspective, I've really been removing American influence from my
• 6:14
  personal life and my career for 10 years.
• 6:18
  This is not just something that has started because of
• 6:22
  tariffs or, anything like that.
• 6:24
  And I think Americans are really stunned that Canadians are finding it that
• 6:30
  easy to really divorce themselves from.
• 6:35
  American culture and pop culture and the way that we shop, the choices that we
• 6:42
  make to buy elsewhere and how that, that really is impacting the American economy.
• 6:50
  You're seeing, the travel industry is being decimated because people
• 6:54
  are just choosing not to travel.
• 6:57
  And we're seeing states actually running advertising campaigns to
• 7:00
  get Canadian travelers back despite the fact that, it doesn't feel
• 7:05
  safe to actually cross the border.
• 7:06
  Because if a, and
• 7:08
  Even just the threat really to look at your phone and your social media.
• 7:11
  I've been commenting on my reasons for leaving.
• 7:15
  In American division for 10 years.
• 7:18
  I can't walk that back.
• 7:19
  At some point somebody's gonna look at things that I've said over 10
• 7:24
  years that weren't controversial when I wrote them and think that
• 7:31
  they might be controversial now.
• 7:32
  So how do I proceed?
• 7:35
  My client base is not American.
• 7:38
  I'm definitely, global in nature.
• 7:41
  I will look at, what's happening in Australia and the UK and
• 7:45
  Denmark and Europe in general.
• 7:47
  And, I definitely look at the US because I've got a great
• 7:51
  deal of familiarity with it.
• 7:53
  But quite honestly, my bread and butter would be, the idea would
• 7:59
  be to have a solid Canadian base.
• 8:02
  It really doesn't harm me or impact me to really talk about the fact that Americans
• 8:11
  really need to own what's going on in their comp country.
• 8:14
  And I know the majority of Americans didn't vote for this.
• 8:19
  I know the majority of Americans didn't expect.
• 8:23
  Government agents to be shooting citizens in the streets.
• 8:29
  I've talked, I talked to Americans for 16 years daily, multiple times a day.
• 8:36
  They're good people.
• 8:37
  The majority of them, they.
• 8:40
  Care.
• 8:40
  They're courteous, they're polite, they're interesting.
• 8:43
  They're funny.
• 8:45
  I miss quite a lot of them.
• 8:47
  Even 10 years later I think about the people who made my days a daily
• 8:52
  delight because they were fun.
• 8:57
  So
• 9:00
  when I talk about Americans, it's with great deal of appreciation because.
• 9:08
  I like a lot of the clients that I dealt with.
• 9:12
  But I also know that it
• 9:19
  change only really happens when you own your collective impact.
• 9:24
  And so you may not have voted for what's happening, but you do have
• 9:31
  the ability to make a difference and.
• 9:34
  Advocate for change, and this is where this fight for democracy that's
• 9:39
  happening actually on the streets of Minneapolis and the protests and the,
• 9:45
  on, on Friday, there's supposed to be no work, no school, no shopping and
• 9:49
  economic boycott really to impact the companies that are not standing up for.
• 10:01
  What's right and
• 10:05
  what's uncomfortable.
• 10:07
  That's nice to see because quite honestly, that's what Americans have to do.
• 10:13
  And it has to be Americans.
• 10:15
  That's why 10 years ago when I made the decision that I,
• 10:19
  I wanted to work with.
• 10:21
  People and companies whose values match mine.
• 10:25
  And the way to do that was to focus more on can Canada and Canadian companies
• 10:30
  rather than American companies.
• 10:34
  I made that decision 10 years ago and people are just noticing this now
• 10:39
  and confronting it because it can't come from anybody who's external.
• 10:46
  Because Americans themselves don't
• 10:50
  value the insight
• 10:52
  and I'm gonna pause there and just say, I'm not trying to be insulting with that.
• 10:56
  I'm not trying to be confronting with that.
• 10:59
  It's just a reality of the American.
• 11:04
  Personality, which is, home with the brave land of the free Americans are the best.
• 11:13
  You see it in movies where the American rag comes in and the
• 11:17
  heroes are always Americans, cans.
• 11:21
  I can't tell you how many times I've seen Recreation of World War II where.
• 11:27
  The Americans are the heroes, even though the whole rest of the world
• 11:31
  was president and contributed in multiple different ways as well too.
• 11:35
  The storytelling that is woven into day-to-day American life is
• 11:41
  that Americans are the good guys.
• 11:44
  And so when things are happening that are not in the best interest
• 11:49
  of sustaining that narrative.
• 11:53
  The change, the advocates, the people who have to really fight for
• 11:57
  this, have to be Americans because
• 12:04
  you are the only voices
• 12:09
  that really make a difference to each individual, American.
• 12:17
  And that matters.
• 12:18
  So I am doing this in a podcast rather than actually writing it on LinkedIn
• 12:24
  because I feel the need to share it,
• 12:31
  but I also know that I get fewer listeners.
• 12:38
  And so this is controversial.
• 12:40
  I realize that I have a perspective that not a lot of Canadians are willing to
• 12:44
  speak up and say my relationship with my American clients worked because I
• 12:51
  was not honestly allowed to voice my.
• 12:57
  Distinct Canadian opinion,
• 13:01
  right?
• 13:02
  I was throttled, my calls were recorded.
• 13:05
  People knew what I was saying, and honestly, I probably conveyed a lot
• 13:13
  more than I ever should have to the majority of the clients that I had.
• 13:17
  But realistically, you didn't.
• 13:20
  You never got the honest, upfront version of me.
• 13:25
  That a corporate filter.
• 13:29
  So I really hope that Americans figure it out because it's shocking to see
• 13:39
  the relationship between Canada and the US disintegrate the way it has.
• 13:44
  But Mark Carney is right.
• 13:48
  It's nostalgia.
• 13:52
  It's the way it used to be, and quite honestly, it's been disintegrating for
• 13:57
  far longer than what most people think.
• 14:01
  Again, I started seeing this and making moves to change
• 14:06
  my interactions 10 years ago.
• 14:11
  And what does that mean for the future?
• 14:15
  I don't know.
• 14:16
  I think it really depends on the.
• 14:19
  The way that individual Americans speak up and advocate for what
• 14:25
  they want the future to be.
• 14:28
  And I know that's scary, and I know that it doesn't feel safe,
• 14:32
  especially with the way that, people are being shot and murdered.
• 14:39
  There's no easy answer, but the answers do have to come from Americans
• 14:45
  because what's gonna happen is.
• 14:47
  Other people, other countries are going to make choices
• 14:53
  that protect them, that make their daily lives feel safer.
• 15:01
  And quite honestly, I'm an example
• 15:22
  Find yourself in.