The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has appointed Candace Laing as its next president and chief executive.Dave Chan /The Globe and Mail
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has appointed Candace Laing as its next president and chief executive, the first new leader for the influential business group in 17 years.
Ms. Laing, a former Nutrien executive from Saskatchewan, will take over Sept. 1 from Perrin Beatty, who announced his retirement in March. The high-profile role involves lobbying the federal government on behalf of about 400 regional chambers of commerce and boards of trade, and acting as a spokesperson for Canadian business interests in Ottawa and across the country.
Ms. Laing assumes the job at a tough moment for the Canadian economy. Interest rates are high, economic growth is stagnant and business investment in machinery and equipment is muted – a dynamic that’s leading to weak productivity growth, which the Bank of Canada has labelled a “break the glass” emergency.
Meanwhile, companies are dealing with tectonic shifts tied to artificial intelligence, the transition to a low-carbon energy system and rising trade protectionism, especially in the United States.
“We’re coming out of what had been a post-World War II era,” Ms. Laing said in an interview. “We need to invent new playbooks and new tools because these challenges are shifting the whole context which we’ve been used to our entire lives.”
Ms. Laing has a background in both small and big business. She grew up on a family farm and worked for a decade at the fertilizer giant Nutrien and its predecessor PotashCorp, where she was chief human resources officer and vice-president of sustainability and stakeholder relations.
She’s been on the chamber’s board of directors since 2019, and became board chair in 2022. She resigned as board chair to take on her new role.
“I’m not just one thing. I’m from a farm, I’ve had my own business and I’ve been part of this global corporate world too. So I kind of see that full spectrum,” Ms. Laing said, adding that this reflects the diversity of the 200,000 or so businesses that make up the chamber’s membership.
Her résumé differs considerably from her predecessor, Mr. Beatty, a long-time federal Progressive Conservative politician from Toronto, who served as a cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney’s government in the 1980s and early 1990s, and was head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in the late 1990s.
Penny Wise, vice-chair of the chamber’s board of directors and head of the CEO search committee, said the organization considered a range of candidates with backgrounds in business and politics, for what was “a hotly contested role.”
In the end, Ms. Laing was the “outstanding candidate,” Ms. Wise said in an interview, praising her “business smarts” and experience in both the corporate world and with the chamber.
“Even her background coming from a farm in Saskatchewan and that understanding of the small town, the community, how you build that community,” was a positive, Ms. Wise said, given that the chamber is really a network of smaller organizations in towns and cities across the country.
In Ottawa, Ms. Laing will have to navigate shifting political tides, where an unpopular Liberal government is struggling to stay afloat and has introduced a number of measures that have rankled the business community – most recently its decision to increase the inclusion rate for taxable capital gains earned by businesses and some high-income individuals.
The Conservative Party, which is widely expected to win the next election, is often thought of as more pro-business, given its focus on lowering taxes. However, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has expressed public disdain for the Chamber of Commerce and other business-lobby groups.
In an opinion piece published in the National Post in May, Mr. Poilievre said the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Council of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business hold “pointless luncheons and meetings and write op-eds or record interviews that almost no one sees.”
“As leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, I refuse to meet the aforementioned groups. They tell me what I already know,” Mr. Poilievre wrote.
When asked about these comments, Ms. Laing responded diplomatically: “The Canadian Chamber has always worked with the elected members across all parties. We partner in policy solutions,” she said.
She said that she will continue to push the chamber’s long-standing priorities: “We’re always trying to reduce the burden on businesses, to make being in business easier and with less red tape, and to address supply chain challenges.”
Canada needs “an environment, on the policy and regulatory side, that’s got some stability to it, so businesses can plan and work within that,” she added.
Ms. Laing said her focus in the coming months will be travelling across the country and meeting with the chamber’s regional members. She will also be settling into Ottawa, hunting for somewhere to live and looking for a new mixed-martial-arts gym in the city.
She got into MMA, a mixture of kick-boxing and jiu-jitsu, after recovering from a horse-riding accident several years ago. “People say I’m crazy, but I just love it,” she said.