Our guest on this episode of the Insights Podcast is Carrie Cussons, the CEO of Events East, the special purpose government agency partnership between the Province of Nova Scotia and the Halifax Regional Municipality responsible for managing both the Halifax Convention Centre and Scotiabank Centre. There was considerable early criticism about the decision to build the new convention centre. The convention centre opened in December 2017 and, despite operating during a period that included Covid, has proven the critics wrong, attracting 3.3 million attendees at its facilities and generating economic benefits of between $100 and $125 million annually to the economy in Nova Scotia.

The new convention centre is three times larger than the previous facility with 120,000 sq ft of available space. It can accommodate conferences for 3,000 people and multiple events at a time. Before the new convention centre, between 4-5 national and international conferences were attracted to the city. In the coming year, 46 such events are scheduled. This underscores the importance of investment in public infrastructure like convention centres to stimulate economic activity and be a catalyst for development in the downtown core, as has happened in Halifax.

On this episode of the Insights Podcast, our guest is Greg Simpson, the President & CEO of Liverpool, NS-based Mersey Seafoods, a company most would know very little about. Mersey Seafoods was founded in 1964 by a dentist, Dr. Bill Murphy and a group of like-minded businesspeople. It was started to replace a fish plant that had been destroyed by fire and has since become one of Atlantic Canada's largest privately owned seafood companies. The family continues to be privately held by the Murphy family. The company has 700 employees and its own fishing fleet, and one of its ships can catch up to 10 million shrimp in a day. The company recently acquired additional scallop quota, raising its share of the quota to 13 percent. The company is becoming vertically integrated with its own processing facilities, retail and wholesale operations. The company recently acquired the well-known Fisherman's Market and has plans to expand that business. They recently acquired the Shelburne Ship Repair facility, driving growth on the marine repair side of the business. It is a remarkable business success story that few will be aware of.

New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt joined Don and David on the Insights podcast this week. She is the province’s 35th premier and, while only been on the job for three months, is already facing an unexpected challenge, the threat of a prolonged trade war with the United States. We talk about a wide range of issues from health care to immigration and long term economic development. One interesting topic discussed is her focus on empowering the Cabinet. Increasingly in New Brunswick and across Canada, decision making has been more and more centered in the Premier’s/Prime Minister’s Office. It looks like Premier Holt wants to let her Ministers play a more important role. For almost 20 years we have been talking about developing an electronic health record system for all New Brunswickers. She seems convinced her government will finally get it done. Municipal tax reform, housing and energy development are also covered in this conversation. Well worth an hour of your time.

Vision 2025 was an event held last week at the Nova Scotia Health Innovation Hub focussed on the growing opportunities for the life sciences and bio-science sector in Nova Scotia and featured presentations from four companies in this space including Oberland Agriscience and 3DBioFibR. The event was co-sponsored by GreenSpring BioInnovation Hub, IGNITE Atlantic and Life Sciences Nova Scotia. David and Don were the keynote speakers at the event and recorded a live podcast with Doug Jones, the Founder and CEO of Ignite as the guest host for the podcast, where they discussed the opportunities and challenges associated with growing this segment of the economy.

There is a good chance that you have not heard about Don MacDougall, but he is the person most credited by many for Toronto's Major League Baseball's franchise while he was the President of Labatt's Breweries, where he led the company from third place in market share to first place. He was also closely involved with the establishment of the Montreal Grand Prix and the Labatt Brier. He has been a serial entrepreneur including being the owner of Novatronics, a company with some involvement in the development of the Canadarm. He recently returned to his home province of PEI where he purchased the Mill River Resort and Eagles Glenn near Cavendish. He led the transformation of Slemon Park in Summerside after the closure of its military base to a thriving business park with more than $400 million in exports. He is a member of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and the PEI Business Hall of Fame. He is also a past Chancellor of UPEI where their School of Business is named after him. It is an amazing story of business success and community involvement.

The Bertossi Group of restaurants is the largest privately owned group of fine dining restaurants east of Montreal. Stephanie and Maurizio Bertossi opened their first restaurant , the Perla in the 1980s. Few who live in or have visited Halifax have not dined at one of their well-known restaurants that have been around for decades, including the Bicycle Thief, Ristorante a Mano, La Frasca and il Mercato Trattoria.The Group is owned by Hakan Uluer, a personable and ambitious immigrant originally from Istanbul. Uluer began as a dishwasher in his native Turkey before ending up in Halifax with his Nova Scotian born wife and working with the Bertossi where he eventually became first a partner and finally the owner.

The secret of the Bertossi Group's longevity and success is attention to detail and consistency in service delivery, dining experience and food quality. Uluer recently opened two new restaurants on the Halifax waterfront, Water Pool and Matadoras, and now employs over 750 people with an expectation of growing that number to 1,000 by the end of 2025. It is a true entrepreneurial story.

On this week’s Insights, Don and David talk with Heidi Leslie, founder & CEO of Halifax-based Crux Energy Consulting to discuss the energy sector in Atlantic Canada. We talk about artificial intelligence and cloud computing and the demand for data centres and whether this is an opportunity for Atlantic Canada. We discuss the Newfoundland-Quebec electricity deal and other energy generation projects announced in 2024. Leslie also weighs in on natural gas and makes a strong case that the region will be using natural gas for decades to come. If you want to know her view on green hydrogen, nuclear energy, what we are going to pay for electricity and other energy-related topics, click on the link or download wherever you get your podcasts.

This week Gilles Volpé, President of NB Gas with Liberty Utilities joined Don and David on the Insights podcast. Liberty Utilities is the natural gas distribution company in New Brunswick. Gilles provides an important tutorial on the sources and uses of natural gas now and into the future. On an energy equivalent basis, New Brunswick currently uses as much natural gas as it does electricity. Most large industrial companies across the province use it. In southern New Brunswick, almost all hospitals, schools, government buildings and other big commercial organizations heat with gas. A considerable amount of electricity is already produced using natural gas and NB Power is building a new gas-fired generation facility in the Moncton region. Where does the gas come from? Unfortunately, mostly from Alberta and the southern United States. In many cases it costs more to transport the gas thousands of kilometres than the cost of the gas itself. We talk about the potential to green the gas system in the years ahead through renewable sources and other topics.