Disruptors

By RBC Thought Leadership, John StackhouseBusiness Entrepreneurship Technology

Disruptors episodes

April 07 REBOOT: Building Canada: A new generation takes charge.
As Disruptors: The Canada Project earns a Webby Award nomination, we’re re-releasing the season finale, “Building Canada: A new generation takes charge.”
How does Canada actually build faster, smarter and at greater scale?
In this episode, John Stackhouse speaks with Daniel Debow and Lucy Hargreaves of Build Canada about what it will take for Canada to move from big ideas to real execution.
After a season exploring defence tech in Newfoundland, sovereign launch capacity in Atlantic Canada, critical minerals and refining in Quebec, AI-ready power in Alberta, and trusted data infrastructure in Ontario, this finale brings those threads together in one conversation about nation-building, productivity, infrastructure, innovation, and Canadian competitiveness.
If you’ve been following the series, please support Disruptors in the Webby People’s Voice Awards. Vote.webbyawards.com
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31 min
March 24Trust at Scale: Lessons from Wikipedia
Trust at Scale: Lessons from Wikipedia

Wikipedia is one of the internet’s most-used public resources, but what makes people trust it in an era shaped by AI, misinformation and institutional decline? On this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse speaks with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales about how Wikipedia built trust, why neutrality still matters, and what generative AI gets wrong. They discuss community governance, social media, local journalism, online accountability, young people’s information habits and what businesses can learn from a platform designed around public trust.

In this episode you’ll understand:
Why Wikipedia still earns trust when so much of the internet does not.

What neutrality looks like in a polarized digital environment.

Why AI makes trusted human systems more important, not less.

RBC – Thought Leadership
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29 min
March 10 Tech Wins Gold: How Canada Can Rebuild Its Olympic Pipeline
Canada’s Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics delivered unforgettable moments — and also a hard signal: podium success is increasingly won upstream, through systems, sport science, and technology.

In a world where competitors treat sport science as infrastructure, Canada is trying to win with a thinner pipeline and a funding model that can push costs onto athletes. That’s not just unfair — it’s strategically risky.

In our latest Disruptors episode, host John Stackhouse sits down with David Shoemaker, CEO and Secretary General of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and Jennifer Heil, Olympic champion (Turin 2006 gold; Vancouver 2010 silver) and Chef de Mission for Team Canada at Milano Cortina 2026.

This episode unpacks what “modernization” means. It’s the same logic that drives performance in business: small gains compound when the system is designed to learn.

You’ll also hear why talent identification matters and how RBC Training Ground points to what a scalable pipeline can look like when measurement meets opportunity.

Home-field advantage: How to scale Canadian sport tech primer
RBC Training Ground
RBC Thought Leadership
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32 min
February 24Harvest Now, Decrypt Later: The Quantum Era's Encryption Challenge
Quantum computing is accelerating — and putting today’s encryption on a clock. John Stackhouse goes inside Xanadu’s Toronto lab with Christian Weedbrook to meet Aurora, a networked quantum computer built to push scale in the right direction and speaks with Photonic’s Dr. Stephanie Simmons about “harvest now, decrypt later,” fault-tolerant quantum, and why every organization needs a post-quantum cryptography (PQC) transition plan.
It’s not all doom and gloom. Simmons also lays out what quantum could unlock as it scales: new possibilities in materials, chemistry, and discovery that are moving from theory toward real-world impact.

In this episode:
Inside Xanadu: Aurora and what “networked quantum” looks like in the real world

What “fault-tolerant” quantum means — and why it matters

“Harvest now, decrypt later” and the trust implications for institutions

Post-quantum cryptography (PQC): where leaders should start

Quantum upside: materials, chemistry, and faster discovery
Read:
Quantum Explained
RBC – Thought Leadership
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23 min
February 11 The $15m Cliff: Keeping Canadian Agri-Food Startups Scaling at Home
Canada is exporting too much of its agri-food upside—IP, talent, and value-add—because growth-stage financing doesn’t fit the sector. From Ottawa, John Stackhouse speaks with RBC’s Lisa Ashton to unpack Seeding Scale—RBC’s new report on Canada’s agri-food growth-capital gap. Joined by Vive Crop CEO Darren Anderson and Emmertech Managing Partner Kyle Scott, they break down why agri-food is “different money,” why companies hit a wall around the $15M mark, and the first moves to keep more Canadian innovation scaling at home.

Seeding Scale Report

RBC Thought Leadership
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29 min
January 27 Risk as Signal: A Canadian Playbook
Fresh from Davos, John Stackhouse shares field notes on how the world’s economy is reorganizing — and what that means for Canadians.

He is joined by Gerald Butts, Vice Chairman and Senior Advisor at Eurasia Group, to unpack the new RBC–Eurasia Canada risk outlook: what matter most, how to separate signal from noise, and the practical playbook for where to invest, what to protect, and how to diversify.

RBC / Eurasia – Risk Report
www.rbc.com/en/thought-leadership/the-growth-project/top-risks-2026-canada/

Davos ’26: Making sense of a new world order
www.rbc.com/en/thought-leadership/the-trade-hub/davos-26-making-sense-of-a-new-world-order/

RBC Thought Leadership
www.rbc.com/thoughtleadership
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24 min
January 13 Climate-Led Investing: What’s Next
If you’re trying to separate climate ambition from execution, this conversation is for you! John Stackhouse is joined by Clara Barby, Senior Partner at Just Climate, to pressure-test what’s scaling—and what’s getting stuck by diving into RBC’s new Climate Action 2026 report.

What you’ll hear:
Why 2025 was a year of “proof and pressure” and what that means for clean tech in 2026.
Climate Tech solutions that don’t require behaviour change.

The case for Canada’s ‘land transition’ as a ripe opportunity—investing in tools and inputs that help farmers and land managers decarbonize.

Why CCUS remains a complex case: carbon price, CapEx, infrastructure, and the fragmented value chain.
How AI-driven power demand is changing the investment lens on electrification and grid build.
Clara Barby is a Senior Partner at Just Climate (founded by Generation Investment Management). She previously led the Impact Management Project and supported the establishment of the ISSB (International Sustainability Standards Board)

Links:
RBC Climate Action 2026 (report): www.rbc.com/cai
Unearthing Value (report): http://bit.ly/4qJZ9TQ
Just Climate: https://www.justclimate.com
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24 min
December 30, 2025 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.ca
CASMR: https://canada-smr.ca
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25 min
December 16, 2025 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
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29 min
December 09, 2025 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.
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27 min

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Disruptors, now in its 11th season, has become your front-row seat to Canada’s innovation story—200+ episodes exploring the people, ideas, and technologies reshaping Canada’s future.