Disruptors

Alberta’s Next Energy Mix

With industrial power demand rising, can small modular reactors help anchor a cleaner, always‑on system that will support the incoming AI Data Centre boom? In this bonus episode of Disruptors, recorded live in Edmonton, host John Stackhouse speaks with Premier Danielle Smith about a practical path: SMRs alongside abated natural gas, hydro, and stronger interties—with Indigenous equity built in from day one. They dig into reliability needs, near‑term “bring‑your‑own‑power” models, how to finance nuclear in an energy‑only market, and what collaboration between provinces could unlock. Recorded live in Edmonton, Alberta, and convened by the SMR Forum in partnership with the Canadian Association of Small Modular Reactors (CASMR). rbc.com/en/thought-leadership/ SMR Forum: https://smr-forum.caCASMR: https://canada-smr.ca Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Building Canada: A new generation takes charge

Canada’s future won’t be decided in PDF strategies — it will be decided by what we actually build: trade corridors, clean power, AI datacentres, agtech and northern connectivity that can stand up in a more volatile world.In this episode of Disruptors: The Canada Project, John Stackhouse speaks with Daniel Debow, Chair of the Board at Build Canada, and Lucy Hargreaves, the organization’s CEO, about how a new builder mindset is taking shape across the country — and why sovereignty and competitiveness now depend on turning ideas into infrastructure at speed and scale.As global trade routes shift and geopolitical tensions rise, they explore how Canada can capitalize on its advantages — from Arctic gateways and critical minerals to Prairie food corridors and on-farm agtech — while giving the next generation real ways to step into nation-building, in business and in public service.www.buildcanada.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Power to Compute: How Alberta Is Powering the AI Age

Energy planners used to talk about a “trilemma”: reliability, affordability and sustainability.As AI reshapes the global economy and data centres demand thousands of megawatts of new load, Alberta is adding a fourth leg to the stool — velocity — turning it into an energy quadlema.At the edge of Wabamun Lake west of Edmonton, the Keephills and Sundance power sites are being reimagined from coal-era workhorses into “AI-ready” power hubs. TransAlta is converting units to natural gas, opening up land for data centres and using existing transmission and cooling infrastructure to shorten the path from project to power.In this episode of Disruptors: The Canada Project, John Stackhouse speaks with Premier Danielle Smith and John Kousinioris, President & CEO of TransAlta, about how Alberta is experimenting with a new “bring your own power” model for hyperscalers — and how the recent Canada–Alberta energy MOU aims to unlock thousands of megawatts of AI computing capacity.Alberta is positioning itself as a testing ground for how countries can build domestic compute on their own grids — instead of just exporting raw energy — while navigating an energy quadlema of reliability, affordability, sustainability and speed to power. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Trust Advantage: How OpenText is Securing Canada’s Information Layer

The world is investing billions in data centres and compute. Canada’s edge isn’t bigger boxes—it’s Trust: rules enforced at home, private information secured under Canadian jurisdiction, and a clear path for enterprise data handling in the age of AI.That’s how “Canadian trust” becomes a competitive advantage.This week on Disruptors: The Canada Project, John Stackhouse takes us to Waterloo to map how policy as code, Canadian residency, and lineage + audit turn trust into a speed advantage. Guests: Tom Jenkins & Shannon Bell (OpenText), with Janice Stein (Munk School).Build it here—export it with confidence.Takeaways:OpenText new bookEnterprise Artificial Intelligence: Building Trusted AI with Secure Data:https://www.opentext.com/media/ebook/enterprise-artificial-intelligence-building-trusted-ai-with-secure-data-ebook-en.pdfRBC Thought Leadership’s Bridging the Imagination Gap: How Canadian companies can become global leaders in AI adoption:https://www.rbc.com/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2025/03/Bridging-the-Imagination-Gap-Report-EN-2.pdf Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Beyond the Battery: Inside Quebec’s Mine-to-Refine Transformation

As the world electrifies—from cars and buses to datacentres and defence—demand for battery materials is exploding. Today, China refines more than 90% of the world’s graphite into the material used in virtually all EV battery anodes—that level of concentration is a strategic vulnerability Canada, and its allies, can’t ignore.But Canada is starting to respond. The federal Major Projects Office has just referred Nouveau Monde Graphite’s Phase-2 Matawinie Mine as a “Major Project of National Interest”—a move aimed at helping Quebec and Canada shift from exporting ore to building a full mine-to-refine graphite value chain at home, and with it, an entirely new strand of economic and industrial capacity.In this episode of Disruptors: The Canada Project, host John Stackhouse takes listeners into that story. With former Quebec premier Jean Charest and Eric Desaulniers, founder & CEO of NMG, he lifts the hood on what it means for a critical-minerals project to be treated as a “major project” in Canada—and what this could mean for Canada’s role as a trusted critical-minerals supplier to its G7 allies. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.